Alexis Carlier

Alexis Carlier - Music on the Edge

Alexis is the kind of boy who doesn't do things by halves. Since he got on a racing bike at seven-years-old, brimming with the feeling of being the best, he has attempted to win. From climbing Alpe d'Huez on his steel Gitane before his tenth birthday, then on to Ventoux (via Bédoin no less) the following summer, the years that followed saw him spend hours and days on his racing mount. Cycling has rarely rhymed with the leisurely pleasure of the countryside that many of us enjoy. For Alexis he's always cycling hard, trying for the win. From Grasse, where he grew up, training over long distances and sustained intensities, he rose through the Cadet categories, racing across France and Belgium.

The hope at 19 was to turn pro, but the death of his close cycling friend Théo proved a serious setback. He endured a knee problem too, and the morale was not there. He returned to the game with a new team, enjoying victory at the highest amateur level, winning races against the rising generation of French cycling. But then more health problems followed, with a thrombosis, a fracture of the collarbone, then broken ribs. And then there are more crashes in the peloton, the buddies who fall before his eyes, road signs hit head-on, going off the road, head-on collisions with cars. Alexis thinks hard, no longer feels like taking reckless risks, health is more important than trophies. Alas, in 2019 Alexis turns away from the peloton to devote himself to another passion, cultivated far away from the roads, requiring a different kind of bravery and technique.

Music is Alexis' other passion. His parents imagined him as a guitarist, but in 2007 the singer-songwriter Mika bursts out of the radio. Like the best all-rounder bike racer, just as capable of rising high as of descending low, the range of this phenomenal performer covers almost four octaves. He accompanies himself with disconcerting dexterity on the piano, sets concert halls on fire with infectious good humour. It's the click for Alexis.

Self-taught at first, Alexis later attended the Conservatory, the most academic way to learn music. But the classical and jazz piano, music theory, scales too, lessons upon lessons; it was all too structured, and not really in his nature. He dropped out and tried his hand at a few recordings, surprising people online with a performance of Coldplay's The Scientist, among other popular favourites.

“It was ten years ago. In terms of the voice it's not really that, it's painful for me to hear this piece again" Alexis laughs.

“The voice is really something that is constantly being worked on, you must train again and again. I stick to it relentlessly. You need to find an original tone that differentiates you from all the others, that's the key. Being told that your voice sounds like Freddy Mercury could be a compliment, but it’s actually a problem.”

At 18, Alexis writes and composes. At 20 he tries to record a first EP (extended play), six pieces of his composition, sung in English. At 25 he has an LP to his name, the time has come to release something new. The young artist seems to have found his style, an originality of voice and classical pop piano which takes inspiration from the grandiose and epic styles of Hans Zimmer or the group Muse.

The piano is now his bicycle, always there to carry him up to the high notes and down to lower and calmer moments; his voice is the body that he will push in order to perform. Expert technique and a powerful set of lungs are presumably related to his racing experience.

Listening to his 2020 LP, Brain Wave, you can hear some dramatic outbursts, wearing his heart on his sleeve.

On the title track Alex crescendos above his grand piano to wail ‘Please let me express my feelings, I can’t contain the flowing out of my body, I can’t control it.’ The track Undead and dreamers has Alex declaring he’s ‘afraid of failing and falling’, much like any good racing cyclist is on a regular basis. But amid some heartfelt confessions on Let it Flow, he seems to pick himself back up, ‘unforgettable memories, love is a beautiful disease’. Alexis is aware that on a pure artistic level, you need to write songs that sound different from what exists without being ‘hors format’.

“You have to hang on, make concessions. It's not what you like the most that will work best, it's not where you think you're good that people are going to like you the most, and that's a tough choice to make. It's like on a bike, I've always preferred passes and the mountains, but the races I won were hilly parcours. I won in the sprint while in my head I saw myself escaping and winning alone at the top of a pass. In music it's the same.”

Alexis explains that he never composed when riding his bicycle, no melody has come to his mind, no words have sprung from his brain on the road. On the other hand, he confesses that he ‘limited’ himself quite a bit with the headphones on his ears and that his musical culture owes a lot to the long hours spent in the saddle.

EP Dans le mille will be released in the first quarter of 2023, by then a first single A nouveau will set the tone for this hard work he has carried out in recent months, two clips have already been shot, with one of them alluding to his former cycling career.

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