Mathis Akengin makes piano-driven pop where silence matters as much as the notes. At times, you can almost hear the flies buzzing… and the next moment everything shifts, like an elephant landing squarely in your chest.

Spotted at the Inouïs du Printemps de Bourges and later programmed at Les Eurockéennes, he’s grown outside the usual paths: first tours at the age of 13, then as a teenager taking Flixbus rides to London to jam with strangers instead of staying in class.

After working with Catfish and Dead Chic, and arranging for Matmatah, he now returns to something more direct, more stripped back.

Somewhere between the lyricism of Agnès Obel and the off-kilter dandy spirit of Baxter Dury.

Franco-Turkish, moving between two languages, with the sense that people can understand each other without saying everything.

His debut album, ‘Passage des Fleurs’, is a letter to his Turkish grandfather. A love story without instructions, where words sometimes fall short but the connection remains. The title comes from the “Çiçek Pasajı”, a passageway in Istanbul where he spent part of his youth, a place of transition where the fragile meets the powerful, the fly meets the elephant.

The album features Mathis’ recent single ‘First Floor’, which has racked up over 920,000 organic Spotify streams and shows the ability of Mathis’ moreish music to spread through avid listeners on its own volition, proving that he is an artist to take note of in 2026.