Sébastien Tellier: Kiss the Beast

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Image courtesy of Grec Festival de Barcelona.

Sébastien Tellier’s music is like a blend of Taxi Driver and Beauty and the Beast directed by Brian De Palma. He describes his new album as a wild night, an attempt to tame chaos, or a week’s holiday in a theme park. Are you ready?

“This album is the literal description of the music that plays within me. A music crossed by my dualities: the wolf and the sheep, strength and fragility, dream and nightmare”. This is how the multi-instrumentalist Sébastien Tellier described his 2026 album Kiss the Beast, a deliberately maximalist work, as the artist himself puts it. It is “a record that’s free, instinctive, guided simply by the pleasure of making music”, he explained on social media. Indeed, it is “a journey from sweetness to tension, from clarity to fever”, featuring tracks such as Refresh, Naïf de cœur and Thrill of the Night. In his previous six albums, Tellier explored genres ranging from pop to folk and electronic music. In this seventh, he draws on all of them as inspiration for an eclectic yet coherent work, projecting the sounds of his past towards the future.

La Ritournelle (which he performed during the most emotional moment of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games) is just one of many tracks which, alongside Universe, L’amour et la violence, Divine, Roche, Cochon Ville, Fingers of Steel and A Ballet, have made Sébastien Tellier a key figure in today’s French music scene. Always elegant, he works with fashion houses drawn to his image as a long-haired dandy with a beard, cap and dark sunglasses.

Sounds of the City: Summer Music Festivals

What are your plans for summer? If you’re staying in the city, you won’t be alone. Barcelona is becoming a go-to destination for festival lovers, given Catalunya’s covetable combination of culture, great weather and an increasingly diverse concert circuit. So if you’re looking to expand your horizons while staying put this season, check out our article Sounds of the City: Summer Music Festivals for a summary of the summer music events taking place in Barcelona, from big-name gatherings to boutique takeovers.

For more music events check our online events calendar.