Island

Description

An audiophile LP transfer for an immersive tribute to an isolated island off the coast of Brittany. Made famous for his score for Amélie (2001), the French composer settled on the island of Ouessant (Ouessant/Eusa), and this album is a musical tribute to his homeland, made up of ten pieces about ten specific places on the island. In 2016, Tiersen released a collection of pieces titled Eusa, which Jeroen van Veen combined with his 2021 collection, Kerber, named after a chapel on the island, to produce Island. The album was a CD bestseller for its contemplative atmosphere and beauty. Among the 10 tracks, some offer the perfect soundtrack for gazing during a long walk or looking out the window on a train journey. Others seem destined to serve as background music for studying or relaxing. The pieces sound at times dreamy and nostalgic, at times bittersweet, at times joyfully playful. With each song, your imagination can easily evoke a film scene: a breakup after a fight in a cozy café or a nature documentary showing two chicks opening their eyes for the very first time. This is not a collection about isolation; rather, it is an expression of awareness of your own surroundings and the place you occupy within them: a sonic encapsulation of the hyper-local. Tiersen links this approach to a night spent studying the stars — something he does himself. “You can look at things thousands of light-years away and connect your own existence to that truly cosmic element,” he says. “But you feel the same way about the things around you.” - The LP version of a successful CD release: “Island” by the successful composer Yann Tiersen. - The French composer Yann Tiersen (born 1970) is one of today’s most popular and successful film music composers. His soulful and melancholic music draws on folk music, French songs, musette waltzes, street music, but also on the minimalism of Satie, Glass and Nyman. - His international breakthrough came with the music for the French blockbuster “Amélie”. Later came “Goodbey, Lénine!” and others. - The composer’s two new albums, “Eusa” and “Kerber” are inspired by the small island of Ouessant, where he currently lives. Covering less than 16 square kilometers, it lies off the coast of Brittany in northwestern France and consists only of meadows and granite rocks. “Eusa” is the Breton name for Ouessant, “Kerber” is a small chapel on the island. Tiersen perfectly expresses the island’s isolation, its barren and wild landscape, but also its place in the vast universe when looking at space and its stars. - The Dutch pianist, pioneer and champion of minimalism Jeroen van Veen plays the piano in his inimitable way: focused, serene and hypnotic. A worthy successor to Van Veen’s successful Brilliant Classics recordings of piano music by Glass, Pärt, Yiruma and many others.