Paris (AFP)

After eight years of touring with The Woman, Clémence Quélennec took advantage of a break from the group to go to Morocco and produce there, under the name of Aja, a plane electro inspired by "nature and light".

"Solitaire", a five-track mini-album (EP), will be released this Friday and will surprise those who still see it as "The Woman of the Woman" - essentially male training, therefore - who sang "Mycose", dancing microphone in hand on the front of the stage at the Lollapalooza in Paris in 2017.

Filmed playing live "Far Country", one of his two instruments, Aja sits, keyboard on his knees, in the mountains, his dreamy notes dotted with the surf of the ocean or bird callings. A concentrate of his new life in southern Morocco.

"I take my recorder - I like to walk, to go hiking - to (capture) what is around, full of animals, the wind in the leaves, the sound of my steps when I walk, the sea ​​in the distance.

Then, "there is sound used raw or sounds that I traffic It gives me ideas I do not compose my songs with piano and voice, it's not too my + process +".

Why Morocco? "I just wanted to go to the sun, I was lucky to have some money left and nothing that keeps me in Paris," she says. Aja saw herself rather in Greece but followed her "guy who has his grandmother there". "I did not leave".

- "Sunset in the sea" -

The couple found a "very isolated house". But no question of a life of hermit. "The house welcomes many people, we see each other around the music, the creation (...) If someone needs time to compose, he can stay".

In her musical / friendly galaxy we find "electro-free" like Jacques, Ouai Stéphane, or Neysa, half of the trip-hop duo UTO who helped her for a text.

The EP, coherent, has for "driver the light": "I have the chance to have a sky with the colors which change all the time, I also saw a moonset in the sea".

"I want to travel, I tell me travels, magical, fantastic," she says. Her titles bring her closer to those of M83, a project led by Anthony Gonzalez. "Yes, I love what he does." No wonder, since M83 and Aja cite as a reference Suzanne Ciani, American pioneer of electronic music then new age.

In her recording studio "open to nature", she is "quite serene". Forgotten past problems of anorexia - "it happens, I had the chance to heal soon enough".

Steely Dan had entitled his 6th album "Aja". She "likes" the American band, but it's a false track. "I wanted to project myself into a character, it's a name that can come out of a tale, I saw that it means + goat + in Hindi, because it's my favorite animal and I've been surrounded by goats since a year and a half, I like it. "

In its environment, there are also some small galleys. "We have a little internet but at 19:00 it's as if the guy from the wifi left, we have to go to the village." She also "tried to make a garden", but "it's hell".

The project "Solitaire" has however germinated and should still flourish on stage, where Aja wants "work side + ambient + to improvise long beaches + tripante +".

© 2019 AFP