Lila Ehjä is a one-girl band whose influences from cold wave, post-punk, shoegaze, and industrial led her to explore the very French “froide wave.” After years in the suburbs playing bass in noisy bands, she arrives in Paris, where she flourishes in the city’s underground scene. Heavy guitars, intense feedback, and icy synthesizers define her universe, which she composes alone in her apartment.
With a looper, a guitar, and a Roland MC101, she creates atmospheres that shift in color and mood: sometimes blue, soft, and mysterious; other times red, electric, and concrete.
n a way, her music brings to mind a Parisian version of The Doom Generation soundtrack: like the opening scene with Nine Inch Nails, it reflects youth disillusionment, the gray of Parisian boulevards, and the poetry of rain and night.
“DIY or DIE”, this mantra led her to defend her first album Clivota (January 2024,Croux records) on the roads of Europe,but also to her most beautiful experience: play a live performance for the exhibitionMETAL at the Philharmonie de Paris, nice nod to her adolescence.
CLIVOTA
Clivota is a word with mysterious roots, evoking a realm between Slovakia and Romania, or perhaps even a Transylvanian landscape reminiscent of Dario Argento’s cinematic visions. It represents a softened take on Baudelaire’s concept of “spleen”—a kind of effortless melancholy. Google translates it as “she blinked,” hinting at a languid acceptance of this mood, which perfectly reflects the mindset in which the artist found herself while composing in her Paris apartment. Created over two years entirely solo, Clivota was both a musical and visual project, for which Lila Ehjä collaborated with her sister, Marie Mauve, an experimental photographer. Marie captured her in grainy black-and-white portraits, which Lila then tore apart and reassembled to symbolize the scars and life experiences that shape us. Following her first EP, Yö (June 2021), Clivota emerges as a deeply introspective journey, blending influences from cold wave, post-punk, and industrial to craft an atmosphere both haunting and profoundly personal.
