watch Charlotte Adigery's stylish, intense "Patenipat" video

She has French-Caribbean roots but Charlotte Adigéry lives in Ghent, Belgium where she studied art and developed a passion for dance music. As you would with those interests while living in Belgium, Charlotte met the Dewaele brothers, of Soulwax and 2ManyDJs fame, who helped her make her 2017 debut EP at their Deewee studio. She’s set to return with her second EP, titled Zandoli, which, like her first, was written with her musical partner Bolis Pupul, produced by the Dewaeles, and will be released via Deewee in February.

The first single is “Paténipat,” a song that begins minimally with kick drum, Charlotte’s voice, and not much else, but builds into a controlled frenzy. The video for “Paténipat” was directed by cinematographer Joaqim Bayle who has delivered a very stylish clip that, with Charlotte dancing at the center, matches the song’s growing intensity. “I wanted my dance to be as instinctive as the music. I wanted it to be spontaneous and to translate how I personally use my body, says Adigéry. “It had to be a gateway to a state of trance. Plus, I watched a lot of traditional Martiniquan/ Guadeloupean Gwo Ka: music that was made by the enslaved, my ancestors in the Caribbean in the 17th till 19th century. People nowadays still come in the middle of the circle of musicians to dance to the Gwo Ka percussions. I wanted to have a similar kind of grounded, roots movements.” Bayle says, “When I listened to ‘Patenipat’ for the first time, I was super inspired by how pure the song was, no bullshit just the perfect elements that keep your attention and energy all along. I immediately thought about doing something with body language something which is universal and talks to everybody. I wanted to do something as naive as possible.” The video premieres in this post and you can watch it, and stream her first EP, below.