Le Comité Restreint On The Story Behind “Le Gisant”
“Perhaps it comes from a sense of guilt — for having forgotten who we are.”
Le Comite Restreint is a versatile artistic collective where poetry, music, and visual arts come together to create an immersive and endless sensory universe. “Le Gisant” marks the latest single from the collective and the fourth track in their upcoming double album Revolution, coming out in November. In an interview with Punk Head, we talked about politics, indiduality, and the emotions and meanings behind “Le Gisant.”
Punk Head: “Le Gisant” translates to “The Recumbent” — a body at rest, yet never truly still. How do you reconcile the tension between stillness and awakening in this piece? Was it born out of grief, resistance, or something something entirely different?
Le Comité Restreint: It stems from an urgent, almost unconscious necessity — something that stirs Le Gisant, meaning us. As the piece unfolds, awareness rises and sharpens. To rise. To step out of oneself. To start walking, not yet knowing where or why. Perhaps it comes from a sense of guilt — for having forgotten who we are. The one who reaches out a hand to lift us is no one else but ourselves. There’s nothing more to wait for. In the end, it’s still ourselves we’re searching for.
Punk Head: Your work has always blurred the line between the political and the personal. For Le Gisant, where does the self end and the collective begin?
Le Comité Restreint: The individual hasn’t ended yet. He’s still a body lying down — physical, barely moving. His mind is emerging, awareness flickering through fog. Yet the impulse is there, inevitable. The reason for it will only appear later — at the very moment, and without meaning to, when he encounters others. That’s when the collective will come. When he’ll understand that he’s both the same as all and singular at once. For now, he’s alone with himself — profoundly alone with himself.
Punk Head: Your music often feels like memory made audible — blurred, looping, half-dreamed. What memory or sensation were you chasing while composing Le Gisant?
Le Comité Restreint: Perhaps the conflict between the body and consciousness. That dense, fibrous space between coma and awakening. The struggle to break inertia. The voice that commands you to rise — like an inner alarm, jarring and persistent. Le Comité Restreint is driven more by sensations than by memories. Unless memories themselves are what sensations are made of.
Punk Head: “Révolution” is an ambitious title — but the word can mean rebirth as much as revolt. Does Le Gisant represent the death before the revolution, or the moment just after resurrection?
Le Comité Restreint: Le Gisant is clearly the very beginning of the revolution — the first motion, the birth of consciousness. The journey will be long — a terrible périple. But Le Gisant is haunted: he hears voices, feels indistinct forces calling him. His path is the album Révolution. And by the end, in the very last track, he’ll return — because revolution also means turning back toward oneself. He’ll return, be reborn, or haunt those who are yet to be born. And everything will begin again — the same, yet transformed by what has been lived.
Punk Head: Your performances often feel less like concerts and more like rituals. When Le Gisant is played live, what do you imagine the audience is participating in — a mourning, an awakening, or a transformation?
Le Comité Restreint: Ideally, a little of all three. The visual might evoke darkness pierced by faint beams of light — a call to be born, to cross through, to endure, to transcend. Even if the transformation is barely visible — because it’s only beginning — it’s there. Deep inside.
