Start Listening To: Bibi Club

Montreal duo Bibi Club return with Amaro, a tactile and transcendent exploration of love, loss and the space between worlds.

For Adèle and Nicolas Basque, the duo behind Bibi Club, music is a way of reaching beyond the everyday. Their upcoming album Amaro delves deep into grief and renewal, blending pulsing rhythms with a raw, earthen texture they describe as “tasting like dirt.” Inspired by medieval art, mythology and the tension between life and death, Amaro unfolds like a fable: spiritual yet grounded, intimate yet cosmic. We caught up with Bibi Club to talk about the album’s origins, the artists and imagery that shaped it, and how their live shows have evolved into something closer to ritual than performance.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

We're Adèle and Nico from Montreal, Canada. With our music, we explore the liminal spectrum between the here and the beyond, pointing to love, nature and community as the unifying purpose. 

What themes or emotions do you explore in your upcoming album Amaro?

With Amaro, we are exploring grief as a main theme, fatality, in contrast to the desire to love and to live.

Can you share any specific artistic influences that shaped Amaro's sound or lyrical content during its creation process?

With Amaro  we wanted to push our limit, we wanted to be radical with our aesthetic choices. We always say that the sound on the album tastes like dirt, you can feel the music in your body. We imagine people listening to the album while dancing their emotions to the extreme in ancient ruins. We were influenced by les Tapisseries de l'Apocalypse in the Angers castle in France, the medieval imagery influenced the sounds and the lyrical content.

How did your collaborations with Helena Deland and Dimitri Milbrun impact the overall vibe and direction of your new album?

Helena is reciting a text on a song called A different light. The song is an homage to a friend we lost last year. Helena makes the song larger than us. She is reciting a text that Adèle sings later on the album in french. The text is inspired by les Tapisseries de l'Apocalypse, it seems coherent with the times we are living in. As for Dimitri, he plays a sax solo on our song George Sand, he represents the desire to love and live, the sparks of life that gets us inspired and alive. 

What does the title track 'Amaro' represent for you both, and how does it set the tone for the rest of the album?

Amaro to us is a character, a feeling, a place between life and death. It's like a character that passes across the album, an immortal figure, a place where we live our grief. It sets the tone in the sounds we use for the album: the guitar that has a grit, like dirt, the pulse of the drum machine, the feeling of emergency with a calming voice, almost like a spell. It exposes the lyrical themes of the album: life, death, nature.

Can you describe the visual aesthetic for the Amaro album artwork and how it complements the music?

The artwork for Amaro is a collection of ink illustrations made by the visual artist Mégane Voghell and assembled by graphic designer Hugo Jeanson. The illustrations are based on the songs' themes and characters, the mother and the child, the angry beast, Amaro, etc. It presents itself like a window on the world of Amaro, giving the album a feeling of a fable, a myth.

How has your approach to live performances evolved since your earlier shows, particularly in light of your recent experiences?

The live experience is crucial to our project. It's a way to communicate with our audience, to create a human connection, to transcend everyday life. We have been working lately with a lighting designer/video artist (Flavie Lemée), to create mood and textures that pushes the music in a spiritual experience, a meaningful experience. We also work closely with our sound engineer (Charles-David Dubé) to make sure the music and vocals have a physical impact on the crowd. We want to make the crowd feel something, bring an experience that makes you go back home after the show and feel more human, more empathic to the others.