Photo: John Fisher
Yann Tiersen has announced the release of a new album, the follow up to 2019’s Portrait. Entitled Kerber, it is reportedly his most electronic effort to date, indicating a further step in the direction taken in previous albums whilst also venturing into a new territory. On the upcoming album, and as the press release describes, “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.”
The French composer worked on the album in his studio The Eskal, an abandoned discotheque turned into studio, venue and community centre, in the island of Ushant where he lives. Kerber, as with previous albums, is steeped in the sense of place, taking its name from a chapel in a small village on the island, with each track linked to a place mapping out the immediate landscape that surrounds Ushant.
Kerber will see the light of day on August 27th through Mute and ahead of it, Tiersen will release a book of sheet music on July 20th, featuring the album’s seven pieces presented for Solo Piano, with preface by Tiersen.
‘Ker al Loch’, the first single to be let loose from the upcoming album, serves as a perfect taste for what’s to come. The single is offered with an accompanying video directed by Sam Wiehl, who had this to say about it:
“Using the abstracted geographical imagery created by Katy Ann Gilmore [the artist behind the album’s artwork] as a starting point, and further referencing the coast line of Ushant and the natural world, we created imagery (ranging from fantastical re-imagines of landscape, seas and atmospheric conditions to the processes in micro biology and chemical reaction) to capture the beauty and scale of Tiersen’s composition.”
Watch the video for ‘Ker al Loch’ below.