2033: humanity only has five years left to live. Léonie Stardust, a non-binary alien, has found shelter in Niger, as Africa has now become a celestial body orbiting the sun. But they return with a message of hope. After two albums of dreamlike electro-pop, Léonie Pernet gives us a retrofuturistic—if not Afrofuturistic—reinvention of David Bowie’s masterpiece, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Putting on a fifty-year-old costume, and refusing to sanctify or betray Bowie’s music, she helps us rediscover the magic of this record through her synthesizers and percussions. Eschewing obvious and classic patterns to find the balance between the challenge, boldness, and immediacy that characterise this unforgettable album: here’s a project the young musician embodies to perfection. A new step in a protean career which began almost ten years ago, after the success of her album Le Cirque de Consolation in 2021.
Ziggy Stardust, released in 1972, revisited like Harvest and Transformer as part of Trilogie 72, an homage to legendary albums in English.