It's a Long Way to Happiness

Description

A great admirer of Ravel, Bartók, Oasis and Tame Impala, a conservatory graduate, a connoisseur of electronic keyboards, and a drummer, the young pianist Alban Claudin has many strings to his bow. This talented young artist has composed music for documentaries and short films, collaborated with prestigious brands (Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Van Cleef & Arpels…), and discerning followers of the young French music scene have certainly noticed him alongside La Féline, Voyou, or Yelle, for whom he remixed "Je t'aime encore", and of course with Clara Luciani as musical director and keyboardist. Alban long worked from his improvised studio in his childhood home, writing many pieces for his preferred instrument, the piano, but also for orchestra, before deciding to consider making an album. The musician then focused on piano composition and experimented in the studio with different recording methods, searching for the sound that would make his music unique. "Even though it's only 300 years old, the piano has been exploited in every conceivable form, and it's very difficult to reinvent this instrument, to do something with it that hasn't been done before," explains Alban. Thus, stepping out of the shadows of others, he now presents, under his own name, *It's A Long Way To Happiness*, whose almost pop-like melodic immediacy reveals an inspired composer with a smiling melancholy, carried by a luminous interpretation, somewhere between Yann Tiersen and Erik Satie. Conceived as memorable tunes, Alban's compositions evoke, in their simplicity, the charm of childhood and its authentic and fragile nature, and their obvious magic awakens shared memories in the heart. "For me," he says, "melancholy is a form of well-digested nostalgia that makes you smile, as if yesterday's dramas were meant to transform into lightness and, ultimately, do us good."