MEET ASPHALT: THE SOUND OF THE CITY KID DREAMING OF OPEN ROADS
With a name that evokes the pulse of the pavement, Asphalt is the alias of Milo Thoretton, a Paris-born musician whose songs reflect both the grit of the city and a longing for escape. Raised somewhere between rive gauche bookshops and wide-open horizons, Asphalt writes the way others breathe: instinctively. His music conjures rooftops at twilight, the hum of traffic turning into minor chords, and the sudden ache of remembering a place you’ve never been.
More distortion than dynasty
Sure, his artistic lineage reads like a Cannes red carpet roll call (actress Chiara Mastroianni is his mother, Catherine Deneuve his grandmother) but Asphalt leans more toward distortion pedals than family prestige. His Paris is still there, rain-slicked, electric, slightly out of tune, but his songs dream beyond the périphérique. He finds freedom not in spotlights, but in movement: a guitar slung over his shoulder, the road unwinding ahead, the call of wide skies and unknown places. Because music, like nature, offers room to breathe.
His single Lame de fond, co-written with Benjamin Biolay, captures the shimmering melancholy of youth and the hidden poetry of everyday life. “I want the time to fail at life, I want to endure the blow of boredom,” he sings, with the resigned lucidity of someone who prefers beauty to certainty. The track blends surf-pop arpeggios with a subtle undertow of regret, like a salt-sprayed postcard from a place that may or may not exist.
A lean, melodic, melancholic rock
Asphalt’s sound rides a fragile edge between French chanson and American indie-rock. Imagine the lyrical finesse of Alain Bashung colliding with the reverb-drenched guitars of The War on Drugs; add a touch of shoegaze haze and the pop sensibility of Phoenix, and you’re close. His songs are lean, melodic, and gently bruised, crafted with producer Jules Jaconelli, who enriches each track with analog warmth, dry drum machines, and ambient textures that let silence speak before letting the guitars scream.
In late 2023, Asphalt released Sommeil, a soft-spoken nocturne built on tremolo guitars and hushed vocals: a lullaby for insomniacs and last metro riders. But it’s with Cocktail Exil, a six-track EP released in spring 2025, that his musical identity takes full form. Across eighteen minutes, Asphalt distills lonely rooftops, crowded night buses, and imaginary coastlines into a concise and cinematic journey.
The EP opens with Émergée, where sampled church bells meet a thunderous bassline. Heavy Metal Disco Club, again co-written with Benjamin Biolay, is a neon-lit danse macabre where glam guitars meet a pulsing four-on-the-floor beat. Trop, accompanied by a lo-fi video filmed in empty office buildings, turns daily burnout into a breakbeat elegy. On Copyright, old sea-shanty chord progressions are buried under layers of fuzz. The EP closes with a new, more intense version of Lame de fond, its chorus crashing with even greater emotional weight.
Asphalt calls his genre “boulevard blues”: music for those who walk fast, think hard, and dream elsewhere. The blues here isn’t despair, but motion. His choruses bloom with layered harmonies, street recordings, or a brass flourish picked up along the way. A proof that even wanderlust can be orchestrated. With Cocktail Exil gaining traction on late-night playlists, and a debut album already being mixed somewhere in Normandy, Asphalt’s journey is just beginning.
Photos by Victor Liky