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Genres: indie, alternative, ethereal wave, trip hop, spectra, orchestral, bedroom pop, dream pop Similar to: Elizabeth Fraser / Sun’s Signature, Eartheater, Blonde Redhead, Air, Beth Gibbons, Julia Holter, Grouper
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It's a record like a mirage: epic and elusive, the music of a vanished land. A world built in seven songs, like seven days spent traveling through a parallel universe. This hallucinatory land belongs to the band Fantaisie, about whom nothing is known except that the album Pariah's Ballad, ******recorded then set aside until it reached the ears of byebye records in 2025.
What do we hear? First, a female voice, ethereal and weightless, a soprano tone so pure it borders on the otherworldly, as if a ghost were taking us by the hand. Then, orchestral instrumentation, both organic and synthetic, somewhere between film score and bedroom pop. Most of the instruments seem doubled, as if the sound itself were hallucinatory: is that a bass guitar or a digital sub? An acoustic guitar or a sample? Live drums or a drum machine? Strings, a Solina? A human voice, vocoded, or sampled choirs?
It evokes 90s trip-hop and 19th-century painting; Elizabeth Fraser, Beth Gibbons, or Air—but also Shakespeare, video games, and a sleepwalking experience.
In the end, it's a generous and haunted album, with melodies that seem like dawn or dusk—always on the edge of something about to happen. Or end. Like a shared hallucination: a fantaisie.
28.04 — Single 1 Pariah’s Ballad 16.06 — Single 2 Tango 16.09 — Single 3 Stolen Days 27.11 — Album Pariah’s Ballad
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SINGLE 1 Pariah’s Ballad Listen｜Stream｜Master｜Artwork｜Lyrics ｜Social snippets
Fantaisie emerges from the shadows with “Pariah’s Ballad,” both a debut and a kind of swansong — a project shrouded in mystery. Ethereal soprano vocals, organic and synthetic textures, and timeless melodies weave a haunted gothic-pop soundscape. Beneath it lies a hallucinatory western in grey magic dust and cinemascope, unfolding the secret of a nocturnal city encounter — beautiful and unsettling — where two characters limp forward together.
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SINGLE 2 Tango Listen｜Stream｜Master｜Artwork
Fantaisie is back and this time, the sun is rising.
After Pariah's Ballad, a ghost single released in April under a veil of shadow and mystery, the band about whom nothing is still known returns with Tango: an instrumental that turns away from the night to face the open horizon. Same world, different light.
Tango is the luminous side of Fantaisie's inner western — the one that keeps moving forward. Acoustic and electric guitars, piano, strings, synths: layers build slowly, embrace each other, and finally settle. A slow-motion reverie in the middle of a film whose ending we don't yet know. A gracious architecture that feels like resolution. A mid-tempo reverie for open roads and quiet afternoons.
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SINGLE 3 Stolen Days Listen｜Stream｜Master｜Artwork｜Social snippets
Orchestral dream pop with ethereal and cinematic undertones — somewhere between chamber ambient, spectral trip-hop, and movie score. For fans of Eartheater, Weyes Blood, and Julianna Barwick. Third single ahead of Fantaisie's debut album, from the anonymous project that has kept its identity sealed since day one.
Stolen Days moves like a slow-motion sequence from a film that doesn't exist yet. Its magical arpeggios — piano, strings, and synth layers building one into the next — evoke Salvador Dalí's Partial Hallucination: faces glowing with light over a piano at the edge of sleep. A voice slips in softly, haunted and luminous, resonating with itself — a character who no longer recognizes her own reflection.
A piece of music that sounds like a hallucination you've already had.
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1. Stolen Days 03:00 2. Tango 03:29 3. My Oldest Fear 03:52 4. Pariah’s Ballad 03:41 5. Cold 03:25 6. Le Rêve 02:43 7. The Invitation 03:23
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The strings in My Oldest Fear, a lyrical and subterranean ballad, seem to travel through time. The track Cold could be the sonic equivalent of John Everett Millais’s painting of the Ophelia myth. Stolen Days, with its magical arpeggios, recalls Salvador Dalí’s Partial Hallucination, when, at bedtime, faces glowing with light appear to the painter over his piano. Rêve, Tango, *The Invitation, *****even the track titles evoke something like a dream or a nightmare, a fantasy or a lovesick psychosis. A male voice (perhaps the pariah’s?) joins the female one in the title track Pariah’s Ballad, which sounds like a shared haunting, where the loved one becomes a riddle to solve — missed calls, tip-toes, go softly / are you lying too?
whisper to fantaisie through byebye records → [email protected] and keep wandering → website｜bandcamp｜youtube｜instagram
