CloZee on Tour
She may have been named Best International Newcomer at the 2013 U.K. Glitch Hop Awards, but French indie-electronic composer and producer CloZee is more than a master of musical miscalculations. Her futuristic sound mixes digital and organic sources into a paradisal, boundary-dissolving audio hot tub of soothing yet unique soundscapes.
A darling of the popular "transformational" festival circuit that brings the weird and wired Burning Man aesthetic to the masses — she has performed at Electric Forest, Coachella, Lightning in a Bottle, and Camp Bisco — CloZee started as Chloé Herry, a student of classical guitar and sound engineering in the sleepy southern France city of Toulouse. She heard "amazing" artists in electronic music hot spot Le Bikini, and her life was changed by Crying Over Pros for No Reason by Glitch Mob member edIT.
In 2012, CloZee became the go-to beat maker for French film producers OckeFilm, who released an album of her earliest compositions. Her signature style — bass meets world music, or "world bass" as she calls it — emerged more distinctively on her 2016 EP Revolution. Her music is impossible to pigeonhole, and she likes it that way. The voyage is more important than the destination, after all.
"When I listen to the music," she has said, "I want to be suspended in time, travel, meditate. Because I need to escape reality. It is this dimension that pushed me to start writing electronic music."
CloZee's musical influences include Bassnectar, Beats Antique, and Bonobo. She has her own spin-off act in the slightly more pop-inclined CloZinger, a good-vibes collaboration with producer and fellow Toulouse-ian Scarfinger.
Her 2018 debut album Evasion — as in "escaping reality" — takes CloZee's credo of musical adventurism to the next level. Sitar, guitar, violin, and instruments from China and Asia flavor tracks that, like her live performances, transport listeners into a trance state. To sample the flavor of such events, imagine fiery "flow" dancers, such as those featured in her otherworldly "Evasion" video, and neon-glowing hoopers spinning gracefully nearby as you enjoy CloZee's lush, vaguely familiar, and yet inescapably otherworldly sounds.
