Hybrid is the first album from Montreal's elsiane - the creative project launched by singer/songwriter/keyboardist Elsieanne Caplette and drummer Stephane Sotto. The duo's debut is a lush, emotionally evocative album haunted by the sensitive beauty of Caplette's unique, yearning voice that soars and dances ecstatically over evocative string arrangements.
Each song on Hybrid is an invitation to float atop a mysterious and beautiful sea, a deep pool of sound whose reflections appease as much as they disquiet.

Cinematic and narrative, Elsiane's songs are moody stories that emerge from the shadows into a flickering, illuminating light. Lovers of film and visual arts, elsiane weave highly visual and narrative conceptual strands into the rich fabric of Hybrid. The album's cover art was created by the art team of More Than A Friend, as were the visuals that are an element of their live performances, drawing inspiration directly from the songs on Hybrid.
The aesthetics of filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky, Chris Cunningham and David Lynch have influenced their cinematic compositions, and their musical influences range from Tool to Pink Floyd and Massive Attack. "Vaporous" and "Mend (To Fix, To Repair)" evoke epic musical imagery with sounds that blissfully marry electronic, rock, classical, world and jazz influences. But what strikes one most about this elaborate musical portrait is Elsieanne Caplette's angelic yet haunting voice. (Notably, Caplette creates almost all the startling vocal effects and idiosyncratic vocalizations on the album with her natural voice, a voice that tempers refined elegance with, at times, an almost animal intensity.)

Producer David Kakon(Jaffa) gathered a team of renowned musicians and professionals to artfully surround and amplify elsiane's musical vision. The list includes mix engineer Robert Heaney, bassist Kevin Desouza, guitarist Simon Angell, as well as a very special collaboration with legendary producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, NIN) to record the strings that permeate Hybrid. Caplette, who is classically trained, composed and arranged all the instruments heard on Hybrid, including the strings.

The result is an exquisite melodic interplay between Caplette's voice and the music on the album. This delicate interplay is also evident in the relationship between Sotto's drums and Caplette's voice, the rhythms not only support Caplette's melodies but also allow them to soar. Hybrid straddles genres with a sophisticated, radio friendly, sensibility that is sure to appeal to a diverse audience without sacrificing an intensely idiosyncratic and personal aesthetic.