Audiopile Review: Hot on the heels of the Blue Lake mini LP, Tonal Union keep their 2025 hot streak going with the debut proper of Laurie Torres, a Montreal-based musician who’s been circling the folk and pop-rock scenes in Eastern Canada since the mid 00’s. And while what came prior has been completely outside of our wheelhouse, if we’re being honest, she now lands right in the crosshairs of electronic, jazz and ambient with Après Coup, so, essentially, our shit. Leaning more on jazz than the other elements, Torres’ piano takes centre stage throughout, the gradual addition of airy whisps of organ, floating synth, chiming percussion and the occasional wordless vocal melodies intertwine with her deeply resonant and emotionally hefty playing. Perhaps akin to Sala Sinephro’s examinations of the gaseous spaces that exist between ambient and jazz, but Torres’ strips it right down to the core essentials, ending up in an elevated state of raw spirituality. This should also alert fans of preceding Tonal Union releases, C. Diab and Anenon in particular, their ability to draw inviting warmth from acoustic and electronic elements is a through line that runs straight into Torres and her work here. Another absolute stunner from Tonal Union, who are, for those keeping score, currently batting a thousand.
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Laurie Torres is a Canadian musician and composer raised in Montréal, Québec by Haitian parents. Since 2008, she has been a trusted stage and studio performer for Julia Jacklin, Pomme, and Land of Talk, as well as being a founding member of Folly & The Hunter, with whom she recorded four studio albums and toured Canada, Europe and the UK. In 2023, Laurie shifted focus to work on her own creations, a process of making time—the will and the need becoming omnipresent. Drawing creative inspiration from contemporary artists like Tirzah, Gia Margaret, Valentina Magaletti, Tara Clerkin Trio and ML Buch, Après coup finds Torres intersecting at a pivotal moment where artists whose marginalized identities are at the forefront in creating a beautiful array of “other options”. “Being othered and tokenized as a woman who plays music, as well as a queer and black person, takes a toll, while also positively feeding a strong urge to push and be seen.” Centering around piano, drums and synthesizer with interweaving field recordings, Après coup follows the precursor EP Correspondances in the form of a sprawling 11-track album. Translating directly from French—afterwards, after the event—its title subliminally points at something deeper between the lines. Recorded in 2023 between tours in a small window of time where ‘normal’ life hadn’t quite recommenced, Torres meticulously crafted her debut solo material in view of surrounding nature, all providing the perfect nourishment for long streams of improvisation. Built right up to the edge of a lake, Studio Wild in St-Zénon, Québec offered an unparalleled location and set up for her freeform creativity. Instrumental music seemed like a natural response and evolution for Torres who had long basked in the world of “pop music” as she elaborates: “I had an urge to use creativity as a sort of resting place, a place where things can unfold slowly and take time to reveal themselves. In other worlds words, I felt the need to make something slower, more elusive.” With her ‘pop’ past workings never far away, Laurie artfully drifts between uplifting and melancholic hues, never overbearing or undermining one another. She plants seeds throughout and only in consuming the album in its entirety do we make sense of its seriality, as new meanings unfold where repetition and subtleties produce increasingly complex meanings.
