Arnaud Lazlaud was Xavier Paradis' first musical solo project. It started under a blanket of snow in a Quebec City basement in the mid 90s, initially as a series of experiments: analog synth arpeggios drifting out of sync with primitive drum machines, recycled cassette tapes piling up on wrinkled papers stained with hopeless verses... Bit by bit, instruments were added, interfaces were connected and machines were assembled into what was then considered a home-studio. Gradually songs were written and, with the occasional help of a few collaborators, recorded.
Between the chimerical romanticism of an expired adolescence and disenchanted sci-fi backwashes, the aspiration was — rather than scoring the soundtrack of a future that would obviously never exist — to develop a form of impossible folk music.
Most of the Arnaud Lazlaud material was recorded between 1997 and 1999 and then released as two consecutive, (very) limited-edition CD-R EPs. A few copies of these EPs made their way across the Atlantic, mostly to Sweden and Germany, and in 2007 the German label Kernkrach re-released two songs as a 7-inch single. More recently, in 2019, the Franco-German label Objetrouvé remastered and re-released 5 songs, this time as a limited-edition 12-inch vinyl.