Noé Castaing, La Corniche: summer 2025

"La Corniche" came out on 4 July. Today is 1 September, and Noé Castaing has played nineteen dates in that time.

It was a slow three-track single by a guitar player from L'Estaque, pressed in an edition of 750. He played a sunset stage at Worldwide Festival in Sète in June, with a guitar loop in a harbour town, and people there asked about it. Within a fortnight of release I was receiving videos.

The terraces in the south of France had it first, then ones in Spain, then a car park in Ghent, in a clip sent by Elske Maes. The Terrace Mix, which Noé made in an afternoon, travelled furthest. It has no drums for the first two minutes, and on the right terrace the bar goes quiet for those two minutes. Elsewhere it reached a pub garden in Margate, played under an awning in the rain.

The dates

Lena Vogt has a firm rule about travel and rest, and Noé finds it hard to say no to friends. The friends won, and some of that is my fault. On 19 July he played Cabaret Aléatoire at home, with the courtyard of the Friche at 31 degrees at two in the morning, and then went to the airport. In August he played Les Plages Électroniques in Cannes on the same bill as Les Quais, on a stage on the sand, and Yanis Belkacem came on with the sax for the last part of the set.

By mid-August he had lost his voice from talking over monitors, and one guitar, left at a beach bar in Palavas and since posted back. His uncle rang to ask whether he would be home in January, when the two of them go out on the boat. I said yes.

"It's a song about being lazy. I've never worked so hard in my life." Noé Castaing

Noé does not tour from January to March. That has been in his contract from the start, and after this summer nobody at the label is questioning it.

The record is on its third pressing. A follow-up is planned for next summer, and he will not be taking interviews about it until then.