Hi!
It’s Cloé, founder of hauméa magazine.
Okay, the title of this article is intentionally catchy and “raw” to say something much softer: can we do ourselves a favor and just slow down for a bit?
It’s been two years since I last wrote here. Two years without written interviews because I focused on the Parcours d’Indés podcast, which is very active and now in its fourth season ; two years without music reviews, because I wanted to “reset” my listener’s ear, so to speak – trust me, analyzing everything you listen to drags you away from true music appreciation – and promo emails, however useful, were starting to stress me out as I was receiving almost a hundred per day (don’t get me wrong, I still love receiving them, please keep sending me your music via email).
This is the first time I’m publicly speaking here, saying “I” instead of “we,” and I’m happy to say I’ll be writing again on hauméa with a new mindset: I do not care when your music has been released. If it’s three years old and I love it, I might as well just write about it, because what’s stopping me, really? Again, can we just slow down? And stop pushing music out like it’s social media content?
I’m also inaugurating an “editorial” section where I’ll write, with or without regularity, opinion pieces like this one, as editors-in-chief do in print magazines – yes, I’m attached to traditional journalistic formats.
For those who don’t know, I’m also the host of the Parcours d’Indés podcast (sorry it’s in French only!), and the founder of an artist and label services agency, called Proxima Centauri. As part of the development of these two entities – Proxima now taking up most of my time – I’m committed to saying that we should collectively stop rushing to do things, especially when it comes to making music, and therefore stop saying that an album is outdated and “old” after 6 months.
You know me by now, I’m not the type of person to mince my words – doesn’t your all-time favorite album date back several years? Some of my favorite albums were released before I was born. If we consider an album outdated after 6 months, we bypass musical discovery. We also leave the door open to passive curation, often fueled by artificial intelligence these days (ugh).
Music has no expiration date. Proof of this is that my generation – I was born in 1997 – regularly throws parties fueled by 80s disco pop music, and “Y2K” parties are also regularly hosted.
Also, legally, the lifespan of copyright extends up to 70 years after the death of the last author. So how can we keep saying that artists need to release new things every 4 weeks? And release an album every year? I’m not even sure albums are even relevant anymore to those who say stuff like this (it is, please don’t give up on making albums, I beg you).
One of my favorite artists – Banks – releases an album about every four years. I find this to be a great release pace because it allows the artist to have their “eras,” to develop storytelling over time.
Because that’s what a record is. It’s an immaterial object, sometimes physical because pressed on CD or vinyl, that encapsulates what an artist is that this very moment in time.
With this written piece, I’d like to ask you one thing, which you’re not obligated to do but which I find fun for reconnecting with musical discovery.
Click on any word in this sentence, and listen to the artist you land on.
hauméa aims to be a collection of pop, electronic, alternative, and hybrid music. Sometimes, there will be wildcards in the curation – I don’t rule out one day interviewing a post-noise band, because why not – but the editorial line is this because it corresponds to what speaks to me, what motivates me, what makes me see the world differently.
Where am I going with this? By clicking on any word in the sentence above, you dive into hauméa’s archives. I instinctively call them “archives,” but they’re really discographies of more or less active artists, and whose release date is in no way an indicator of musical quality.
So let yourself be surprised.
Go to a record store even if you don’t have a turntable to listen to vinyl: take a photo of a cover that speaks to you, and listen to it later on the streaming platform you use most.
Open the pages of a print magazine dedicated to music, and let yourself be surprised by an interview, by the artist’s words, before going to listen to their music.
Browse the Instagram page of an artist you love, go to the “PRESS” section of the story highlights, and click on the name of a digital magazine or radio station, and see what’s there.
Before algorithms we had music reviews and concerts. Artificial intelligence won’t replace concerts, but music reviews, and written press in general, is slowly dying.
See us as friends recommending you to “listen to this!!!” because we think it’s cool. That’s literally what we do, after all.
So welcome back, to hauméa and to you, hoping you’ll find your future favorite artist here.
Cloé Gruhier.
PS: I had the immense blessing to stumble upon N Nao‘s music lately, please stop everything you’re doing and go give her music a listen. Thank me later.
