[**LULA PACE**](https://www.lulapace.com) glasses.
It is hard to describe the truly intoxicating nature of [Charlotte Adigéry’s](https://www.instagram.com/adigerwww/?hl=nl) single “Paténipat” which sucks the air out of you in a biblical trance. It is one of the multifaceted reaches of the musician’s style and sound which ranges from a girl next door to total latex dom as seen in the brilliant ASMR version of her tract _Cursed & Cussed_.
The sounds fly between 90s trip-hop to the bounciest new wave sounds an appropriate choice to lead the 29 year old Belgian-Carribean to DEEWEE, Soulwax’ label. Speaking with her is a diverse schooling which goes from music topics of punky reggae and the works of Ari Up to minimalist techno god Andy Stott. Flaunt caught up with Adigéry upon her Los Angeles stop to chat about music and meditation.
**Your Yin Yang piece is amazing because I really like the way you were able to evoke a sense of realness to it. I played it the other night for a friend having a bad trip on shrooms. A lot of the times when people do these types of guided meditations it tends to go too positive where there’s no actual bounce back on reality and that sometimes can be really irritating.**
Yeah, I think so too. I feel like it’s so important to be able to relate in your work. Like, if you’re somebody who’s soul searching and trying to meditate and find some piece of mind. But also as artists, I think it’s super trendy now to be real, but I don’t know if it’s that real, like if they’re showing all of it. I try to do that as much as possible because I really believe that being honest and also being open about your struggles, and your fears and your insecurities can help other people and I think that’s super important, so that’s what I try to do. Also, in my search into meditation I found it frustrating as well because, as you said, a lot of people who lead guided meditations they all seem enlightened and not struggling at all, but I think it’s also very freeing to admit that it’s not always easy.
**Absolutely. It’s really funny, so I actually first got to know your song from the soundtrack for Belgica. I didn’t realize that was you though until recently. I was reading another interview. I really love that one song you did for that soundtrack “The Best Thing.” How did you get involved with Soulwax?**
We are from the same city and we have a lot of friends in common, but we didn’t really know each other. One of their crew members worked in another band in which I did backing vocals for. They were making the music for the soundtrack and were looking for someone to do a lip sync performance in the film. So that’s how I met them, I went to their studio to have a talk about that and they were super apologetic because they said that, ‘We heard from a lot of people, a lot of friends of ours that you’re an amazing singer but we’re so sorry we have to make you do a lip sync.’ I wasn’t offended at all. I was super happy to be there and to get to know them. They’re idols for a lot of people in Belgium and beyond Belgium as well. But then the director, Felix Van Groeningen changed the plot a little at the ending and was looking for a song that was a little bit more sensitive that would contrast the rest of the soundtrack and the film that is super rock and roll. So that’s how they realized, ‘okay maybe we should ask Charlotte to try something out’ and that’s how we started off. And actually, they told me to look for some music that inspired me and that could fit with the film. I remember the song I brought to them was “The Narcissist” by Dean Blunt. That was my inspiration - I was addicted to that song. That’s the song that inspired me but is obviously way more mainstream because it needed to fit that movie.
**I didn’t know that! Going back to your recent EP, before I got into your music, I was scrolling through Spotify and I really loved your album cover I was obsessed with the album work before I even heard any of the music. How did you get to using those old school depictions of the barber shop and beauty salon?**
Thank you so much for noticing, I really appreciate that. What we do with our music is that we tell a lot of stories that’s shaped in our world - what we see, what we live in - me, as a black woman and Bolis (her DEEWEE label mate and collaborator) as a half Chinese man. We realized when the second EP was done, we have been telling stories a lot and observing. So it was stories through our eyes and that’s something I wanted to depict in the visual side as well - depict my world and the highlights for instance is about hair and celebrating myself and the tradition of black hair with black women. These old paintings are something I saw in Congo a couple years ago that I really loved. I thought it fit very well with the stories we wanted to tell. One of my best friends, Joelle Dubois, made the artwork. We asked her to do it and she said, “I have this huge archive of artwork like that, because I love that and always wanted to do something like that.” In the end, it all worked out. She did it and she did an amazing job.
