Words by Grey Malkin

Growing up with Franco-Morroccan heritage and living between two countries, Sophia Djebel Rose recalls acquiring a love of writing and poetry to describe and illuminate the homes and lands that she constantly had to leave behind, as well as sense of being between places. Subsequently, as a part of the ensemble An Eagle In Your Mind, Rose purposefully pursued a nomadic life for many years, performing across countries and continents, garnering a love for life on the fringes, whilst developing and honing an instinctive and intuitive approach to her music within the depths of numerous underground venues. Emerging as a solo artist in 2020, Djebel Rose’s first release was the striking and original ‘La Louve’ on the Reverb Worship/Future Grave label, which was closely followed by her breathtaking debut solo album, ‘Métempsycose’, an album of intricate chamber folk that challenged and bewitched.

Her new full length ‘Sécheresse’, is an equally baroque and haunted beauty, both intense and spacious, and entirely recorded and played by Rose herself. Also a perpetual traveller within the realms of her music, Rose’s songs are without simple genre or label; she traverses from folk to chanson, to experimental noise and soundscapes, but the sound is uniquely and authentically her own. Comparisons may be made with her noted influences such as Emma Ruth Rundle, Nico, Catherine Ribeiro and Marissa Nadler, but few are doing what Sophia Djebel Rose is currently doing, in making music this vital, ambitious and decisive.

‘Au Verger’ opens the album with the sound of birdsong amongst field recordings of distant laughter, and Rose’s arresting vocals. Pleasingly disorientating and unsettling, it invites us into something otherworldly, a parallel reality. ‘L’Homme au Costume Doré’ is next, a solemn organ-led hymnal where Rose’s incredible voice comes to the fore, at first intimate and mournful, and then stridently rising above oscillating chimes and percussion, before effectively forming a one-woman choral section. Heart stopping and hypnotic, ‘Les Amandiers’ enters upon a procession of guitar and strings, a piece of doomed chanson replete with Rose’s impassioned vocals and ghostlike harmonies calling out from the shadows. Chilling and ethereal, this is music that you can feel in your bones.

A centrepiece of the album, the murder ballad ‘Blanche Biche’ is an alluring dark lullaby, fingerpicked guitar providing a gossamer framework for Rose’s funereal performance, the song hastening and layering as the terrible fate of the protagonists is revealed. This concludes in a swell of undead voices and frozen winds, with a majesty that evokes both the work of the likes of Anna Von Hausswolff or Earth in its rumbling darkness, and Sourdeline and Malicorne in its mastery of traditional folk. ‘Les Géants’ strips things back to Rose’s voice and the roar and wail of distorted guitar, growling like a wounded creature that stands directly behind her, as she defiantly continues, regardless.

Shifting, seeking and unclassifiable, the album as a whole reminds one of Dorothy Carter’s ‘O Willow Waly’ or Nico’s ‘The End’, it embodies the same quest for a particular mood and atmosphere in order to best serve or match the song’s narrative or core emotion, which often lends a welcome cinematic or widescreen feel to the work. The title track is a case in point, a tense, apocalyptic lament of chiming guitar notes with the tension expertly held throughout, amidst swells of harmonium punctuating the undercurrent of dread, and waves of distortion building and growing like gathering storm clouds. Within this maelstrom, Rose’s vocal rains biblically down, before the piece reaches an end-of-days finale of pulsating drumbeats and howling guitar. This truly is one of the most mindblowing things you will hear on album this (or any other) year.

Next, ‘Chanson pour un Aimé’ provides a short, spectral interlude of gorgeous, harmonised vocals, before leading into ‘Pareille au Torrent’, a glistening, beautifully adorned and arranged piece, its stately beauty hinting at an undertow of threat and darkness. ‘Les Noyés’ closes the album, initially hushed and with a bed of reverberated guitars building to a hugely evocative, ascending chorus. A noir, Lynchian atmosphere pervades throughout; echoed guitar notes and ominous strings emerge from the darkness, and analogue synths swirl and scream as a massed chorus of voices chant and cry out, whilst Rose’s voice increases in ferocity to an electrifying crescendo.

‘Sécheresse’ is an essential work, one which reveals greater detail and depth with each listen, and which remains an involving, immersive and cathartic experience. At a time when so much of life, culture or art is commodified, neutered or rendered bland or generic, Sophia Djebel Rose’s work is resolutely individual, honest, and contains a defiantly beating heart. Seek it out now.

Released February 2025, Sécheresse is available to order here