"This Is The Darkness I Used To Tape" by And The Bear

AND THE BEAR is the one-man band project of Alexandre MANUEL, a French multi-instrumentalist based in the March since 1998.

Over the years he has taken part as a singer and guitarist in various musical groups in the region such as HOURPLUG, AM I RIGHT and THE QUITE COLLECTIVE all of them art rock, shoegaz, indietronica. With these bands, from 2000 to 2017 he released 4 EPs and participated in various festivals throughout the country (Emergenza Rock, M.E.I. Faenza, Marte Live, Sottoterranea, Big Foot Festival and Tunz Market).

In the 2016 he began his "cine-concert" adventure, a kind of show that associates the projection of a film with the performance of live music. He composed and performed the music of the short films “Poco prima del caffé” (2016) and “Irene” (2017) of the director Jonathan Soverchia for CINECONCERTO Festival.

In 2018, Alex becomes AND THE BEAR.
From the very first gigs, he collaborates with the visual artist Marco Di Battista who will be able to underline perfectly the visual part of the musical approach of the ATB project that wants to be borderless, experimental, mixing digital and electronic structure with melodies and waves of analog synths, guitar and voice. .

Also in the 2018, he writes with his brother Grégoire the screenplay for the short film “The Guide Swap” of which he will also compose the music. The short will be the winner of the CINECONCERTO 2018 Festival and will later be screening at the TOKKO FILM FEST 2019 and CASTELBELLINO ARTE 2019.
In the same year he staged the show "Motori di Carta" with the company TEATRIQUE, a company in which he is still active as a composer and actor.
In the 2019 he undertook the production and music composition of videodance in collaboration with the MOTUS PROJECT company. In 2020 the video dance "FRAINTENDIMENTI" wins the Audience Award at the CINEMATICA FESTIVAL and is a finalist at the FIFTH WALL FEST in the Philippines, with other selections at the MOOVY TANZFILMFESTIVAL (Cologne), ROGUE DANCE FESTIVAL (Canada), BOULDER AND BEYOND CONTEMPORARY DANCE FESTIVAL (USA) ).

In the 2020 he won the 14th edition of the HOMELESS ROCK FEST and composed the music for the "In Nature's Arms" commercial for the London cosmetics brand The Wild Together.

After almost 50 concerts in unusual places (art exhibitions, photographic studios, film festivals, etc) he records 8 of the 35 titles of his live show at Maurizio Sellani's MAUI GARAGE STUDIO, songs that make up the skeleton of his first album "This Is the Darkness I Used To Tape ".

"The album was born with the desire to freely experiment with all the instrumentation I had accumulated: synths, sequencers, filters and distortions for guitar and vocals, but also ukuleles and various types of percussion instruments.
The keystone of the project is the desire not to use the computer or playback tracks. The songs of the album have been recorded, as they are played live. I just enjoyed adding settings, colors, noises that come to mind or that I visualize while playing the pieces!

In the lyrics, I deal with the theme of fear in the broadest sense of the term. The songs were born long before the pandemic and I feared that the sense of the record would completely distorted by the climate we have been experiencing for too long. Fortunately, in wanting to touch the question from a thousand points of view, sometimes in an intimate but I believe also universal way, the message has not undergone any "decline".
The darkness that one chooses not to look at, the inability to appropriate one's breath, the choice of violence and arrogance are all demons that I try to reveal with my words ".

The album has been released on March 12, 2021 in digital version and CD for the VALVOLARE Records and Maui Garage Studio labels