“I spent a whole year without being able to do anything on the guitar, which was really scary. I thought, ‘OK, maybe I’ve lost it for good’”: How Neige’s ascent from the creative abyss led to Alcest’s most ethereal and life-affirming album

Neige of Alcest headbangs whille playing a hard-tail Jazzmaster onstage, in an image that is rendered in blue and black from the stagelights.

For 13 lucky years, French ambient metal icon Stéphane “Neige” Paut regularly wrote otherworldly and emotionally resonant songs that enabled him to escape the often burdensome weight of daily life.

Alcest’s frontman may have started his career playing black metal, but Neige always saw slivers of light in the darkness, and over the course of six albums Alcest evolved into a more winsome group that experimented with soundtrack music, post-rock and shoegaze.