De Grêle is the solo project of bassist / composer Sylvain Gagné. Influenced by both American psychedelic and experimental bands from the 1960s and ’70s (Red Crayola, Grateful Dead, Captain Beefheart) and German krautrock (Can, Amon Düül II, Faust), De Grêle mixes minimalism, drone and largely improvised noise music.

Various analog and digital effects, as well as guitars and field recordings, blend in with bass lines in densely layered compositions incorporating static and white noise. Occasionally, repetitive themes and melodies create a meditative mood that at times evolves into sparse and minimalist moments or elsewhere steps into chaos, where frenzy takes over order and structure.

De Grêles’ music — whose sources of inspiration include concepts and ideas relating to insanity, loss of memory and psychosis — thus become a constant overlapping of abstract/improvised sections and more concrete ones.