The Offline's Debut EP 'En-Clair Obscur' Is Here

Inspired by the moody soundtracks of 1960s and 1970s film composers such as Francois de Roubaix, Brian Bennet and David Axelrod, The Offline releases atmospheric, soulfully visual tunes with dramatic Library-music-esque cinematic arrangements.

In these times of endless sonic possibilities streaming out your computer 24/7 comes the idea of putting away the screen and going back to the beginning, with an analogue feel reminiscent of old funk and jazz albums you’d often found sampled in hip-hop, The Offline delivers songs that capture the feeling of a cool summer soundtrack.

The Offline came to life, when composer and photographer Felix Müller travelled the Atlantic coastline in the south of France with his analogue camera, capturing the beach life on film. After coming back to Hamburg, he started writing songs to match the sonic counterpart to the analogue visuals and soon recognized that he needed to build a group of musicians. With Carl-Michael “Grabi” Grabinger on drums, Sebastian Schütze on bass and the brass section with Hans-Christian Stephan and Kimo Eiserbeck, he found highly skilled instrumentalists to help the tracks come to life.

Clair-Obscur, or better known as Chiaroscuro, is the use of light and dark areas in a painting or in an image. The use of light and dark, positive, and negative can also be found in music, whether in harmony progressions, arrangements or soundscapes to create a certain mood. With each track named by a famous surf spot, ‘En Clair-Obscur’ is a journey along the shores of the French Atlantic, paying homage to great French composers.