[**ALABAMA BLONDE**](https://www.instagram.com/alabamablonde/?hl=en) top**,** [**ZANA BAYNE**](http://zanabayne.com/) bra, and talents own pants.
**Sonically there’s an amazing through line you have that’s a mix of electronic, a little jazzy and there’s almost always a sensual element to it. I really love the way that you were able to do that. What was your main inspiration behind the music and the commonality with it?**
We love all genres, but we wanted to be playful. When you love all these kinds of music, we never wanted it to be a conscious decision that “it has to sound like this.” We were super playful with all of the genres we love. As soon as it sounds familiar or like something we copied unconsciously, we would change it and add a twist of another genre to it. To us, playfulness and humor is super important because humor is like oxygen. That’s what I think happened with the EP. It’s eclectic and full of genres we love, and I love seeing people dance to our music - I love to dance to music. Dancing to me is like celebrating life so it’s always very danceable, most of the time. I think we talked a lot about The Slits, the UK band.
**I love The Slits! Oh my god!**
Yeah! As soon as you told me, when we were at the shoot and I played Andy Stott, I was like, “Okay, we love the same kind of music!”
**I don’t think a lot of people who like Andy Stott know The Slits and vice versa. I love The Slits. Are you familiar with when Ari Up went solo and kind of like when she went to Jamaica and became like a Rastafarian?
**Actually you know how I came across that, I also had an interview with this guy who also did this piece about her, about Ari and I didn’t realize it’s so much I didn’t know and I can send you the article, but I guess you would know all of it because yeah. It’s like a couple of months ago that I realize she did all of that so yeah, that’s crazy.
**Yeah, she had this one album called or song called, “Me Done”, the whole visual it’s so like early 90s gangster rap, it’s amazing.**
Oh my God, oh my God. Okay, I’m writing this down right now.
**I’ll send it to you.**
Yeah, thank you.
W**hen I was listening to Highlights, I was thinking a lot of George Michaels but then you had a lot of those kinds of like twisted wonky funk sounds that were so … it really works well with like the clash of it. It was really interesting.**
Thank you so much.
[**ZANA BAYNE**](http://zanabayne.com/) top, [**ALABAMA BLONDE**](https://www.instagram.com/alabamablonde/?hl=en) gloves and talents own pants.
**Paténipat, is that the one that’s your lead single, like the big one, what was the inspiration for that?**
Yeah, yeah it is. So, we had four songs that were ready for the EP. And then we were like, okay maybe we should write one more and then David from Soulwax, who helped us in the studios finish or when we’re stuck with something they help us finish. They were like make a song that a 110 BPM, that’s danceable and super minimalistic. And that’s how we started doing that. Bolis made the demo with super minimal beats, and then I started to sing on it and that’s the little sentence is actually a mnemonic and known in Martinique to depict a certain rhythm, like a certain genre that’s called Biguine.
So when you say quickly, that’s actually the rhythm of the beating and that was something I wanted to do, something went for a long time and listening to the demo with Bolis, I just started singing that on top of it and it went so well together, and then I decided to add some Caribbean rhythms to it as well so that it’s not four to the floor the whole time. Or four to the floor, but with this twist, Caribbean twist and that’s how we made the song. We didn’t want to add too much, we didn’t want to add any synthesizers, just voices and rhythms. And that’s something that is also very typical for a Caribbean, French Caribbean music is the percussion and the voices. It’s like my little homage to my heritage.
**So you invented minimal Caribbean electronic basically?**
Yes, I wanted to be a pioneer at something so that’s, let’s, yes. Bolis and I are pioneers of minimal Caribbean music, I’ll take it.
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Photographed and directed by [Mynxii White](https://www.instagram.com/mynxiiwhite/?hl=en) at Opus Beauty.
Styled by BJ Panda Bear.
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