FÉLICIA ATKINSON - SANS VISAGE [CD]

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: VIERNULVIER017CD
Barcode: 788362412296
Release Date: 26 Jun 2026
Genre: Electronic/ Ambient/ Experimental/Soundtracks

Renowned French musician and artist Félicia Atkinson announces new album SANS VISAGE, a reimagined score for Georges Franju’s cult 1960 horror classic Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face).
                                                     
Black vinyl, 12-page booklet with liner notes by Claire Cronin and artwork by experimental comic artist Momo Gordon. 500 copies only worldwide. Non-Returnable.

Follows her recently released collaborative album with Christina Vantzou, Reflections Vol. 3: Water Poems, via RVNG Intl., as well as her acclaimed solo releases Promenades and Space as an Instrument on Shelter Press.

Atkinson first saw Les Yeux Sans Visage when she was a teenager, around the turn of the century. The film made an impact for its iconic imagery and the way Franju draws on the aesthetics of early filmmaking, from its score that relies on stylistic markers typical of the 1940s or 50s to the decision to shoot in black and white. Even four decades after its first release, it was clear that this was a work that stood outside of the cultural moment that birthed it, speaking through time in ways that were uncanny, but profound.

A quarter-century later, Atkinson was approached by the Belgian cultural center VIERNULVIER to create a new score for Les Yeux Sans Visage for its celebrated Videodroom series, which has seen artists like claire rousay, Mabe Fratti, Lee Renaldo, and many more create new original scores for cult classics and genre cinema. Atkinson's music, with its sublime meditations on space and proximity, its elusive sense of narrative development, mirrors the pacing and mystery at the heart of horror filmmaking. There is a shadow at the heart of her soundtrack to Les Yeux Sans Visage, an ever-shifting wisp and an insinuation of encroaching transfiguration. Echoing a climactic moment in the film, the music obliquely points to "the Beyond," an impossible place of discovery and revelation.

This recorded version of the soundtrack is a 34-minute synthesis of the full 90-minute score, presented on LP along with an essay by writer-musician Claire Cronin and drawings by Momo Gordon, together forming a complex reflection on the film's themes. If these sounds move as if the bars of cages are no barrier, they also intimate the freedom and power of those held behind them. Rather than simply mirroring the fear and confinement shown onscreen, Atkinson offers an elusive escape, a beacon for the characters, and the listener, to follow as they reckon with the narrative and move through it.

Tracklist LP A1. Félicia Atkinson - "Les Yeux I" A2. Félicia Atkinson - "Les Yeux II" A3. Félicia Atkinson - "Les Yeux III" A4. Félicia Atkinson - "Les Yeux IV" A5. Félicia Atkinson - "Les Yeux V" A6. Félicia Atkinson - "Les Yeux VI" B1. Félicia Atkinson - "Sans Visage I" B2. Félicia Atkinson - "Sans Visage II" B3. Félicia Atkinson - "Sans Visage III" B4. Félicia Atkinson - "Sans Visage IV" B5. Félicia Atkinson - "Sans Visage V"