Angèle announces new album ‘Instinct’ featuring Justice, Soulwax, Caroline Polachek and more

Angèle has today (August 31) announced details of a new album, ‘Instinct,’ featuring Justice, Soulwax, Caroline Polachek and more.

The Belgian musician also previewed the album with the release of a new single and music video, which you can see below, for ‘Une seule vie’. This follows on from the previously released ‘Dis-Le’ in June and ‘What You Want’ – a collaboration with Justice.

The new album is out on October 16 via Angèle VL Records / Sony Music and you can pre-order it here.

New single ‘Une seule vie’ was produced by Angèle and long-time collaborator Tristan Salvati as is described as an “urgent call.” A statement added: “Written in the first person, it takes the shape of a stream of thought in which Angèle lays out her doubts and questions her relationship to the world, to truth and to illusion…It holds past, present and future together and stays in the hesitation, until what remains is the desire itself, to live.”

The song’s video comes with a music video written and directed by Thomas Mailaender and produced by Partizan. 

A statement about this explained: “Filmed in the south of France and shot entirely on 16mm, the video is a crafted, faintly surreal piece of work in which memories and mental images physically break into Angèle’s reality. Everything was made in front of the camera rather than generated afterwards, through stop motion, superimpositions, mirrors and printed images, and the making of it is left visible in the frame.”

You can watch it here:

The video also features footage of the solar eclipse earlier this month on August 12. Speaking about the video, Mailaender explains: “We imagined the video as a succession of memories, visions and mental images that physically burst into Angèle’s reality. […] Analogue thus becomes the natural language of the video: a fragile, imperfect material to talk about memory, nostalgia and time slipping away from us.”

The album meanwhile is described as “a return to instincts, to the part of yourself that exists before expectation, performance and external noise.”

A statement added: “Across the album, Angèle explores the tension between control and release, image and reality, and the different versions of ourselves that emerge when we stop trying to fit into a fixed identity. Electronic at its core, the album uses chrome as a recurring visual and conceptual language: reflective, artificial and cold on the surface, but ultimately treated as a space for transformation and freedom.”

The album’s tracklist reveals collaborations with Soulwax, Justice and Caroline Polachek. Check out the new album artwork and track list here:

Instinct’ Track list

‘Instinct’ (intro)
‘Dis-le’
‘Au revoir’
‘Une seule vie’
‘Trop’ (ft. Soulwax)
‘On verra’
‘What You Want’ (ft. Justice)
‘Je compte’
‘F4ck 4ever’
‘Tout décider’
‘Je sais’
‘Love Triangle’ (ft. Caroline Polachek, SebastiAn)
‘NYC Blues’

Speaking to NME in 2022, Angèle opened up about her patriarchy smashing track, ‘Balance ton quoi’. “I feel like it’s a really important moment of the show, and I know that people will sing it with me very loud,” she told us at the time.

She continued: “Now a lot of people are talking about how to fight patriarchy and the fact that we all need to fight it,” she explained; but she agrees there’s still a long way to go. “It makes sense to still sing this song, knowing that it has taken so much more [meaning] with the years in my life.”

And although she explained that things are shifting, Angèle’s opened up about her own experiences to us of being a victim to music industry misogyny. 

“When you’re a woman and when you’re doing music, it’s always about your physical aspect. You’re too sexy, or you’re too shy, or you’re not enough, or you’re too much,” she explained. “It’s always about how you are and never about what you do…sometimes I feel like as women we have to do double affords to be taken seriously.”