Yann Tiersen is an author, composer and performer. He is obviously known for “the non-original soundtrack“, he said, from the movie the fabulous destiny of Amelie Poulain by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (2001). His notoriety crossed borders at that time as he was also the originator of the soundtrack of the German film “Goodbye Lenin!“, in 2003, for which he was rewarded. Yann Tiersen returns with an eleventh album Kerber.
franceinfo: Kerber is a homecoming since we are really talking about the island of Ouessant. Is it also a new beginning?
Yann Tiersen : Yes really. A bit because just before I released an album called Portrait. It was a bit of a contextualization of all my songs. We even mastered the album from tape to vinyl and suddenly, it was a highlight. And there is the continuation.
This album is a bit the definition of what you are, a laboratory technician. You are always in search of sound, mixing your know-how with what you also know: scores, arrangements, but also you reinvent something.
It’s all stupid. I started making my music in the early 90s and it was actually post-punk. It was empirical like that. I’ve always recorded my stuff without asking too many questions and enjoying hacking around and doing things in my room.
How did music come into your life?
My dad was very music lover. I lost it when I was 7, so I think it’s related to that.
“Music has always been very present in my life. It allowed me to let go of things, comforted me. It was full of things.”
Yann Tiersento franceinfo
There are seven tracks on this album. It feels like you’re in a movie and yet it’s the movie of your life, it’s what touches you inside. There is nature, the environment and then the essential. What, moreover, is your essential?
I think the main thing, at least now, is to connect, to reconnect, to leave anthropocentrism a little behind … It’s a bit of a hippie thing.
It gave rise to this album called Kerber. Let’s talk about the title of this album because it says a lot about your approach, about who you are, about what resources you.
Kerber, it’s a chapel next to my house. My music used to be more about trying to take snapshots and encapsulate time. And now it’s more places. Put a place and juxtapose a piece of music, which does not necessarily have something to see, in addition. But I like this juxtaposition, it allows precisely to focus on a place and to reflect on the places. So, it’s quite simple.
You have a classic training, which you stopped at 13 years old. Then as a teenager, you turn to rock. Have you always had this mentality, this desire to rock?
No. I was born in Brest and my parents moved to Rennes. I spent my teenage years there and it was great because there was the Transmusicales. There were at least two demented groups a week. I did just that, go to concerts and rehearse with my friends. And I started at Trans.
What also stands out is your need to always have challenges, I am thinking of the project The absent with this string quartet, to the symphony orchestra with Goodbye Lenin! even if you are not a fan of film scores. You’ve always had this urge to push a little harder, to try new things.
It’s not that I don’t like film music … Goodbye Lenin! is a very good example. I am asked to make a film score and my mother was sick at the same time. It’s a bit like the story of the film. I said yes, no problem. I didn’t do something on the film, but on my mother who was sick.
“For each album, I’m a kid with the music. I find it to be something quite precious, vital.”
Yann Tiersento franceinfo
I need to have fun like it’s the first time all the time and suddenly I can’t repeat myself. Suddenly, I change each time, I explore new territories to keep that energy.
Your music conveys your emotions and we feel that it’s good to keep them, but from time to time, it’s good to give them, to share them anyway.
Yes. I always say concerts are the easiest way to share music with people. A song when it’s on the album, as long as you don’t listen to it, it’s dead, it no longer exists. Normal, it is on a support, you have to put the vinyl on the turntable or go on a platform, to listen to it. And then he is reborn. He must be reborn for the stage: I redo everything so that the piece is alive.
Is this album a message of hope, of transmission too?
I want to be positive and believe in the future. Anyway, the future really has to be invented.