THE BLAZE Tickets

The Blaze In Concert

French duo The Blaze — cousins Jonathan and Guillaume Alric — may have been canonized when ‘Moonlight' director Barry Jenkins called one of their self-directed videos "THE best piece of art I've seen in 2017," but the pair's success has little to do with high-profile cosigns. 

Instead, the two electronic musicians and filmmakers found fame entirely on their own terms, pairing melancholy, left-field house music with breathtakingly original visuals tackling subjects like love, exile, and death. "Territory," the video tipped by Jenkins, tracks a young Algerian man's emotional homecoming. "Queens" follows the funeral of a young Roma woman and the friend, maybe lover, she has left behind. 

Video was a natural fit for the two young artists. They began working together when Jonathan was studying film in Brussels and asked his cousin to assist him. They chose a luminous yet low-key name to accompany their arresting visuals and understated sound — in French slang, "blaze" means "name." It's a good fit for a project whose soft-spoken creators prefer to let the work do the talking.

Their music spread by word of mouth. Their debut video, 2016's "Virile," released on Brodinski's Bromance label, notched more than a million plays in the space of its first year. The follow-up, the self-directed "Territory" in 2017, netted 1.6 million views in just one month. 

Rather than cashing in on viral fame, the Alrics took their time. Following 2007's 'Territory' EP, they developed their live show and hit the road, playing Coachella, Lollapalooza, Montreux Jazz Festival, Roskilde, Primavera Sound, Parklife, Lovebox, and Pitchfork Festival Paris, among others. In September 2018, the duo finally released their debut album, 'Dancehall.'

Their live show frequently emphasizes the project's visuals, with multiple screens projecting mirrored images of their distinctive camera work. The Alrics, meanwhile, stand silhouetted against their machines. They may be positioned center stage, but they're not the center of the spectacle; the audience's attention remains focused squarely on their sensual, wistful, slowly sashaying electronic grooves and the richly colored imagery that accompanies them.