After the December release of his first single in English we’re a dream nobody wrote down, Ludovic Alarie unveils we don’t exist a new song combining English and French. It premiered yesterday on Stereogum: “It feels like a tailor-made soundtrack for those moments when you just completely space out from everything and everyone surrounding around you. A chilling yet ruminative Wurlitzer illuminates this sensation of being in a world of one’s own, and is exacerbated by the change of language used: The first half of the track is in English, the rest in French”.

Ludovic describes the song: “We recorded the song live altogether in studio while playing as quietly as possible. Warren was on the Wurlitzer, Simone on drums and Adele was singing while improvising. Mishka had just tried a Mexican Guitarrón at the studio and decided to play on it. It resulted in a spontaneous, spacious and dreamy arrangement that worked perfectly for the song. We were all very impressed by the sound quality of the take and Simone found the perfect image to describe it which is that ‘it almost feels like cotton’…”.

“I wrote the lyrics with Tasia (Bachir). We started by writing the lyrics in English. We thought it would be interesting to write the lyrics in French for the second part as a reflection of what was happening musically – we always found that the instrumental part in the middle of the song sounded really transitional. We wrote the lyrics in French by rethinking the meaning of the English lyrics in a different way. It ended up adding a cyclical aspect to the song “ explains Ludovic. “The lyrics are about obsessionally looking at the same places for someone or something that you have never known” adds Alarie.

Warren C. Spicer produced, recorded and mixed the song at Mixart Studio in Montreal. Alarie is accompanied by Warren C. Spicer (Plants & Animals), Simone Pace (Blonde Redhead), Adèle Trottier-Rivard (Le Bleu), and Mishka Stein (Patrick Watson). The single is being released in Canada under Ludovic’s own label chouchou records that he co-founded with Tasia Bachir and under Asa Wa Kuru, Blonde Redhead’s label, in the US.