PARIS / NEW YORK — The Discretes — the experimental art rock duo of vocalist and lyricist CECILIA and multi-instrumentalist Ali Ayrik — announce the release of their debut album, In Sore Bless, out August 11, 2026 on all digital platforms via their independent artist-run label Oriflamme, with vinyl following September 15th. Lead single and music video “Deep Noon” is available now.
This is not background music. It is a ceremony.
In Sore Bless coaxes its listeners into a ritualistic trance — dark, unapologetic, and entirely singular. Weaving together post-rock, noise rock, art rock, experimental, cinematic, ambient, and trip-hop influences into what the duo describes as a musical mandala, it is a record that carries the spiritual power of speaking in tongues and retreating inward, away from the noise and fury of the outer world, toward something ancient and true. From the very first notes, something is being conjured here that is genuinely difficult to name — and impossible to resist.
For fans of Portishead, Noveller, Blonde Redhead, Chelsea Wolfe, and MONO, In Sore Bless offers both solace and challenge in equal measure.
“We find inspiration in the entropy of life,” the duo says. “Sometimes we celebrate it and at other times we resist it. Art and music act like a bandpass filter — cut out the sound and fury and focus your attention on what moves you. Creativity is channeling energy to make your own bandpass filter, and inspiration is the motivation to express ourselves and to take leaps of faith when doing so.”
In Sore Bless is that filter made manifest — eight tracks that move through post-noise ballads, distilled jams, fragments of Anatolian trip-hop, and other genre-amalgams, all drawn into the orbit of CECILIA’s voice. She sings in English, French, and Italian, calling to an omnipresent yet elusive love — binding, repelling, fragile, transient, and spiritual. Her lyrics, rich with references and homages to dead artists and writers she loves, unfold over Ali’s background of synth drones, hand percussion, electronic textures, and strings. Olivia Baldi contributes cello on “ICI.”
“To me, writing and singing most often feels like entering into a conversation with invisible forces and the lingering aura of the dead,” CECILIA says. “A dialogue with voices and archives that have deeply resonated with me.”
The album required something genuinely new from CECILIA — a surrender of control that she has not offered in over a decade of solo work. For the first time, she took on strictly the role of singer, leaving all instrumental work to Ali. The voice, more exposed than ever, carries a direct and nakedly human strength.
“This is my first collaboration in more than ten years of working solo,” she says. “The voice is more exposed and in that nakedness, there is a direct, human strength. At a time when my own music is becoming more minimal and stripped down, it was refreshing to work with Ali’s instrumentals that are rich, heavy, saturated and opening up to different energies.”
For Ali, the record is a synthesis of everything — a tribute to a lifetime spent more in the audience than on stage, absorbing music across continents and genres, from a street concert in Frankfurt at the age of seven to a path that led through punk, post-punk, noise, free jazz, and finally into the recording studio.
“Music accompanies us throughout our lives,” Ali says. “It’s a steady drip of inspiration in itself and there’s always so much to learn and explore. CECILIA’s art and singing inspire me.”
