Ange Halliwell first touched the harp when he was twelve. Based in the verdant countryside of south-west France, he continues to make harp music with hypnotic arpeggios and sung, spoken or shouted voices. Halliwell's compositions are intimately linked to nature – cicadas buzz through the songs regularly – and have a contemporary consciousness of tradition – his dog Pastou, a literal shepherd in his self-made music video’s, is deemed his “muse”. Halliwel’s harp play is extended in visual musings that are at once luminous and melancholy.  

Where his previous album was structured by the seasons, Halliwell’s latest album “Lullaby for the dead” is marked by the reiteration of a type of song, the lullaby. Typically a song to literally lull a child to sleep, Halliwell directs his lullabies to the infinite sleepers. Leaning less into the genre impulses the harp slips into, the songs each provide a distinct and contemplative soundtrack for the various stages of hope and grief. Throughout the album, the electric harp remains a fantasy and as a voice itself along human howls, it persists as an instrument of taletelling. Ange calls each piece “a prayer”, they are “a tribute to these invisible worlds and these emotions that overwhelm us all at some point in our lives.” And he sings: "Fly, fly beautiful soul! The afterlife awaits you...”