Idylls Of Somerset is an experimental electronic music duo exploring sound poetry, sound art, and drifting, hypnotic ambient soundscapes with a minimalistic approach. The band’s unique artistic vision revolves around their instrumentarium composed of semi-modular synthesizers processed through a recursive network of delays, resonators, and the use of generative and algorithmic processes for sound synthesis and visual creation.
The project is a collaboration between the Belgian composer, engineer and writer Emmanuel Mertens, and the mixed-media artist and music/audio research engineer Charles Al Picasso.
Their key releases are The Howl in Daylight (2024), a sonic journey luring their love for Allen Ginsberg and Philip K. Dick, soundscapes, oblique fields, resonating textures excursions. This album features the video of the single Your Land Is Lips. The Dawn of The Pale Fox (2025), a recent collaborative direction introducing haunting poetry, melancholic voice from the artist and circus performer Brenda Clark.

Emmanuel Mertens

Composer and writer, he also works in the film industry as a sound engineer. He started his career as a sideman and leader musician in jazz-rock and progressive rock bands, before turning to electronic projects. As a composer, he has worked for theatre, performing arts and film. Interested in acousmatics and contemporary music, poetry and visual arts, his passion for building bridges between distant disciplines, creators and art forms has led him to writing. His work focuses on examining, documenting and highlighting the literary, poetic and philosophical influences of selected contemporary artists.

Charles Al Picasso

Mixed media artist and research engineer, his artistic work and interests span the fields of sound synthesis, generative systems, spatial sound and the visual arts. As a research engineer and software developer, he works at the IRCAM research center, and collaborated in the development of multiple technologies involving spectral representations of sound, bio-signals tracking and analysis, and timbral visualisation. He holds a Master of Arts in Acousmatics and Sonic Arts from the Paris-Est University.

Brenda Clark (Guest artist in "The Dawn of The Pale Fox")

After a Master in English and Dramatic Literature at Toronto University, Brenda Clark has studied at Maggie Bassett Studio in Toronto and New-York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts, different internships (Bernard Ortega, Enrique Pardo, Monika Pagneux, Daniel Stein, Philippe Minyana, Michael McLennan...), actor training (Patricia Sterlin, Kim Massee,..), aerial acrobatics and trapeze, dance, singing,...she has played in several theatre plays, TV series, commercials, and works as a dubbing actor for a few productions.