“I spent a whole year without being able to do anything on the guitar, which was really scary. I thought, ‘OK, maybe I’ve lost it for good’”: How Neige’s ascent from the creative abyss led to Alcest’s most ethereal and life-affirming album

For 13 lucky years, French ambient metal icon Stéphane “Neige” Paut regularly wrote otherworldly and emotionally resonant songs that enabled him to escape the often burdensome weight of daily life.

Alcest’s frontman may have started his career playing black metal, but Neige always saw slivers of light in the darkness, and over the course of six albums Alcest evolved into a more winsome group that experimented with soundtrack music, post-rock and shoegaze.

“Alcest is a very spiritual, introverted type of music,” Neige says. “I write about my own thoughts and feelings and, like everybody, these range from really happy to very sad. I like to draw from different types of music to express these things.”

When the pandemic shut down the world in 2020, Neige figured he’d have extra time to relax in his studio and write an abundance of introspective new Alcest songs. Instead, he battled excruciating writer’s block that left him empty.

“I spent a whole year without being able to do anything on the guitar, which was really scary,” he says. “I thought, ‘Okay, maybe I’ve lost it for good and I’m done with music because it doesn’t seem like I have anything left to say.’”

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Intinally, after a year of aimless noodling – during which time the Covid vaccine became widely available and the world started to open up – the sun broke through the clouds and Neige wrote L’Envol, the first single from Alcest’s new album, Les Chants de l’Aurore.

The eight-minute journey through a galaxy of clean and dirty reverb-drenched guitars, push-pull dynamics and ethereal meditations was the key that opened the lock to Neige’s creativity and confidence. “I felt that Alcest magic again, and I knew I was back,” he says.

Despite (or maybe because of) the bleak, uncertain times, Neige was able to tap back into the celestial beauty that has marked Alcest’s best material, while coloring the songs with occasionally roaring vocals (Améthyste) and sporadic blast beats (Komorebi).

The eclectic Les Chants de l’Aurore includes piano, synth, strings and a choir, yet Les Chants de l’Aurore is not as musically complex as the band’s last two releases, 2016’s Kodama and 2019’s Spiritual Instinct.

“I wanted to return to our old sound, which was more simple and uplifting,” Neige says. “I needed to feel that kind of magic again. I tend to be quite melancholic in my daily life, so I really like to make this kind of beautiful music to cheer myself up.”

• Les Chants de l'Aurore is out now via Nuclear Blast.