FLEUR ELECTRA - “COULD BE BETTER”
LABEL : VICTORY POOL RECORDS
Fleur Electra is the dream-pop project of Toronto-via-Saskatchewan aesthete Anna Klein. Starting her “colourful, girl-pop era in the depths of 2020 chaos,” Fleur Electra was born out of the early pandemic, defined by Klein’s sensual and sonically adventurous bedroom production.
Since releasing her debut In Technicolor in 2022, Klein has been performing around Toronto and crafting captivating visuals, honing her artistic magic. She self-produced, wrote, recorded, and mixed her acclaimed 2024's In My Room—a small miracle of an album, considering a house fire destroyed the very bedroom in which these songs were written (while almost nothing was recovered from the fire, this album of songs were saved from a damaged hard drive). Klein went through profound growth from this experience, and though her artistic powers were continuing to develop, her belief in herself was waning. Klein's mental health was worsening, and trying times had her feeling like she was at a dead end—until the ideal producer came along.
Klein explains: “I got a random Instagram DM from Alex Black Bessen”—an LA producer whose credits include Alex G and BENEE—“and he said, ‘I’m going to be in Toronto, and I would love to meet with you if you’re down.’” As soon as Klein and Black Bessen met up, it was clear that they were meant to be collaborating: “It was one of those immediate connections—like, have we met before?” Klein couldn’t believe how easy the artistic collaboration felt: “he could hear my sound and my vision, and he knew how to take it to the next level.”
“Next thing I knew, I was in California in a cabin in the woods, having the most beautiful time,” Klein smiles. Klein and Black Bessen—along with producer-percussionist Tim Voet—poured over Klein’s hard drive of demos in their cozy studio, building these sketches into the delicious alt-pop vignettes.
Klein’s journey with Fleur Electra traces back to her prairie roots. Growing up in Saskatoon, then moving to isolated, small-town Saskatchewan at age 10, Klein leaned hard into imaginative creation: “it felt like I was entering a different world when I was making music.” The eighth of ten kids, Klein and her siblings would inspire one another with flashes of creativity: drawing portraits, singing made-up songs around the house, and acting in elaborate self-scripted videos. Precociously aesthetic, Klein couldn’t hear a song without mentally pairing it with a visual. As soon as she started producing her own music at 12 years old, her interests in sonics and visual art collided, reflected in the gorgeously crafted music videos and graphics of Fleur Electra.
Klein’s early recording sessions in Audacity also provided a counterweight to her religious upbringing. Heavily in worship music, Klein “grew up listening to a lot of Christian rock bands and singing in church.” Though her perspective on religion is nuanced and ever-evolving these days, Klein’s music as Fleur Electra seeks to strike at the same power of communally sung hymns in church, similarly crafting music that “cuts through the vulnerability, just gets there, straight to the point.” While Sunday morning services strive to bring you close to God, Fleur Electra’s music beckons you, with similar frankness and vulnerability, to reckon with your own internal turmoil, relationships, and percolating joys.
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