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INSIGHT 008

ODALIE


There’s a rare clarity to Odalie’s music—a sense that each phrase is considered, sculpted, refined. Across her sophomore release on Max Cooper’s Mesh label, Optimistic Nihilism, the French composer, producer, and instrumentalist delves into the existential paradoxes of our age: meaning in the absence of absolutes, connection amidst collapse. This is not ambient as balm, or neoclassicism for gallery walls—it’s music forged from tension, designed to be inhabited rather than consumed. Sophie Griffon, the artist behind Odalie, blurs the boundaries between electronic precision and organic resonance. Her sound world—centered on modular synthesis and Paolo Rezze’s stirring cello contributions—leans into friction and fragility, with every bowed phrase or syncopated rhythm pointing to something unspoken yet urgent. Where her debut, Puissante Vulnérabilité, felt expansive and architectural, her latest release is somehow more distilled yet also more volatile. Across six movements, it veers from melancholia to momentum, from structured chaos to lyrical stillness. But beneath the layered sonics lies a philosophical core: a confrontation with the absurdity of existence, not in despair, but with resolve. Odalie doesn’t offer answers; instead, she scores the questions—intimately, audaciously, and with an ear tuned equally to nature, noise, and the unsaid thoughts that bubble beneath.

MFA: Optimistic Nihilism suggests a paradox—one that embraces both existential void and hopeful creation. What drew you to this philosophical concept, and how did it shape the emotional arc of the release?
Odalie: I'm really into paradoxes and contrasts—I love to confront them and observe them. They don’t frighten me, because I can easily change my opinion if I feel it needs to evolve, or if my thoughts no longer align with what I feel. 

To me, it’s a beautiful way to grow—to be influenced by others and to change. I love talking to people who don’t agree with me, as long as it’s respectful. We can grow together—just by stepping into someone else’s shoes and seeing the world through their lens.

I already knew the concept because I went through a time in my life where I was a full-on nihilist—my thoughts were much darker than they are now. At some point, for the sake of my mental health and just feeling okay, I needed a way of thinking that could hold both sides of who I am. I read a lot of philosophical, sociological, and political books and the idea behind the EP was already there in those books, in between the lines. Then I came across this Kurzgesagt video called Optimistic Nihilism, and I felt totally seen and understood. The way it’s explained is so simple and clear, and it really matched what I’d already been thinking. 

The idea of life having no real purpose was an existential dread to me, that we couldn’t explain our place here and that things are unfair: this idea of Optimistic Nihilism made me think about how I could find some meaning by creating good, useless, beautiful things with the community, and through the connections I have with people.

And it just feels great.

That makes sense. And Kurzgesagt is pretty great. Your press release says, “Courage does not lie in invincibility but in accepting our imperfections.” How does this ethos translate into your compositional choices and sonic imperfections—intentional or otherwise?
Perfection is my nemesis. I know I don’t want to be perfect, not in my life or in my music, but it’s so hard to fight against this part of myself. 

For a few years I tried my hardest to fight against the idea of perfection because it doesn't help me with my work and with loving myself. 
The artists I love and who inspire the most me work with imperfections as a source of creation and beauty. 

Nature is full of imperfections and things that are not coherent: there is a lot of incoherence in nature; that is what makes it beautiful. 

In order to translate this in my music, I chose to work with a lot OF plug-ins and synths that have weird and unpredictable answers, like my modular synth with modal synthesis, or granular effects and synths on the computer. I tweak stuff and work with the concept of serendipity: when I find something nice, I cut it and keep it, but I stopped trying to aim for something in particular. I look for beautiful accidents, sonic creatures that come from my exploration of sound.
It also helps me connect more with myself and my feelings when I make music.

I always made music as a way of healing myself and trying to get my emotions out. To see my imperfections in my music is also a beautiful way to accept them.

