midi.is

YANN TIERSEN
At the Reykjavík Arts Festival

Celebrated composer and multi instrumentalist Yann Tiersen will be a guest of the Reykjavík Arts Festival 2012 with a special acoustic performance of his new album Skyline. Tiersen is a renowned and startlingly unique artist whose early albums merged cutting edge classical with flourishes of folk with the bristly energy of post punk, and while these works attracted a dedicated fan base, it was his soundtrack to the beloved indie film “Amelie” which introduced Tiersen to a far wider audience. Since then Tiersen has continued to attract fans with a continuously evolving sound and memorable live performances at everything from distinguished concert halls to rock festivals including a recent appearance at this year´s Coachella Festival in California.

Skyline is the seventh studio album by Yann Tiersen and follows on from its darker sister Dust Lane, released in 2010.  Skyline was largely recorded at Tiersen’s tiny weather beaten island home of Ouessant in the Atlantic off the coast of West Britanny, with further parts recorded in San Francisco and Paris.  A final mix with producer Ken Thomas (Sigur Rós, M83, Dave Gahan) saw the album completed in Leeds.

If Dust Lane was a transition, then Skyline really marks Tiersen and his band’s arrival in this musical world he is beginning to inhabit so comfortably.  Tiersen would argue he’s been there all along, and it’s only now everyone else is catching up.  On stage, or tucked away in his Paris basement studio you would be hard pressed to find him behind the wall of vintage synths (his first passion) and electric guitars.  The album came together over a year of touring only punctuated with endless hours spent on the tour bus surrounded by his second passion – vinyl. Bands like Neu!, Kraftwerk and Can are particular influences.

Tiersen has always loved to collaborate and Skyline is no exception – guest appearances come from Efterklang, Peter Broderick, Syd Matters and Matt Elliot. The first single, Monuments has Tiersen’s trademark lyrical repetition, which muses our place in the world and the traces of ourselves we leave behind – “all monuments of men, they’re sinking in vain”.  Wrapped in a chorus of vocals and shimming guitars the message isn’t so dark, it’s full of hope.

“Let’s live in an enormous world of sound we can use randomly, with no rules at all,” says Tiersen, of his vision. “Let’s play with sound, forget all knowledge and instrumental skills, and just use instinct – the same way punk did.”