Essaie Pas

Essaie Pas comprises the Montréal-based pair Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau. The Canadian duo fuses dark minimal synth pop with French pop, Italo-disco, and horror-movie soundtrack elements. Lyrics delivered in both spoken and sung form by Davidson and Guerineau address loneliness, sexuality, and fantasy, ideally suited to late-night listening. After several limited cassette and vinyl releases in the early 2010s, the project took a more danceable turn on DFA, commencing with the 2016 album Demain Est une Autre Nuit.

The two musicians formed in summer 2010 and issued a four-song cassette EP on their own Téméraire Records in 2011 that featured a rough, guitar-driven sound. Their 2012 split cassette single with Hobo Cubes explored atmospheric synth drones, while the cassette Tout Est Jeune crystallized their minimal synth pop direction. Malditos Records and Teenage Menopause Records co-released the first vinyl LP, Nuit de Noce, in 2013, gathering earlier cassette material plus one unreleased track. Atelier Ciseaux released a split 12" EP with Police des Moeurs in 2014, and Teenage Menopause Records followed with the Danse Sociale 7" in 2015. By then Davidson had also issued two solo albums on Weyrd Son Records and HoloDeck that occupied similar territory.

DFA released the duo’s first widely available full-length, Demain Est une Autre Nuit, in February 2016. A remix EP appeared next, after which the pair began work on their second DFA album. Loosely inspired by Philip K. Dick’s dystopian sci-fi novel A Scanner Darkly, New Path came out in 2018. The trance-influenced EP Earth followed in 2019.