MY NEW EP, IN THE DARK, IS AVAILABLE NOW ! 🦦
Roots sing songs to the leaves, leaves sing songs to the birds.
Mick Strauss knows all too well that there are many stories to be found on the road. In his forties, Strauss has always traveled far and wide, his curiosity piqued by encounters and their cultures. One of these journeys shaped the sound and stories of his debut album, ‘Southern Wave’ - a six-month journey through the heart of the United States, his motherland, from Duluth to the Louisiana coast via Missouri.
In 2023, he reworked 6 tracks from this album in an acoustic version on the Southern Wave Night Birds EP. Accompanied by a short film, it was recorded and filmed live in one night in Mick's attic in his hometown of Douarnenez - a haven for pirate artists and fishermen in Finistère (France’s western tip).
This year - 2024 - between his collaborations with Moriarty (he is the founder and one of the main songwriters ), Astéréotypie (a French music collective in which he composes and plays bass), and his soundtracks for various theatre, circus Mick Strauss (aka Arthur B. Gillette) will be releasing In the dark, a new five-track EP.
In the dark is a collection of strange-folk-DIY songs about loss, signs of change to come, and the endless adventure of taming our inner beasts. The EP moves towards the shores of divergent folk, at once romantic, hard and also strange. Mick Strauss reminds us not only of Lou Reed but also of Jonathan Richman, Neil Young, Skip Spence, Bill Callahan and even reminiscences of a song that might have been written by Dolly Parton or Lucio Battisti.