Steel & Velvet greet the approaching colder days with a beautiful new body of art. It’s titled “People Just Float” and consists of both music and video works, namely it’s home to a 6-track EP and a short movie. For this article, we have picked the EP’s first track, which is a cover of Robbie Basho’s melancholic and touching “Orphan’s Lament”.
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A gentle fingered guitar melody introduces what is to be a song of longing and loneliness. The bold yet gentle voice of the band’s vocalist, Johann Le Roux carries a heavy weight of abandonment, only lightened by hopes that the people he’s missing the most in his life will return one day. An earthly layer of tonality underneath the swirl of melodies holds a sense of inner voice saying the sad truth he doesn’t want to hear. This loneliness is to be.
While the original has Robbie Basho accompanying himself on piano, Steel & Velvet’s guitarist Romuald Ballet-Baz reworked the song for piano and used finger-picking technique. Robbie Basho was extremely skilled at this method and his technique was influenced by sarod playing. Also, while the original song gazes towards the skies expecially in the beginning, as a young lad hopes and wishes for the parents’ return, Steel & Velvet’s version is one of an older man, who is no longer searching, but still carries that gaping, unfillable hole in his somber soul.
“In 2023, we released our first four-track EP as a tribute to Mark Lanegan, an artist I greatly admire. Following that, Romuald, Jean-Alain, and I decided to record compositions for a new album. But they’re very busy, and the writing wasn’t progressing fast enough for my liking.
Since I didn’t want Steel & Velvet to remain inactive for too long, I proposed another concept: an EP that would also be the soundtrack for a short film that I imagined as a “Lynchian Western.” So I carefully selected six songs that, taken together, would tell a story. The first song, Orphan’s Lament, introduces the character of Joshua in the short film.”
Steel & Velvet
“Orphan’s Lament” comes along with a music video, which is more of a short film. Featuring a lone hunter named Joshua, the softly toned video depicts a day in the woods, where the hunter encounters a saddled horse, but no rider. Later, he finds an unconscious woman Hope, who must’ve been knocked off the horse’s saddle.
Though one was armed by a gun and the other by a decidedly gun-shaped hefty stick, they soon recognised something within each other. Companionship in a life otherwise spent alone.
“In the book “Lanegan” by Greg Prato, Aldo Struyf mentions this anecdote: “We listened to music [after the rehearsal], because I’ve got lots of records. The last thing he made me listen to was Robbie Basho: Visions of the Country – a finger-picking guy. Mark told me a story about him, that lots of people were really jealous of him because he could play such difficult guitar-picking music and sing along with it…”.
After reading this passage, I listened to “Vision of the Country,” which is a remarkable album. And I was particularly touched by “Orphan’s Lament.” I immediately told myself that I would like to perform it one day. Funny thing is, on this piece, Robbie Basho, who was a virtuoso guitarist, accompanies himself on the piano. So Romuald had to adapt it for guitar. And what he created is, in my opinion, exceptional. That’s why I want to share it with as many people as possible.”
Steel & Velvet
Steel & Velvet is a folk-rock group run by friendship and a desire to tell thought-inspiring stories. Their sound is intimate and heavily acoustic in the studio and live. On stage, singer Johann le Roux prefers not to have his voice amplified; in this way, it feels more natural and inherently vulnerable as the band connects with the audience. Visual works are equally important for the stories sung by the band. The song’s video, as well as other video work by the band, has been created in collaboration with photographer and cinematographer Loïc Moyou.
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“People Just Float” by Steel & Velvet consists of both music and video works. Home to a 6-track EP and a short movie. “Orphan’s Lament” is the opening track.
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— Jpgchief (@jpgchief.bsky.social) 24 de octubre de 2025, 13:10
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