He also comes across as a man very much wary of the world around him, of his fortunes (and in some cases misfortunes), and of his forever growing audience. "I think it's because of the internet. You know, Youtube and all that sort of stuff." If he at first seems somewhat reserved, it's not all that long before he's jovially recounting tales of jaunts down to Minehead for various editions of All Tomorrow's Parties. However he's not overtly keen on doing the promotional rounds it seems: "we're now more free to drift away from traditional methods of promoting an album, from things like newspaper, radio, TV, which is good." And so here we find ourselves, recording tangled, contorted voices on an iPhone for an online interview in a beer garden on a digit-numbing, blood-chilling October afternoon.
One particular labelling that's known to get Tiersen's blood boiling (or at least simmering) is the description of him as an outright composer. When quizzed on the common misconception, he barks firmly: "I'm not!", the words seeping out from a smirk mistaken for a smile. "I'm happy with what we are doing so it's not all that frustrating. And obviously there are more and more people at the gigs thus there are positives to be drawn from it. When I was writing my first album right at the end of the '80s/ the beginning of the '90s, I was just messing around with acoustic stuff, trying to make 'funny' rock music but with a lot of rhythm and strange elements. For instance I've always found the accordion to be the most ridiculous instrument on earth so that made me want to use it. I just thought: 'Why not?'" Jarre too has often been mistaken for a composer, albeit of somewhat more synthetic symphonies thus Tiersen finds himself in good company under the banner of media-girded fallacy. He continues: "I'm not paying too much attention to promotion and press so people can brand me whatever they want really", his frustration at the label and indeed at the question itself barely concealed. "When Amélie came out it was so easy for people to label me as a 'soundtrack composer', which is completely wrong. I never did the soundtrack! So suddenly having passed through indie-type stuff, fiddling around with strange instruments, my profile became quite clear, if clearly incorrect. And that was as this 'soundtrack composer'. I didn't know why."
His latest work, Skyline, is questionably his most experimental and perhaps esoteric to date, although it may well also be his strongest and most confrontational, and this could potentially be accredited to his bemusement at the confusion and misconstructions of his "profile". "When I was writing Les Retrouvailles, I just decided that I wanted to put on a rock show. It was the first record to be released after Amélie came out so it was quite exciting in a way as we were then playing in front of people expecting something really orchestral! Half of the venue left. Which is good, it's fine", this final thought tinged with a touch of pique.
An inextricable element of this "profile" is of course his heritage. Despite having Belgian and Norwegian blood coursing through his veins, Tiersen is quintessentially French, and wondrously so. However when questioned on the country, his feelings towards it are evidently conflicting: "I'm from Brittany" he declares staunchly as if the province had never been incorporated into the country just beyond la Manche. He then goes on to voice a potential reasoning for this desire to distance himself from France and, particularly, French culture: "there are some differences in the reaction we receive in different countries but globally, it's kind of the same mood towards us. Apart from in French-speaking countries actually. Strangely. The worst places for us to play are France, and then Québec." When asked to meditate on any conceivable reasoning for this, Tiersen's look is equal parts perplexed and vexed: "I think it's like a spell or something. It seems as though as soon as a French artist goes international, suddenly there is a big misunderstanding and there's then a problem with them, and I think it's the same with M83. Regardless of how critically acclaimed and well received he may be, I remember him recently playing in front of about fifty people in France, which is really fucking strange. Sometimes I think they just don't get it. I think it's down to the French culture more than anything; it's just not a very musical country, and there is no rock culture." His issues with la patrie and its ways of digesting its own musical produce unfortunately don't end there either: "I think it's because of this stupid fucking French protectionism, things like having quotas on the radio for crap music just because it's sung in French. It killed every band in France, but now things are starting up again with bands like Phoenix, M83, GaBlé. There are a lot of good bands, but they just don't sing in French."
Skyline strikes a beautiful balance between the instrumental and orchestral; the sampled and the sung, although all lyrics remain in English. "French is a beautiful language, but it's too complex and self-analytical for lyrics. I remember reading a quote from Aristotle in a hotel in Sofia that was written in English, German, and Bulgarian. It was three lines long and yet the French translation was seven, and said the exact same thing. It's almost impossible to write songs in French for this reason." The lyrics contained within Skyline are ambiguous throughout, and are often unintelligible, and Tiersen affirms: "lyrically I enjoy working with small sentences, a few lines here and there. I think Kraftwerk were great lyricists. They say a lot, while remaining minimal. Their lyrics are sometimes stupid, but it's abstract and nonsensical while purveying a great deal. Radioactivity is great."
"I really don't view music itself as a language though; it doesn't say anything until you put lyrics on it. But I like them to be open to interpretation. Of course there are specific subjects and themes I try to express, but it's pointless to explain these explicitly. I prefer my work to remain open." For anyone to have ever stuck a Yann Tiersen record on (and presumably subsequently stuck it on repeat) it would seem as though his arrangements are at the forefront of his thinking and indeed, "the music always comes first" in the songwriting process. Yet when questioned on yet another media labelling, that of Tiersen as a 'multi-instrumentalist', he's equally irked: "I'm bored with that tagline too! When I started to make music, samplers were in vogue so I just started out sampling a lot of stuff and that gave me the idea that I could use any sound I wanted. Then I got bored of being sat in front of a machine all day long, so I decided to do everything on my own, to record through a mic rather than a sampler and that's the reason I've played a lot of instruments in my time." Unenthused he may be, but he's also humble in his own ability: "I'm really bad at drumming, and sometimes I end up playing the drums. Similarly, I'm terrible at the cello. If I had a cello here everybody would laugh because it would just sound horrible. Even if you don't know how to play an instrument, it's still worth trying to play it, to use it as a way to make sounds. Nothing more; nothing less."
However there's one particular instrument that's rushed to the front of the orchestra stalls both within the context of Skyline and the live show (shows he still gets "excited and scared" about), and that is the guitar, the instrument Tiersen would keep hold of were he forced to make a record with only one. "I like to compose, sorry, write on guitar. It's easy. Take the piano for instance: it's too complex. I'm really into synths and I think it's good to use them, but when coming up with the first idea or layer of a song, there are too many possibilities with the synthesiser. Guitars are simple; good pieces of wood to work with."
While to the external ear his rich oeuvres may sound complex, Tiersen graciously contends: "most of them are just two chords. Three maybe. For instance we're doing an acoustic version of Monuments for a radio show this afternoon, and it quite literally sounds like me just playing three chords over and over. On record I do add a lot of layers and textures though. Obviously."
It's for this reason that, as with all artists signed to Daniel Miller's deservedly vaunted Mute label, he appears to have wound up in the right place: "I'm really happy to be signed with Mute, primarily because I really love the bands that are on the label. I'm not the kind of guy that's desperately trying to piece together the perfect album" and although it's unthought of for Miller to demand such nonpareil, it seems he may well have finally, inadvertently, constructed an album bordering on the ideal.
Yann Tiersen's seventh studio LP, Skyline, is out now.
