Alex Tolm – “Présence Absente”

Belgian artist Alex Tolm has put out a debut album that genuinely surprised me. “Présence Absente” is the kind of record that doesn’t announce itself loudly. It just pulls you in quietly, and before you realize it, you’ve listened to the whole thing. This is exactly what happened with me.

The album is piano-driven at its core, and that choice pays off. There’s a rawness to it that you don’t often get in modern pop productions. Tracks like “Pardon, j’parle tout seul” feel personal in a way that’s hard to fake. You get the sense Tolm was working something out, not performing for an audience.

The record sits in an interesting space. It draws on classic French-language songwriting traditions while mixing in Art Pop and a kind of dreamy, late-night dark pop atmosphere. The synth-driven production gives it an expansive quality without losing intimacy. It doesn’t feel cold or overworked. If anything, it feels like music that took its time.

The emotional territory here is specific, too. The album explores presence and absence, not just as abstract ideas but as something you feel on a gut level. The distance between people, the emotional gaps that build over time. That’s hard to write about without sliding into cliché, but Tolm mostly sidesteps it.

Honestly, this is one of the more quietly confident debut albums I’ve heard in a while. There’s maturity in the sequencing and the production choices that you don’t usually get from a first release. My advice is to go back through whatever Alex Tolm has released before this, and make sure you’re following him. This is an artist worth tracking.