Every day, a personality invites herself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Today, the author, composer and performer, Émilie Simon. Friday April 14, 2023, she is back with a new album called “ES”. She is also on tour throughout France.
Émilie Simon is an author, composer and performer. It is with his first album, Emily Simon, crowned by the Victory of the music of the electronic album of the year in 2004, that it is made known to the public. Subsequently, she worked with director Luc Jacquet for his documentary on Antarctica, which gave rise to her second album, The emperor’s walkand the soundtrack of the same name.
Friday April 14, 2023, she is back with a new album entitled ES. She is also on tour throughout France.
franceinfo: ES is a new version of your first album. But 20 years later, you decided to revisit it as if you were releasing it today. For what ?
Emily Simon: In fact, it came with the 20s. I wanted to give a gift to the people who follow and who love my music to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this album, which was the starting point of my entire career. At first it was just a desire to maybe rework a piece or two. And then in fact, it happened in such a fluid and magical way that I chained the pieces… I didn’t think I would do it at all. Besides, I’m not of a character, especially to look back. But there, it was not the state of mind, I took each piece and I said to myself then how I would produce it today? And I went on like that for the whole album and I said to myself: it still has to exist. But it was somewhere a project that even took me a little by surprise.
Do you remember what state of mind were you in when the album was released?
When we release a first album, we have no idea what awaits us. So he carries in him something very pure in fact, which is at the origin of all the rest.
“The first album is also the one that carries within it everything that we have been since childhood, which is without censorship, without expectation.”
Emily Simonat franceinfo
This purity also comes from your father who was a sound engineer. He instilled that in you, he introduced you to music, gave you a taste for it, a passion for it. So much so that the notes ended up very quickly punctuating your life since you hold a DEA in musicology and you worked in sound engineering at IRCAM. In fact, this album is a link between the past and the future. There is a letting go and it is not by chance that you decided to accompany it with a live creation on stage, alone on stage. How do you live this moment on stage, meeting with the public?
It’s exciting and it’s terrifying, a little bit of both. I have already played alone, not a lot in France, but when I tour the United States, I had the opportunity to play alone with my machines. But this is a tour that’s different, that’s around ES with my electronic arm on stage and other instruments that we imagined with Cyrille Brissot, whom I had met at IRCAM when I was just starting out and who has remained a traveling companion all these years. So there is always this side of interaction, a musical gesture that comes with electronic music, but somewhere, coming back with a ‘single on stage’ like that, for me, it was also obvious because it’s an album that I did it alone.
Does this mean that you finally trust yourself more and more?
Yes of course. There is trust. There is an autonomy that has always been present in me, but which is growing and which goes well with the way I do things.
The first title is called Desert. Have you experienced moments of desert, of doubt?
“Moments of doubt let us know what our real life goals are, what is really important to us.”
Emily Simonat franceinfo
Yes, of course, And that’s also part of life. These are moments that are important because then we manage to understand each other better, to know each other, to understand what our real desires are in those moments.
What is important to you then?
Transmit my art. Playing, making albums and communicating that. Only that transcends everything in my life.
Your debut album was critically acclaimed. You also received a Victoire de la Musique. It means that the public was present, the critics too. This was followed by this very fine collaboration with Luc Jacquet for The emperor’s walk. This collaboration has changed the way you build other projects a little too?
Yes, because it happened in the second album, so it immediately opened my field of perception of what was possible by making a film in the second album and it was very enriching for me. I worked a lot on this project. I kept coming up with options and options, I had to write two hours of music before I got to the end, it was a great encounter.
On your latest album that comes out today, there is a title that closes it, it’s canvas song.
It’s a song that I wrote at the time of my first album. I really liked medieval music at the time and I listened to that. And canvas song, she was a model, these women who weaved while waiting for their men who had gone to war. And I found it very, very romantic, this state of waiting, in the process of weaving, and very contemplative too.
Isn’t your life just a fairy tale?
We can see it like that. Yeah, that’s the life I wanted to live, so I’m happy with it.
Émilie Simon will be in concert, for example, on April 15, 2023 in Toulouse, on April 19 in Bourges, on June 24 in Antibes, on July 13 at the Francofolies de la Rochelle.