Artists
Dec 18, 2025
Yann Tiersen: From Meditation To Protest
In early 2025, Breton-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Yann Tiersen returned with Rathlin from a Distance/The Liquid Hour, a two-part LP designed to contrast nature’s stillness and environmental urgency. Recorded between his home studio on the remote island of Ushant and a sailing journey across the North Atlantic, the project reflects Tiersen’s deep connection to nature, travel and contemplation.
The first half, Rathlin from a Distance, is a suite of eight solo piano compositions, each named after a location visited on his 2023 sailing voyage. The minimalist pieces reveal Tiersen’s mastery of space, silence and subtle emotion. Meanwhile, its counterpart, The Liquid Hour, breaks that stillness open with a bold collection of immersive electronic explorations, channeling Tiersen’s call for social and ecological awakening.
Layering vintage synths, various drum machines and the rare Ondioline (on loan from Gotye’s Forgotten Futures project), the album fuses ambient soundscapes with propulsive rhythms and haunting vocals from Tiersen’s wife Émilie Quinquis. Meanwhile, Tiersen’s use of Ableton played a crucial role in shaping the album’s expansive and urgent flavor as another extension of his creative instincts.
Yann Tiersen live at sea off the coast of Svalbard
You turned your back on the piano as a child, yet here we are 40 years later and you’ve released a one-part piano LP. What changed?
I’ve done three albums now where the piano was involved and including the instrument has been a bit of a slow evolution, but juggling acoustic and electronic elements has always been the essence of my music. The compositions on Rathlin from a Distance are in opposition to the electronic experimentation of The Liquid Hour, and I deliberately wanted to create a big contrast between the two. The piano album is about introspection and The Liquid Hour is about activism and fight, but both aspects were equally important - the minimalism of the piano and the maximalist combination of acoustic and electronic instruments.
The video for Yann Tiersen’s “Ninnog”
Take us through your journey of pivoting between acoustic, electronic and sample-based productions?
I'm not classically trained, and like everybody who went to music school I just wanted to start making music. When I began my first group, I was actually playing guitar before discovering that my bandmates were more focused on something else, so I started to make my own music. My first synth was the Roland Juno-106 and soon after I got my first sampler, the Korg DSS-1. That was a really nice machine to use because it had great filters, but it was only when I got the Akai S1000 that I started to work a lot more with samples - not just sampling records, but myself. For me, sampling was liberating because I’ve always enjoyed using instruments as a sound source rather than an actual instrument. I wanted to make noises with them and use those noises to build tracks, so sampling’s always been at the root of whatever I'm doing.
Inside Eskal Studio – where Tiersen recorded his latest double album
Were you quick to adopt software sequencing?
At the beginning, I used Cubase on an Atari ST before switching to a combination of Ableton and Pro Tools, but there was an important shift on the album Skyline (2011) in collaboration with Efterklang where I totally relied on Ableton to mangle samples on the track “Vanishing Point”. Following that, I made the album Infinity, where I went back to my roots by making a record using lots of toy instruments that were transformed using Live. What I liked about using Ableton was that you could zoom into samples using granular synthesis and time stretch and modulate stuff using lots of LFOs and envelopes to create complex textures and pitches. Since then, the software has been really important to my process. For this double album, I switched to out of the box, but Ableton still played an important part alongside the Elektron Octatrack.
“Juggling acoustic and electronic elements has always been the essence of my music.”
In the past, you’ve implied that digital recording is cold compared to analogue. How have you worked around that issue?
I was using an Akai MG1212 multi-track recorder that used one-inch tapes that were almost in video format and then switched to ADAT recording, which was convenient but made my productions sound really cold. After that, I started to use tape and found that I liked the workflow when using analogue gear because it forces you to commit, and that’s really helpful on a creative level because it can be dangerous to endlessly transform something in the digital world. Now, when I mangle stuff on the computer using Ableton or the Octatrack, I’ll often print the recordings to tape.
Why did you release Rathlin from a Distance and The Liquid Hour as a double album rather than independently?
The root of the idea came from a sailing tour I did in 2023 where I was supposed to play an acoustic piano performance at a church, but the promoters also wanted me to play an electronic gig. That gave me the idea to create some sort of contrast between two elements that have always been present in my music. The story behind the individual albums is that Rathlin from a Distance is a kind of meditation, reflection or identity deconstruction about what it means to be at sea or in the middle of nature without any social pressures. I wanted to explore how you interact with other human beings once you’ve found yourself.
The Liquid Hour, meanwhile, was all about the European election, which was followed by the French election at a point when the far right was getting increasingly powerful. It's more of a protest album about finding the motivation to go out into the street and fight back, even though I never thought about making songs directly about that. For me, every album has this blurry image related to its meaning, and that becomes clearer throughout the process of creation as everything starts to build.
