Elliott Armen, music revealing the journey

A journey of 200 kilometers to give birth to an album is the adventure led by Elliott Armen. Yann Tiersen’s son went to the Isle of Lewis, off the coast of Scotland, to record his second album, “Turbulence”, released Friday.

If there is a great sweetness in Elliott Armen’s music, it is because he seeks its substance at the heart. His voice on a guitar or above a piano, nothing is ever forced. At only 24 years old, the young Breton is already on his second album, Turbulence, released Friday January 12. And if the first had been recorded on the island of Ouessant, in the studio of his father Yann Tiersen, there he wanted to travel. Direction the Isle of Lewis, in the northwest of Scotland, with tent and backpack.

“I wanted to do something that I really like to land inside me before recording. And that worked well”, he told franceinfo. He recognizes it today: “I spent 12 days in magnificent and wild landscapes, calming the hubbub of everyday thoughts. I arrived in very good condition to be able to record this album“.

An “augmented” folk

Armen, the rock or the stone in Breton, this chosen name owes nothing to chance, as he loves these raw and striking landscapes, and his music reflects it. On the Isle of Lewis, he went to record at Black Bay Studio to transform his ideas into orchestrations.

“We moved forward from folk and built around something a little orchestral, a little big, a little vast.”

Elliott Armen, at franceinfo

On this approach, he explains: “The idea of ​​the album was to take that visceral folk for me, the style I like to express myself in, but take it a little further, in a modern way and collaborate with people . Especially Peter Fletcher, who produced the album with me and who had lots of good ideas. He’s the one who told me: ‘we’re going to put in some big distortion pedals, do some things on the guitar'”. And like a light in everyday life, Elliott Armen’s music deserves to be immersed intensely, already waiting for new journeys to see where his fertile inspiration will take him.

Elliott Armen, Turbulence (Helium Balloons Records). Album available. In concert on February 8 in Paris, at Hasard Ludique.