Yann Tiersen - Dust Lane

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4...according to our Clinton on Thu 07 Oct, 2010.

Most well known for his score of Amelie, you often forget how famous Yann Tiersen really is. An almost household name but one that seems to happy to wander along the fringes of music being quietly influential. This is his first album on Mute and if you are expecting minimalist twinkling you've come to the wrong place. Its produced by Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros, M83) and the first track has more in common with those outfits, big bombastic and orchestral. Tiersens Nyman like compositional abilities take root in the title track which has that particular Gallic flair with interlocking piano, accordion and female spoken word vocals which recall the voice on Paddy MacAloon's criminally ignored solo outing 'I Trawl the Megahertz'. 'Dark Stuff' is what it says on the tin, distorted looped guitar, choir like vocal and harp (i think).

The 12" version of 'Palestine' has already been mentioned in these pages and is a stand out here - again it rocks away with the author spelling out the title over the top of the most delightfully distorted violins heard since the halycon days of King of the Slums. Overall this is big, bold impassioned music, classical in composition but arranged and played as if by rock behemoths. Comparisons? I have a few. Matt Elliott, A Silver Mount Zion, Carmine.

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Mute are delighted to announce the signing of Yann Tiersen and the release of his brand new, long awaited album, Dust Lane, out October 2010.

Yann Tiersen is one of the most revered French artists of his generation with a reputation first established by his studio albums (which include 1998’s Le Phare and 2005’s Les Retrouvailles) and cemented by his work on the original film score of Amelie (2001) which earned him widespread recognition.

Produced by Yann Tiersen and mixed by Ken Thomas (Sigur Rós, M83, Moby), Dust Lane sees Tiersen incorporate vintage electronic sounds and textures into his music for an album he describes as “a journey on the dusty lane that leads us to death. Not a sad thing, but like a colourful, sometimes painful, but mostly joyful experience: life!”

Yann Tiersen has a formidable live reputation and returns to the UK in October and November this year for a series of dates that includes Koko in London on 3rd November.

Dust Lane is, inescapably, an album preoccupied with mortality. During its recording, Tiersen lost his mother and a close friend, and the music within embodies what it is to be bereaved. It is also an album about life not as something lost, but something to be lived. "Not a sad thing, but a colourful thing - an experience sometimes painful, but also joyful," says Tiersen.