"Between the real and the surreal": Jean-Michel Blais world builds on new album mirador

The record due 25 September, marks Blais’ first full-length release since his collaborative album with Lara Somogyi in 2025 and arrives alongside lead single "ulysse".

Inspired in part by childhood memories of building imaginary worlds in his parents’ basement in Nicolet, Québec, mirador takes its title from those early “lookout” spaces – places of refuge, invention and possibility. For Blais, who has spoken openly about growing up queer and with Tourette’s syndrome, that basement hideaway became a vantage point from which to dream.

“What strange place is this where time dissolves, suspended between sky and earth, between the real and the surreal,” Blais says of the album’s imaginative core. “A fissure is enough. The desire for an elsewhere still unknown, a will, a direction finally accepted.”

Blais has enlisted composer and arranger William Brittelle (LA Philharmonic, The National), assembling a 12-strong baroque choir and a string quartet of friends. He's also brought in Tulio Velazco Villagra, a master of Andean instruments. Residencies at the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia helped shape the record’s atmosphere.

Recorded in locations ranging from Spanish caves to Estonian forest, the resulting collection of songs moves between folk traditions, contemporary composition and cinematic storytelling, incorporating choirs, strings and the music of the Andes. Blais will perform songs from the record at a number of dates across Europe in the autum, with a London show at World Heart Beat on 26 October.

mirador artwork

mirador tracklist

“muses”
“ulysse”
“pavane”
“carnavalito”
“mirador”
“quwi”
“granada”
“kyrie”
“laulasmaa”
“silhouettes”
“querelle”
“a chambre des possibles”