The fabulous destiny of Amelie

Today is going to be a bit different, not only because I'm posting a completely different style of music, but also because the guy I'm going to talk about is already relatively famous anyway. I actually remembered I had this watching the English version of the apprentice yesterday, as it was on when Syed got fired (about bleeding time too). But the fact is, if anyone is sitting at work right now and feels like putting on some music but without disturbing their co-workers, this is the kind of music you need. Yann Tiersen makes music everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, can enjoy. He too was at the Sziget festival. Unfortunately, the organisers in their infinite wisdom put him on the theatre stage which is next to a hill. Meaning only about 500 people were expected to come. Oh, how we laughed as thousands packed in to watch him (if you look carefully at the picture you can see people trying to watch him from the side). I myself only saw him by walking around the stage and looking through a gap in the side for while. There are now two things that make him famous: writing Original Soundtracks to films (first "le Fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulin", or "Amelie" for non-French speakers, and Goodbye Lenin) and now working with Shannon Wright. Haven't gotten round to listening to it yet, but I'm sure radioblog or pandora have it available in streaming, or you could of course just buy it.

Either way what I am going to be concentrating on today are two albums: "l'absente", which was one of his first pushes away from rock, and the soundtrack to Amelie. Like I said before, this is music everyone can have on. Some love it, others tolerate it, but noone I have met outright hates it. There are some beautiful piano pieces, achordeon and orchestral pieces in there. This is not only due to the fact that he knows how to play the aforementioned instruments and how to conduct an orchestra, but because of the actual music he writes. As we know, the best musician in the world will sound awful if his writing is pathetic. Not so at all with Tiersen, who seems to go back to Roma, Gypsy and old French music for inspiration. He rarely sings himself, but prefers to let others do it for him. For this track, "La Parade", I believe it is Lisa Germano singing. Good combination then - nice husky voice with him playing the piano in the background, and his band in the background, doing wierd stuff. Hooray! She worked with him on another track on the album, but I don't have he bandwidth to host it here.

Yann Tiersen & Lisa Germano - La Parade

The next track is the most famous of all - the soundtrack to the film, "la valse d'Amelie". One of the most relaxing tunes I know I think - other than the "Orchestral Version", which I'll give you too. It is, for lack of a better word, absolute genius, and if you haven't heard this, download it now! It'll get you out of a bad mood, it's a very uplifting song. My alarm is set as playing the orchestral version of this, I wake up to this. And I'm still not sick of the triangle I hear at the beginning of every morning (unlike The (International) Noise Conspiracy, my alarm's tune for a while, I don't shudder at the sound of it). It's simply beautiful. There's not much to rival it, being perfectly honest.

Yann Tiersen - La Valse d'Amelie
Yann Tiersen - La Valse d'Amelie (orchestral version)

"Comptine d'un autre ete: l'apres midi". Oh, I could listen to this all day, its almost a shame it's so short. The reasoning behind it, I presume, is that you can have too much of a good thing. As usual for the Amelie soundtrack, no singing, but it doesn't need any. It's one of my favourite tunes of all time, and was the track in the episode of "The Apprentice" yesterday. That program is the only TV I watch now, and since it's only on once a week I don't get too distracted from more important things. Anyway, I thought I'd finish on a good note, and this does the job damned well.

Yann Tiersen - Comptine D'un Autre Ete: L'Apres-midi

I seriously encourage you all the buy at least the soundtrack to the film, absolutely magnificent. A work of complete genius, and will hopefully be remembered for a long time. I'd love to hear this in 10 years somewhere, and so will you, I'd have thought.

That's all for today, tune in sometime in the near future for more!