Mutant harpist, singer-songwriter and producer Laura Perrudin has caught the attention of Pitchfork, the BBC, FiP, Le Monde, and Les Inrocks.
Immersed in jazz since childhood, she began studying classical music at an early age while also exploring electronic and experimental music, hip-hop, soul, pop, and just about anything that makes noise. Trained by numerous musicians in her native Brittany, she later sought new perspectives in New York and Paris.
Seeking to increase the possibilities of the harp and find a richer harmonic language, she found an opening in 2008, when luthier Philippe Volant built her a chromatic pedal-less harp with a single row of strings, enabling her to bring the sinuous harmonies of her compositions to life. She continued on her adventurous musical path with the electric chromatic harp, an instrument that was tailor-made for her. With it, she ventures into sound worlds evoking Amon Tobin, Björk, Portishead, Mica Levi and Flying Lotus, as well as the winding, impressionistic harmonies of Debussy, Ravel or Wayne Shorter.
Her debut solo album, Impressions, was released in 2015 after she won numerous awards (Montreux Voice Competition 2014 2nd prize, Concours national de jazz de la Défense 2013 Composition Prize, Jazz à Vannes 2013 1st Prize, giving her the opportunity to support the Wayne Shorter Quartet...). This was followed by the experimental pop album Poisons & Antidotes, supported by the Talent Adami 2017 Prize. This album, blending soul with electronica and impressionistic folk, relies solely on her unique and inventive use of her electric chromatic harp. Lending her distinctive voice to the electronic experiments she loves, Laura Perrudin crafts a personal and powerful universe that comes to life in captivating performances, where effect pedals, a laptop, a multi-track looper, and handmade electronic setups expand her harp and voice.
With her album Perspectives & Avatars, released at the end of 2020, she further explores a genre increasingly rooted in soulful, electric, and danceable pop. Her lyrics sketch a world of shifting roles, perspectives, and masks. Through a subjective lens, Laura Perrudin explores the existential musings and obsessions of a wolf, a cloud, a song, a satisfaction survey, and a witch about to be burned at the stake.
An album of songs with exceptional collaborations - Becca Stevens, Philippe Katerine, Mélissa Laveaux, Emel Mathlouthi, Ian Chang (drummer for Son Lux & Moses Sumney), Krismenn... - built on a narrative concept where each song is a character, an avatar.
Bringing this album to life on stage, Laura Perrudin performs, arranges, and produces her orchestral live music with an improbable setup called the "Ghost Orchestra". Using effect pedals, a laptop, a multi-track looper, and mechanical objects to amplify her harp and voice, each sound can be processed, spatialized, recorded/looped, and broadcast through various objects (including a snare and bass drum), creating vast and lush soundscapes. Jérémy Rouault mixes it live as though he were handling a full band.
This intense, virtuoso live-looping performance (without any pre-recorded sounds, metronome, or quantization) was recorded at Antipode in Rennes and became a live album: Featuring the Ghost Orchestra, released in May 2023. Manipulating the playback speed of her looper, accelerating and slowing time, even reversing it, Laura Perrudin crafts her artisanal abstract beats by twisting the audio as she creates it. Her harp and voice are the beating heart of a vast, electroacoustic and poetic ecosystem resembling a giant silver octopus. Everything here is shifting, evolving, alive. Electronic music, in her hands, isn’t automated; it relies on the human touch in the moment. Laura Perrudin offers homemade electronic music with the freshest and most local ingredients, harvested right on stage.
From the most boundary-pushing indie pop scenes (Transmusicales de Rennes, Eurosonic Noorderslag - Groningen, Lincoln Center Atrium - New York City, PopKultur Festival - Berlin, The Great Escape - Brighton, MaMA - Paris...) to the most prestigious jazz venues (Théâtre Antique at Jazz à Vienne, Jazz in Marciac, Winterjazz Fest New York City, EFG London Jazz Fest, Jazz à la Villette, Paris Jazz Festival...) Laura Perrudin brings her music to some of the most eclectic stages in France and internationally.
Complementing her solo work, she collaborates with artists such as Austin Wintory, Becca Stevens, Salami Rose Joe Louis, Emel Mathlouthi, Fabian Almazan, Théo Ceccaldi, Anne Paceo, Sylvain Barou, Michel Benita, Michele Rabbia, Louis Winsberg, Robert Mitchell, Olicía, Ludovic Ernault, and choreographers Pilot Fishes and Alain Michard.
She also founded the band DOKSHA:
Combining handcrafted noise-groove with danceable neo-soul infused with luminous pop, DOKSHA’s music merges groove, sci-fi, and sonic experimentation. Sound-warping her harp, Laura Perrudin is joined by musicians with hacked acoustic or pirated electric instruments: Thibault Florent on guitar (Mange Ferraille), Ronan Courty on double bass (Cabaret Contemporain), and Simon Bernier on drums (Ludovic Ernault). The group explores using ancestral tools (coat hangers, knitting needles, cosmopompic electronics...) to make their instruments sound and groove just right.
Lyrics in French and English weave a sprawling futuristic odyssey, tracing humanity’s journey from the collapse of the era of great smog (our time) to the low-tech, de-hierarchized utopia of DOKSHA. This crafty, colorful, and absurdly ironic sci-fi music became an EP released in May 2024 on Volatine records.
2024 was the birth year of TEMPUS.
TEMPUS is a solo string project. A return to song in its rawest, most acoustic form. A hacked Celtic harp and heterodox acoustic guitars. A mutant folk tinged with soulful and earthy craftsmanship. Ethereal impressionism rooted in a rough, blues-related trance. Lyrics in English and French unfold around the idea of time: our relationship to it, its multiple meanings, and dimensions.
Some videos began to release in autumn 2024, and an album is in the works.
"contemporary artists shun classical traditions and conjure future-facing stories from the intimidating instrument, playing around with genre and electronic processing, as well as championing subversive new techniques. French harpist and singer-songwriter Laura Perrudin teases unexpected sounds from her chromatic electric harp"
Pitchfork
"Perrudin’s strong melodies and poetic imagery make each song uniquely compelling."
The Guardian
"A dreamy confection of electronica, neo soul and psychedelic folk, threaded with vocal experiments and multi-tracked harmonies that soar and soothe. An arresting work by an artist destined for greatness."
The Evening Standard
"This beautiful album brings together classical, folk, hip hop, rock and jazz: it’s a personal, original and highly musical vision."
London Jazz News
"Could we just say we LOVE the amazing Laura Perrudin and her superb album. Go listen!"
BBC
"The harp is like a texture box that Perrudin can make sound like a drum, a heart beat, a guitar... or a harp"
NPR - PRI's The World
"Music in the gray areas between the musical classifications by an artist who ignore the usual boundaries between genres"
New Sounds
"Laura Perrudin loops chanting vocals, percussive bars of beatboxing and layers of her custom-made chromatic harp to create enchanting experimental jazz and hip-hop"
The Line of Best Fit
"She mixes darkly magical, dream-inspired imagery with curious and slightly queasy sound design. Perrudin’s silky voice is the bow that wraps it all together, keeping it loosely tied to the surface while exploring the murky depths"
The Monitors
"she helps us to rediscover the harp, far from the clichés usually associated with it."
"It's rather as if Björk had chanced upon Herbie Hancock in a Dublin pub"
FIP
"Laura Perrudin ignores the stereotypes. It is stunning to listen to the thousand games of a tightrope artist, her cheerful and spontaneous radicalism, definitely modern"
Les Inrocks
"All combined: Laura Perrudin suggests a thought, a universe, a being."
Le Monde