Photo: Léo Alestro

French musician, composer and arranger Jean-Claude Vannier is something of a restless creative soul with a very long and fascinating résumé. Over his six-decade wide-ranging career, he has worked on myriad film scores, released solo studio albums, collaborated with the likes of Beck, Sean Lennon and Mike Patton, and produced and arranged for everyone including Brigitte Fontaine, Françoise Hardy, Claude François, Johnny Hallyday and Astor Piazzolla, to name but a few. He is most known for his arranging and composing credits on Serge Gainsbourg’s cult record Histoire de Melody Nelson.

Jean-Claude Vannier et son orchestre de mandolines (Jean Claude Vannier and his mandolin orchestra) is Vannier’s latest venture, a gorgeous album created as the soundtrack to a non-existent silent film. The record was composed on mandolin and accordion and features mandolin virtuoso Vincent Beer-Demander and accordionist Grégory Daltin.

We’ll have to wait until February 14th for Jean-Claude Vannier et son orchestre de mandolines to be out through Ipecac but we can already hear the tender and heartfelt first single ‘Perdue dans la cité (Lost in the city)’.