Mathis Akengin

Mathis Akengin makes piano pop where silence matters as much as the notes. At times, you can almost hear the flies buzzing… and the next moment, everything shifts, an elephant straight to the chest. Spotted at Les Inouïs du Printemps de Bourges and later performing at Les Eurockéennes, he’s built his path outside the usual lines: first tours at 13, then as a teenager taking FlixBuses to London to jam with strangers instead of sitting in class. After playing with Catfish and Dead Chic, and arranging for Matmatah, he now returns to something more direct, more stripped bare. Somewhere between the lyricism of Agnès Obel and the “off-kilter dandy” spirit of Baxter Dury. French-Turkish, suspended between two languages, with the feeling that people can understand each other without having to say everything. His debut album, Passage des Fleurs (out in June), is a letter to his Turkish grandfather. A love story without instructions, where words sometimes fall short but the bond holds firm. The title comes from “Çiçek Pasajı”, a passageway in Istanbul where he spent part of his younger years, a place of crossing, where fragility and power meet, where the fly and the elephant collide.