I love this idea of harnessing imperfections as a way to come to peace with yourself. So the titles across the EP— Projection, Wabi, Sabi, Emotional Prism—suggest a visual and even architectural sensibility. How do you conceptualize spatiality in your work, not just as sound design, but as psychological or emotional architecture?
Spatialization is a big part of my work. I think I work more with spaces in sound than notes or rhythms. When I compose a track I know what I want the spaces to say.

Spaces have histories. When you enter a room you can feel the space: I love to show this to my friends, make them enter a room and hear the space they walk in, by hearing how the sound of their voices reverberate in those spaces, how their breath sounds in particular spaces—churches, caves—even in what seems like silence. Silence is a big part of music, because this is where you hear the space.

We could talk about emotional architecture, I kind of like this expression you chose. Because the spaces I choose for my sounds tell a story: sometimes they start like little things, close to your ears, tiny little creatures, and then they grow and take all the space and get really big and impressive. 

It also comes from the mixing process, in what space I place the sounds to tell the story, the place I want them to take and how it evolves during the track.

It’s true, your mixes are so spacious and clean. Overall your palette blends modular synthesis with neoclassical textures, particularly the cello. Can you describe your studio workflow? How do you start a piece, and decide when it’s finished?
I start by exploring and creating sounds with my modular synthesizers, a Prophet 6, sometimes other synthesizers like the Moog DFAM or synthesizers people lend me with no purpose at all. I always start with the electronic parts, especially the sound design because it’s my favorite part.

I could have been a sound designer if I didn't pursue music. The only thing that was bothering me is that I like things to be useless, with no purpose other than beauty and experience, so I would have struggled with the idea of making sound design with a purpose.

When I have something that looks like an idea, with most of the sonic elements composing the background, the general idea, and general feeling I send this to my cellist, Paolo Rezze. Sometimes I have a precise idea so I tell him I want you to be this role or in this spectrum or with this way of playing and sometimes I just let him do his stuff not knowing what will come back.  Or if I have a melody I sing it to him and tell him to improvise around that.

Paolo isn’t just an excellent cellist: he’s also an excellent music produce. I’m really lucky to work with him since so many years now. Eight already!

So when I receive the ideas from him —usually three or four improvisations—I cut everything up and choose the parts I like the most, then re-do my composition around his ideas to adapt my parts.

Sometimes I take out a lot of sounds to make everything breathe more.
It’s like a sculpture, I have a lot of materials at first, and then I cut, cut, cut until I have the final thing with a lot of silence and space and details. It’s funny, sometimes a sound I took so much time to create can only be used once in an entire track. 

When the idea is strong enough in my ears I do transitions (redoing sound design as needed to make sure all the parts work together), and then I export everything to go into the mixing phase.

Then I try to not touch the composition again: just EQ, make some little volume adjustments everywhere, sometimes compression.

Finally, at some point I feel that whenever I do more work on the track I am now only making things worse than it was, so then I stop, and It’s finished. It’s a very long process, but I don’t know how to speed it up.

I tried to make less materials and go directly to a few strong ideas, but it’s boring in my opinion, and I need things to be exciting to find motivation.

It’s like you said about making sound design with purpose. Kinda boring in a way. But so your ongoing collaboration with Paolo Rezze on cello is clearly integral to your output. What drew you to the cello as an instrument to work with?
I chose the cello because I love the timbre. It’s really close to electronic music in so many ways. The way Paolo plays his cello also makes it sound like an electronic music instrument: he leverages the psychoacoustic particularities of the cello to make very special sounds. We both love to play with resonances and psychoacoustic techniques, and that’s what makes the music we do together unique.

We met at music school and from the beginning Paolo was a sonic explorer of his instrument, the fact that he was into this and loved electronic music and the fact that I loved the cello: it was a perfect match.

Cello is also a very versatile instrument, you can do so much with it: from subsonic to very high frequency sounds. So we can exchange our roles in the tracks: sometimes he plays the bass (in Dancing with chaos for example, or in a part of Battements), we like the fact that sometimes in our live performances, people don’t understand which is the electronic part and which is the cello. 

