French multi-artist Halo Maud has shared and alternate version of “Catch the Wave.” the title-track off her latest EP. The song follows previous single “After The Wave” and is available today via UK label, Heavenly Recordings.

“Catch The Wave” emanated from Maud’s “small and nomadic laboratory” in which, using one main synthesizer, she accumulated layers and layers of sound, “crushed with my favorite effects, a chorus and a harmonizer. The track arose from this waving material, clinging to a strong rhythmic pattern I had found in an old drum machine, and then arranged for proper drum kit and percussion”.

“I love to find the perfect balance between the mystery and magic of the music” she continues, referencing an “attachment to reverse playback, one thing I never tire of playing with”. It is the unexpectedness, the unease of the back-to-front that tips Maud’s music into the eldritch; sublime as her world may be, it is one in which you can’t take for granted that the walls won’t suddenly ripple, or else entirely fall away.

For all its liquidity, “Catch the Wave” also finds footing on dry land; perhaps more than just of the sea, it is fundamentally elemental. “There is a strong idea of getting fed”, says Maud, “kneading a fertile soil, drawing sensuality in it, feeling filled by the power of touching. Fed by movement and traveling too, and by the people met and loved.”

Released digitally, “Catch the Wave” is accompanied by two alternate versions: “After the Wave”, the “natural continuation” of the song — “a noisy, bombastic conclusion” that “totally galvanized” Maud during its recording (“like a running athlete who just won a competition and keeps on running after the finish line”) — and its inverse, “Catch the Wave (Dawn Version)”, in which the track is stripped all the way back to its most delicate; fishbone and gossamer on an early morning breeze.

Halo Maud
Cath The Wave
Heavenly Recordings

1. Catch The Wave
2. After The Wave
3. Catch The Wave (Dawn Version)