Meet the Anonymous London Artist With a Cult Following: Lausse the Cat

Seven years after his cult-classic debut The Girl, The Cat and the Tree, French-British multi-hyphenate Lausse the Cat has re-emerged with The Mocking Stars, an hour-long transmission from deep within his meticulously crafted universe.

Shrouded in anonymity and armed with a penchant for surreal spoken-word storytelling, Lausse has always operated on his own terms. Now, with his latest release, he cements his place as one of the underground’s most compelling enigmas. Blending cosmic atmospheres with the quiet ache of the everyday, The Mocking Stars is less an album than an immersion, one that rewards patience, curiosity, and late nights spent staring at ceilings.

From its eerie narration to its meticulously designed visual rollout, everything about it feels intentional, insular, and strangely intimate.

Words: @soph.ferguson

Image: @cals.castle

Some artists slip through the cracks, others build whole worlds inside them. Lausse the Cat belongs to the latter breed, equal parts mythmaker, impressive musician and faceless poet. The reclusive French-British artist, who vanished after releasing 2018’s cult classic The Girl, The Cat and the Tree, has returned with The Mocking Stars, an hour-long album sounding like it comes from somewhere between the astral plane and a damp East London bedsit.

His 2018 debut album was a descent into a foggy, jazz-soaked London dreamworld where excess and intimacy collapsed into one another. Over the course of eight tracks, he stitched together spoken-word confessionals, surreal character studies, and beat-driven lullabies. In other words: it was cult as hell. Fast forward seven years, and just when most had stopped expecting new material altogether, Lausse returned quietly, without warning, and with no explanation. No press shots. No interviews. Just a new full-length album titled opening with the line, “Welcome back my dear children to the Lausse the Cat Show… we find our poor, tattered cat still cold, withered and heartless…”.

Where his debut built a surreal, jazz-tinged universe, The Mocking Stars expands that world into something a bit more cosmic and haunted. The album immediately establishes itself as both a homecoming and a requiem, there’s a continuity here as Lausse remains obsessed with the margins: the strange, sad, beautiful, and bored. As always, his lyrics arrive in that unmistakable thick London drawl, half-mumbled, half-sung, with the occasional verse in perfect french. His signature spoken-word delivery floats above a lush, textured production. This is very much music for late nights and dim rooms, as Lausse moves through themes of addiction, isolation, emotional erosion, and fleeting intimacy with a rare kind of grace. The result is an album that feels both otherworldly and painfully human.

Visually, Lausse remains an enigma. He never shows his face, opting instead for a masked persona that appeared at the odd house party perfomance back in 2018 that only deepens the sense of mystery. His online presence is minimal but more than meticulously crafted. Each element of his interactive website, Lausse's House, feels a bit like an alternate reality video game. After clicking around for a bit (or if you're like us, hours), you'll find that the website includes lyrics, song credits, and a series of posters, one for each track on The Mocking Stars, with each artwork echoing the mood and mythology of its corresponding song. It’s world-building in its purest form.

Central to this entire aesthetic is the artwork of @cals.castle. Every poster, lyric video, and piece of cover art is built upon his gorgeous, abstract paintings. His work, eccentric, sprawling, and deeply textured, provides the visual blueprint for Lausse’s universe. The collaboration feels inevitable; Cal's canvases possess the same dreamlike decay and emotional weight as the music itself, turning the album’s periphery into a gallery of distorted beauty. To look at his art is to understand said damp bedsit and astral plane all at once.

Though still criminally underrated, Lausse the Cat’s slow-burn return feels like a defiant middle finger against the churn of modern music culture. It’s rare to see an artist nowasays treat their entire project as a cohesive aesthetic universe. And yet, despite the richness of the world he’s built, Lausse remains elusive. No face. No social media trail beyond an account documenting releases. Just the music and the masks. In many ways, he feels a bit like an artist from another era, largely untouched by trends or scenes. In a landscape crowded with artists chasing visibility, Lausse the Cat’s return is a reminder of the power of mystery.

@LAUSSE_THE_CAT @CALS.CASTLE