Alexis Molenat (Les Cavaliers)

It was in the suburbs of Paris, where he was born, that Alexis Molenat sealed the pact that would bind him to music for good by founding The Cavaliers (Born Bad Records, 2008), a surf-music trio in which he wrote the songs and played guitar. Over the following ten years he launched several bands – FixiT (hardcore punk), Crywolf (synth-garage), Calypso (synth-pop) – worked with artists such as Forever Pavot, Frustration and Last Night, and composed and performed on stage the music for around fifty performances of the play Un Deux Un Deux by Mélanie Mary and François Bégaudeau. After so much time spent in studios and on the road across France and Europe, he decided to focus on home-recorded music, buying his first audio interface and, most importantly, his first electronic instruments: a Casio CT-403, a Roland Juno-6 and a Boss DR-55. This quickly led to the creation of the duo Cité Lumière (ERR REC, Polytechnic Youth Records, 2017), a project devoted to vintage analog synths and drum machines, which lasted two years. Alexis – who kept the nickname "Lumière" – then released several mini-albums dedicated to the Casio brand (The Casio Stories 1 & 2, ERR REC 2019 & 2020), contributed to the ERR REC Library compilations (under the alias Antonin Fortin), appeared on Police Control's maxi single Trois (Croque Macadam, 2020), recorded an instrumental library album inspired by 1960s music (Parigo Music), and collaborated both live and in the studio with the band La Femme (appearing on the album Paradigmes in 2021, US tour June 2022, 2022/2023 tour). In 2020 he moved to Rennes, where he set up his home studio "Fiat Lux". This was followed by a new Casio-focused adventure (Agent Casio, GWTW 2021), part of the recording of A Trois Sur La Plage's debut album (GWTW 2021), and the completion of the EP Invitation, started in Paris and finished in the Breton capital (Cheptel Records, 2021). Since then, more releases have followed, including Midnight City (Entre Soi, 2022) and the most recent, Grigny 90 (Underwater Computing, 2023).