After a series of experiments and scores, Natasha Pirard returns with her most intuitive and personal project yet. Turning inward, she dedicates the work to her mother and late grandmother, whose caring presence shaped her life. A photobook of songs rustling through delicate pages of memory—the album weaves her voice, field recordings, synthesizer, and violin into an ode to the lasting influence of her matrilineal line. Fernande, Cecile reflects on these two women: Pirard lost her grandmother at seven, yet Fernande’s warmth stayed with her, a touchstone throughout childhood. Her mother, Cecile, has been a constant presence, guiding Natasha through difficult years while undergoing the tides of life herself, too.
Alzheimer’s–which her grandmother suffered–and the impermanence of memory permeate the work, lingering as both absence and presence. A conversation with her mother planted the seed for the album: over coffee, her mother placed a hand on her heart and said, “If, at some point, I start to have this disease as well, don’t forget I’m still here (inside).” That fragile moment became central to the compositions. The album is a way of caring recklessly, translating Pirard’s love and gratitude for these women into a musical language as pure and heartfelt as she can create. It is also an homage to motherhood more broadly, to the nested devotion that not everyone is fortunate to experience.
The music moves in fragments—howling small notes, dots, chords—tracing childhood memories: grandmother’s garden in full bloom, blackberry bushes in sunlight, afternoons that felt safe and untroubled. Pirard intertwines her instruments not as language alone but as traces of lived experience. Loops and rhythms follow life itself: shifting and building, sometimes abrupt, marking painful transitions or necessary growth. Recurring fragments carry echoes of love and loss, of absence felt deeply, and of the memories that struggle to be reclaimed. The songs unfold in tactile, warm layers: ambient noises brushing against her voice and instruments, or the chirp of her grandmother’s favorite bird drifting through.
The album is structured in two parts. Side one, Fernande, traces her late grandmother’s life and the fading of recollections, capturing both warmth and the sorrow of loss. Side two, Cecile, follows her mother’s care and resilience. Track titles trace memories, while the music drifts through longing and gratitude, articulating what words alone cannot.
The album was written and recorded by Natasha Pirard, produced and mixed by David & Stephen Dewaele of Soulwax/2manydjs at DEEWEE.
