NEW ALBUM FROM YANN TIERSEN: KERBER
Kerber, Yann Tiersen’s new forthcoming album, marks a new chapter in the Breton artist’s work, one that begins with his most overtly electronic material to date. True to Tiersen’s nuanced and subtle approach, this isn’t a U-turn-like thumping piece of dance music, but instead a beautifully textured, highly immersive and thoughtfully constructed electronic world to step inside of.
It is both an evolution of what has come before as well as a new space to explore. On the new album, the piano is the source, but electronics are the environment that they exist within. Tiersen explains, “You may get this intuitive thinking of, ‘oh it’s piano stuff,’ but actually it’s not. I worked on piano tracks to begin with but that’s not the core of it, they are not important. The context is the most important thing – the piano was a precursor to create something for the electronics to work around.”
Working in The Eskal, the studio he built on Ushant (the island where he lives, located 30 kilometers off the West coast of Brittany in the Celtic Sea), Tiersen’s process for the album’s recording was particularly involved. After spending the spring writing the piano parts, he went on to spend that summer meticulously creating a sample bank for the Elektron Octatrack using these parts as inspiration, following the chord progressions, playing them on instruments such as the Ondes Martenot, mellotron, and harpsichord.
These were then subsequently transformed, reshaped, and processed. What then followed, with producer Gareth Jones (Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten), was three weeks of working with electronics, sampling, re-sampling, and processing sounds to create an engulfing soundscape where the tender tones of piano keys merge with gently pulsing electronics and an intense ambient milieu.
Yann Tiersen’s new album will be released on August 27th, 2021. Click here to pre-order the album.
Kerber Tracklisting
- Kerlann
- Ar Maner Kozh
- Kerdrall
- Ker Yegu
- Ker al Loch
- Kerber
- Poull Bojer
Watch the Video For “Poull Bojer” Here:
Watch the Video For “Ker al Loch” Here: