![]() He asked Tiersen to write some original themes for the film. Jeunet loved Tiersen's records and had already put some songs on his rushes as temp tracks. Photo: Richard DumasWhile working on this ambitious project, Yann got a phone call from French film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, then shooting Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain. His 2000 album L'Absente ('Missing') brought in new sounds like the Ondes Martenot (see box), a string quartet, an orchestral ensemble, well known English singers such as Lisa Germano and Neil Hannon, and a new sound engineer, Fabrice Laureau. A year later, on Rue Des Cascades ('Cascades' Street'), Tiersen progressed: his string arrangements, which he played himself, were richer, the melodies more developed, while follow-up Le Phare ('Lighthouse') reached a wider audience and saw Tiersen singing for the first time, along with guests such as Claire Pichet and Dominique A, and touring France. He recorded it himself with an ADAT, a few budget microphones and an analogue console. ![]() In it, Tiersen's musical style arrived fully formed. His first album, La Valse Des Monstres ('Monsters' Waltz', 1995), was a compilation of themes written for theatre and animated movies. A Career On The EdgeĪs a teenager in the '80s, the classically trained Yann Tiersen felt more attracted by rock & roll, and put down his instruments to play electric guitar. However, Tiersen is no Luddite: he writes and records his music in his own studio, uses modern production tools like Logic Audio and Pro Tools, and mixed the latest album on an SSL 9080K at Davout Studios in Paris, while its release was accompanied by a 'making of' DVD in 5.1 surround. Tiersen plays mainly instrumental and short songs, employs delicate and rare musical instruments, adds evocative and almost childish noises (bicycle, toy piano, music box, recorder, even a typewriter) and combines them with 'normal' rock & roll instruments. ![]() He plays most of the instruments himself, recording them live with almost no editing or plug-ins. What makes this surprising is that Tiersen's style is rather marginal in today's musical world, containing no electronics, no samples, no machines and no MIDI. His latest album, Les Retrouvailles ('Reunion'), has already sold several hundred thousand copies throughout Europe. The more dumb and basic the idea is, the more wild and original the song can become."Īt the age of 35, Yann Tiersen is one of the most famous French recording artists. Starting from a little idea like that, you have almost total freedom to build the song. But in the final mix, that first guitar part will still be there, even if it's barely audible. "A song can come out of a four-minute-long guitar track where I'm just repeating the same chords I find a bass line, then the other parts come, and the song is born. I keep the first draft, and I only develop one version of a given song at a time. A song often loses its soul when you try to refine it, to redo it well. I try to retain these unique moments in the final version. I don't make demos: I find it's impossible to redo something with the same energy, the same feel you had when you were inventing it. "When I record a song, I like to capture what's going on straight away. "I'm not a cerebral guy," says Yann Tiersen. His idiosyncratic working method involves toy instruments, songs built from fragmented ideas, and entire string sections created by recording himself over and over again. The unique musical world of Yann Tiersen was opened up to millions of people by the soundtrack to Amelie.
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