After translating into music on several occasions (“Eusa”, “Kerber”) the landscapes launched by the Ouessant wind, the island off Brittany on which she has lived for several years, composes and records its music, Yann Tiersen has decided to celebrate another small strip of land surrounded by the sea, Rathlin, extreme offshoot of the Irish north-east led to Scotland.
This time the French composer chooses not to choose, putting together – indeed approaching – modern classical and electronics in two distinct works in sound But united in the source of inspiration. “Rathlin from a distance” is therefore a collection of piano rattles, “The Liquid Hour” an outpost of the most experimental soul of Tiersen, between electronics, minimalism and ambient.
Moreover, Tiersen in recent decades has carried out the two parallel routes, sometimes preferring to each other, with the result of equally heterogeneous tour: some lived on stage alone, others with a real band to accompany him. “Rathlin from a distance”, the last outpost of that minimalism that twenty -five years ago entered the collective imagination thanks to the collection and synthesis work of the first discs that was the soundtrack of Amélie Poulain, is between the two parts of this album the least intense, and not without surprise.
There is no lack of more spot on, of course: the sweet and sour “ninnog”, the rarefied “Rathlin from a distance” and the placid “Fastnet”, perhaps the best successful among these compositions. None of these episodes, however, seems to be able to keep up with the many lucky movements that Tiersen has written in many years of prolific activity. The Girotondi first plumbei then rapppaPcified of “Nordragorta “and the chasing of notes of” Bigton “are numbers well known to the public of the composer Breton, for better or for worse.
On the opposite side, “The Liquid Hour” redeems himself with a sample of heterogeneous and in some ways new solutions for Yann Tiersen: think of the instrumental, opera growth in its essentiality, of “stourm”, before the digital sounds take the scene at the rhythm of Drum Machine and more or less palpable synth. “Ninnog at Sea” even refers to the beginning, with that sound of electric harpsichord that embroiders baroque plots on which post-modern visions are grafted.
In the Algida Techno of “Arne” the scene of Quinquis, the name of art behind which Emilie, the composer's wife, is definitively the scene. The electronic Rumodia of “The Liquid Hour” somehow condenses the various musical drives of Tiersen, turning off on notes that even the less attentive listener will not be able to recall the best known repertoire. “Dolores” closes the curtain between ambient, synthetic outposts and orchestral openings, designed an ending with a cinematographic impact, finally exciting.
13/04/2025
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