Paolo’s cello parts in your work feel so tactile and alive. Can you walk us through how you capture Rezze’s performance—mic setups, space, processing?
We work with a lot of mics in the studio on the cello, most of the time at least five different microphones. We place all the mics on the first day and then we don’t touch it so I don’t get lost afterward in the mixing process: there are a lot of cello tracks to handle and I need it to be really organized and consistent if I want to work fast.

We go to a real studio—not mine—with a good room, to record the cello. This is expensive, so we only record the cello in studio when we already have really good demos and I already have everything else recorded at my own studio. 

These studio days are quite hard on Paolo because it’s very physical to record five tracks in two or three days and my perfection often strikes at this moment: I want the cello to sound exactly like what we decided in the demos, even when it’s a little resonance so he has to record quite a lot of takes.

We always discuss with the sound engineer from the studio, so we choose our sound engineer really well to be sure he understands our point of view on sound, and we choose the mics all together. We use an AKG C214 which is the first mic I bought 12 years ago. It helped us create our cello sound, so we keep it even if it’s not a really good mic compared to those in the studio. The defaults of this mic kind of made our sound; it has a special color that I’m used to and we make the demos with it so it’s difficult to take it out after because I already chose all the other sounds to work around it.

At first you work with constraints—but in the end it becomes an artistic direction.

About processing, I try to use as litte as possible: if the composition and arrangement is good in the dem,o normally you don’t have to do a lot for it to sound great. A few EQs, compression, a little bit of saturation when he does the bass or the lead, but I always try to maintain a lot of dynamics. Now we have the OTO Reverb Pedal in our live set, so I also use this as a cello reverb on the studio—its beautiful and works so well on the cello in our context.

Has the nature of your collaboration evolved between the last album and this release? Are you exploring extended techniques, spatial recording, or other experimental approaches together?
The nature of our collaboration always evolves because I get bored really fast. I think we both like very much to challenge ourselves so we try new stuff on each release. 

When we start thinking about the next release we throw ideas in we want to experiment with (like more rhythmic cello for example on the last EP); sometimes we make each other listen to reference tracks from artists we like, even when it’s not cello or electronic. 

I always come in with the concept and the feeling of the release so the techniques we explore are usually connected to the subject I’m on at the moment (but my subjects are almost always the same, I just explore them in greater detail). 

Paolo loves a good challenge so we’re always up to it. The only big problem we have is that music industry is getting harder and harder on musicians, especially about time and money, and we always lack time to explore what we want.

Our time together dwindles every year: that’s something we need to resolve because quality time together, talking and experiencing and exploring music with no purpose is necesary to make good music.

So true. Now I have to ask, what’s your DAW of choice, and how does it integrate — or conflict — with your modular and acoustic setup? Are you working primarily in-the-box, or do you use the DAW more like a multitrack canvas?
I work in Ableton Live, and it controls my modular synths via the Push. I don’t work a lot in the box, it’s mainly to record my synths but I have little plugins I love like the Bubbler I work with a lot. I also use Ableton’s Utility a lot with modulators in Live as an extension of my modular synth practice.

Interesting. So are you multitracking layers of modular synth live takes, or do you sculpt sequences iteratively? How does your modular rig function within your compositional language?
I don’t multitrack layers of modular synth, I try to have separate tracks even when they work together because at first when I did live takes it was very difficult to achieve a good mixing process.

I love details and nicely organized material, so the approach of doing everything in one take with every layer does not work for me for now. It’s also because I have a very small modular setup and not a lot of money to buy all the tools needed to make that work. 

That’s something I could explore in the future if I had the possibility, but for now it doesn't work for me. I work with what I have and I don’t need much. 

