Yuzima Interview

Earlier this month one of the most exciting new musicians from one of world’s most exciting cities released his new record; you can read my review of Yuzima’s Sound Opera: Project One here.

Yuzima

Now Yuzima has kindly taken some time to talk to me and answer a few questions about the Sound Opera project, pop music in general and its, as well as his, future.

Air Interview

This is probably the most showbiz thing I’ve ever done: meeting electropop greats Air at the French embassy to talk music and, above all, cinema. You should also check out this excellent review of their album/score Le Voyage dans la Lune here.

Back in 1902, cinema was still a relatively new concept. It was, after all, only seven years since Auguste and Louis Lumière had pioneered motion pictures with L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat: the moving image of a train pulling into a station which, apocryphally, sent cinema goers into a mass panic. Nevertheless, it was in 1902 that Georges Méliès first released Le Voyage dans la Lune and thus became arguably the first auteur to not only include then state-of-the-art special effects in one of his films, but also the pioneer of science fiction in the movies. The George Lucas of his day, Méliès has been inextricably associated with cinematic space exploration for 110 years and it could easily be argued that Air are his sonic counterparts.

Air

Originally released in both black & white and in colour, the prints of the film were painstakingly hand painted. Lost for years, the colour print was finally rediscovered in Spain in 1993 and, six years later, work began on restoring the badly damaged film reels. With a view to premiering the rescued version at the 2011 Cannes film festival, Fondation Groupama Gan and Fondation Technicolor, the two cinematic organisations working in film preservation, approached Air earlier this year with a view to producing a new soundtrack.

Read the full interview here.

Yann Tiersen Interview

I spoke to Yann Tiersen over the phone last year to talk about his new album Skyline. After circumventing his thick accent, a dodgy phone line and no recording equipment, the final piece ended up being far less in-depth than I’d hoped.

Yann Tiersen

The idea of the impatient and precocious European (read: French) avant garde artist is a cliché as old as the hipster itself; consigned primarily to lazy yet unfathomably successful western “satire”. It is an image I was ashamed to have at the forefront of my mind at the start of my conversation with Yann Tiersen about his upcoming album Skyline as, luddite that I am, I hastily scribbled his responses shorthand in my notebook whilst attempting to penetrate his thick Brittany accent over the phone.

Whilst this involuntary reaction was unfair, it is at least defensible, as the first impression of Tiersen is that he is someone who gets bored quickly and easily. In conversation he was thoughtful and erudite, giving considered answers to my questions; however he was keen to emphasise the evolution of his work over the years and his passion for progress. Still, the interview could have opened better…

Read the full interview here.

New Music: Lauren O’Connell

This is an article I’ve republished a thousand times already. Lauren O’Connell is a kind of alt-country-ish singer from that America they have now; she answered a bunch of my questions by e-mail last year.

Lauren O'Connell

In light of the current [2010] box office success of David Fincher’s latest critically lauded movie, now seems to be as apropos a time as any to discuss the merits of social network media; something whose link to the contemporary music world is nowhere near as tenuous as this glib opening gambit implies.

New Music: The Evil Beat

This is an interview I did with Aaron from The Evil Beat, a now sadly disbanded collective I saw a few times at uni.

The Evil Beat

Once upon a time, in my hazily-remembered days as a student in Lancaster, I took a girl I liked to see a local band I was vaguely familiar with, and whose music was refreshingly and markedly unique from the deluge of guitar-led four-piece student rock bands that are seemingly ubiquitous on every campus. That band was The Evil Beat, a band whose name is apposite for their bass-led, dark, murky sound (even more so when you consider that it was allegedly lifted from a porn website). Date music this is not.