Were the two albums recorded simultaneously, and were some of the piano pieces used as a basis for compositions on The Liquid Hour?
I did the piano pieces first and then spent some time working on rough chord progressions using my vintage synth collection. I wanted to use them as a sample base and mangle them in Ableton, which left me with these really ambient, abstract versions and ideas. Then I went back to the studio and focused on creating rhythmic parts using four drum machines, the Erica Synths Perkons HD-01, a Roland TR-808, the Elektron Syntakt and a Roland TR-7, which I used to build tribal-sounding rhythmical sections.
Christopher Berg in Sweden also introduced me to a Bang & Olufsen tape machine from the ‘60s that is really good for distortion and building stereo tape delays. Alongside the Perkons, it helped to create the edginess and distortion that you hear on the album’s drum patterns. On top of that, because The Liquid Hour is based on activism, I wanted the music to sound similar to a brass marching band and was lucky to have an Ondioline in the studio. It’s modelled on an Ondes Martenot, but I also used a Mellotron to help create these weird electronic brass sounds.
The Ondioline is a very rare instrument. When did you first come across it?
It was lent to me by the Forgotten Futures project and had been in the studio for a long time. I was supposed to use it, but didn't get round to it because I was touring - then, just when I was on the verge of give it back, I started using it quite intensively and ended up buying it. It's an amazing electronic instrument that uses valves but was originally advertised as a way to mimic acoustic instruments. It’s actually way more creative than that – there’s lots of sliders that you can combine to create noises that are supposed to sound like a violin or trumpet, and if you mess with them you can create some pretty aggressive sounds.
You mentioned the Octatrack, which seems to have been quite a fundamental instrument on The Liquid Hour?
It's a genius piece of engineering and has been one of my favourite instruments for a long time now. You can do similar stuff with other equipment, but the Octatrack is so instant and immediate, which suits the way I work. It’s very user-friendly and allows me to find new ways to be creative and build sounds using shortcuts and sound manipulation based on various chance operations. The main thing is that I haven’t reached my comfort zone using it; otherwise I’d switch to something else.
Analog mixing desks and tape machine at Eskal studio
Your studio is jam-packed with hardware. As each project mutates, do you find it useful to limit yourself to a specific set of tools?
People have this preconception that my style has always changed a lot from project to project, but if you listen carefully it’s been a slow progression from the first album to the last. My work is full of contrast, but I really don’t think there’s been a big change within that. As I mentioned earlier, I’m motivated by finding ideas and programming textures and samples in the box before coming out of the computer and recording to tape. I have an MCI JH-16 two-inch, 16 track tape recorder and both a quarter-inch and 24-track Studer in Studio B to print my mixes. I love committing to those limitations because I'm not the kind of guy that enjoys working endlessly on an album – when it's finished, it's done and I’ll move on to something else.
Modular corner at Eskal
Are you routing hardware directly into Ableton?
Strangely, I'm not sequencing on Ableton and prefer to use it to modulate samples or focus on the granular aspect of various Max for Live devices. Most of the time, I was using the Octatrack’s sequencer and the drum machine sounds are all pattern-based, although I was mostly building sequences on the Perkons because the user interface is really easy to use. The great thing that I’m now using Ableton for is DJing – I use it to prepare my DJ sets and transform the tracks.
What can you tell us about the track “Arne”, which you kindly provided us with stems for?
It’s named after a Norwegian philosopher called Arne Naess who was a founder of the ecological movement. I met Stefan Harding – a professor of the Schumacher College in Devon who had an amazing relationship with Naess, and these guys have transformed my view of the world. The track is a tribute to Arne and like most of the tracks on the album my wife wrote the lyrics and performed vocals. The music has all the elements that we previously spoke about – I wanted to create this weird sort of electronic brass section and used synths like the Arp Odyssey, Juno-6, CS-70 and a Roland SH-101 with a drum machine and some added tape distortion. The track also has some Elektron Analog 4 sequences and we’ve provided all of the stems to show how it was built.
Yann Tiersen – “Arne”
I understand there's going to be an expanded edition of Rathlin from a Distance/The Liquid Hour?
I made a track called “Harmony” that we’ll be putting online pretty soon and Randall Dunn, who mixed the album, recorded some other versions of tracks. There’s also an unreleased track that I really like, but I can’t remember the name of it at the moment [laughs]. I’m not sure about the timeline because I think the idea of a release date is kind of old fashioned. When something’s ready, it's good to be able to just put it online.
Follow Yann Tiersen on Bandcamp and Instagram
Text and interview: Danny Turner
Photos courtesy of Aurélie Scouarnec / studio photos courtesy of Al Sundvall & Daniel Miller