My modular is my main instrument and the way you recognize my sound, I have the Rings module by Mutable Instruments that has been part of my sound for years. It’s my favorite module: you can hear it almost everywhere in my music, it’s an enormous part of my sound (thank you Emilie Gillet who created this module). It has lots of parameters, sometimes it’s not exactly in tune on every note, but I love that too (to return to the imperfection idea). 

I often find harmonies with my modular because I have to add layers on it: one dry and one with some delays effects I love. 

I love that iterative sort of layering technique. I think it explains a lot of the dimension in your sound. So how has your relationship with technology evolved between your debut, Puissante Vulnérabilité, and this new EP? Were there any new tools or techniques that proved important or key to your growth?
I don’t like changes too much. It frightens me and it takes me time to adapt so I prefer to stay on the same tools for many years! I’m not the kind of musician to try new tools all the time; if I integrate a new tool it’s because I really need it.

There was not a lot of time between these two releases and I wanted to learn a lot about percussion and rhythm for Optimistic Nihilism, so I focused primarily on this, and didn't really try new tools. 

My key to artistic growth was that I wanted to keep my emotional and spacious composition but incorporate it into a more rhythmic journey. It’s a path I’m still on at the moment, keeping this acoustic and melodic focus and melding it with more percussion.

You’ve described instrumental music as a way to say what we can’t with words: "dire alors qu’on n’a pas les mots." What are the things you find most urgent to express through this non-verbal medium these days?
That showing vulnerability is what we need as humans to work as a community. That the people that don’t want things to change don’t want us to understand, empathize, and listen to each other. But It’s a way of wishing for a better world for all of us. 

I want to show that expressing vulnerability takes a lot of courage, and that people’s feelings are beautiful things to experience and feel. I think we can’t make a better world without understanding that each individual has their own struggles, their own past, insecurity, aspirations, and that it’s beautiful to share and grow all together. 

I believe strongly in community and human connection as a way to empower one another, not through a quest for power or domination, but through solidarity and cooperation. That’s what I try to express in my music, but also in my video creations, and in my performances, when I speak. Doing my best to express that because it feels needed.

It’s important stuff, for sure. There’s also maybe a sense of a political undercurrent in this record that feels more about emotional truth than direct activism. If Optimistic Nihilism refers to a way of being, what does it look like in your daily life outside of music?
My life is a mix between a lot of connections to people, a lot of new encounters because I'm very social, and at the same time a lot of time to work, work, work because I’m so obsessive about it. 

Being a musician today is difficult. So it’s a big goal that the people around me know this and support me. I’m so grateful to these important people being there even when it’s hard.

Photo: Anne-Laure Etienne













THIS IDEA OF OPTIMISTIC NIHILISM MADE ME THINK ABOUT HOW I COULD FIND SOME MEANING BY CREATING GOOD, USELESS, BEAUTIFUL THINGS WITH THE COMMUNITY, AND THROUGH THE CONNECTIONS I HAVE WITH PEOPLE.































THERE IS A LOT OF INCOHERENCE IN NATURE;
THAT IS WHAT MAKES IT BEAUTIFUL.






























IT’S LIKE A SCULPTURE, I HAVE A LOT OF MATERIALS AT FIRST, AND THEN I CUT, CUT, CUT UNTIL I HAVE THE FINAL THING WITH A LOT OF SILENCE AND SPACE AND DETAILS.































WE LIKE THE FACT THAT SOMETIMES IN OUR LIVE PERFORMANCES, PEOPLE DON’T UNDERSTAND WHICH IS THE ELECTRONIC PART AND WHICH IS THE CELLO. 














Photo: Anne-Laure Etienne




















AT FIRST YOU WORK WITH CONSTRAINTS—BUT IN THE END IT BECOMES AN ARTISTIC DIRECTION.
































QUALITY TIME TOGETHER, TALKING AND EXPERIENCING AND EXPLORING MUSIC WITH NO PURPOSE IS NECESSARY TO MAKE GOOD MUSIC.