Why Émilie Tiersen Sang in Breton for Her Debut As Quinquis

Photo Credit: Richard Dumas

On her debut album as Quinquis, Èmilie Tiersen, who previously recorded under the artist name Tiny Feet, chose to sing in Breton, the historic, and endangered, language of Brittany. Seim, out on May 20 via Mute, is a Breton word that means sap.

“It’s way closer to Welsh than to French,” says Tiersen of Breton, which is part of the Celtic language family. Although Tiersen herself was raised in Brittany, she didn’t speak the language while growing up. “My mother did, but she was forced to speak in French when she was at school,” she says. 

Tiersen’s grandmother also spoke Breton and inspired the singer to learn the language. “My grandmother had Alzheimer’s,” she explains. “She had forgotten, step by step, everything that she had learned, so she forgot French. She started speaking only in Breton because it was her mother tongue.”

Once this happened, there was a language barrier between grandmother and granddaughter. “I was really close to her and I just couldn’t communicate with her,” recalls Tiersen, who was by her grandmother’s side when she passed in 2011. “I think at that moment I realized that I really needed to learn Breton language.” Tiersen dedicated several months to studying in an intensive language course. Now, she has passed that knowledge on to the next generation. “My little boy is a Breton native speaker,” she says. 

When we connect by Zoom for this interview, Tiersen is in a studio not far from her home on Ushant Island. This is the space where she works on songs before heading to the recording studio that she and her husband, Yann Tiersen, built on the small island at the south end of the English Channel, off the coast of Brittany. Tiersen has lived on Ushant Island for close to a decade, but it’s only recently that she realized the impact it has had on her music. 

In fact, Tiersen says, two years ago, she would have said that Ushant Island did not influence her musically. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, led to a revelation. “During those two years, I realized how deeply linked to here, to this rock, I was, and how the community could really nourish my work,” she says. “On my album, it’s really full of stories about people from the island and full of emotions that I have shared with people here, or not far from here, in western Brittany, where I’m from. I really feel that the sea and the torment of the weather tells me something every day.” Without realizing it, Tiersen says, this would all become a part of her work. 

Amongst Ushant Island’s characteristic features is tumultuous winter weather, with weeks so windy that there is “no semblance of silence” in the area, something Tiersen says can be quite intense. “Nature is powerful here,” she says. “The connection between people and nature is super deep and the community here is a really nice community.”

Tiersen began work on Seim while on tour with her husband, shortly after their son’s birth. “I was following him on tour so that he could see our son,” she explains. She also brought her computer along for the trip and made a plan to work on one musical idea in every tour stop. While she worked on the initial ideas, Tiersen imagined a character telling stories in each of the cities she visited. The tracks developed from there, but would go through several iterations before reaching their final form. “Everything was done by computer. I destroyed everything,” she says of the initial drafts.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Tiersen went back and remade the songs using an electric guitar and acoustic instruments. “I brought all those ideas into the room, where I am at the moment, and I tried to reshape them and go further into these ideas,” she says. “I kept some. I left some.”

After that— “by the end of the first lockdown,” Tiersen notes— she began collaboration with Gareth Jones, the producer and engineer known for his work with artists like Depeche Mode, Erasure and Interpol, while he was in England and she was on Ushant Island. “We really did co-writing on every single track with him using my acoustic elements and trying to link them to his synthesizers,” Tiersen explains. “It was like a dialog between us.”

The end result is a sublime and cohesive collection of songs that feel as in tune with nature as they are with the recording studio. 

Seim also includes collaborations with Ólavur Jákupsson (“Run”) and endurance cyclist Emily Chappell (“Netra Ken”), who lend their vocals in Faroese and Welsh, respectively. The incorporation of these two languages is significant, as both have been revitalized by modern-day speakers and language-learners. “I think that both Welsh people and Faroese people are a good inspiration for Breton speakers,” Tiersen says. 

Writing lyrics in Breton was not without its challenges. “To find the musicality of the language took me a while,” Tiersen notes. Word choices, too, were difficult at times. “I didn’t just want to write basic lyrics, poor lyrics,” she says. “I wanted to try to use words that were beautiful and sometimes, maybe words that are not commonly used, just put them back somewhere.”

The challenge was worth the effort for a Breton speaker like herself to share the language. “Every single person will reach one person,” says Tiersen. That, she says, can help make interest in learning the language spread faster. In using Breton, Tiersen is also doing her part to help spark renewed interest in the language. “We all know teenagers that are able to speak English thanks to the English tracks that they’ve heard,” she says. “Here, the best way to have your kids learn English is to have them listen to rock music.”

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hackedepicciotto Renders Tumultuous Pandemic Year on The Silver Threshold

Photo Credit: Sven Marquardt

If there’s one song that truly encapsulates the frustration of life right now, it’s “Babel,” from hackedepicciotto’s latest album, The Silver Threshold. Over music that rises and falls with cinematic tension, Danielle de Picciotto tells the story of the Tower of Babel, of the construction of a building intended to reach heaven, of a God who splits their one language into many and of a people divided when they can no longer communicate. 

“All of our songs always deal a lot with our situation and the situation that we feel confronted with, in general, around us,” says de Picciotto, who is joined by Alexander Hacke, on a video call from the duo’s studio in Berlin. Since The Silver Threshold came together in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and a series of global upheavals that happened in 2020, that certainly played a part in the album’s evolution. 

“When we were writing it, I had the feeling for quite some time that people don’t seem to understand each other anymore,” de Picciotto explains. “As the pandemic progressed, that feeling got stronger and stronger. You had the feeling that you were talking to friends that you had known for your whole life and they just didn’t understand you anymore and you didn’t understand them.”

That situation reminded de Picciotto of the Tower of Babel story told in the book of Genesis (though there are parallels to the story throughout a variety of cultures). “I wasn’t raised religiously, but there were a couple of Bible stories that I always thought were interesting,” she says. “I very often have the feeling that we’re actually experiencing that which, in the Bible, was mentioned being in the very beginning.” She points out this is intended to be a contemporary commentary reflective of current global situations, asking the rhetorical question: “Do we realize that somehow, for some reason, we are in this state where we do not understand each other anymore?”

“That doesn’t mean enemies or people from different countries, but even your best friend,” she adds. “There’s something wrong in our communication and we have to figure that out again.”

When the pandemic hit, hackedepicciotto, as de Picciotto says, considered themselves “touring nomads,” though the couple had long been associated with Berlin. De Picciotto is a U.S. born multi-disciplinary artist who moved to Berlin in 1987 and co-founded the city’s infamous Love Parade. She’s also released a number of solo and collaborative albums, written multiple books, made several films and has had her art shown in galleries and museums in Europe and North America. Hacke was born in Berlin and was just a teenager when he joined Einstürzende Neubauten, who would go on to become legendary force in underground and experimental music. He’s also played with Crime and the City Solution and composed a number of film scores. 

The two have been collaborating on music together for 20 years now and, about a decade ago, they gave up their home and hit the road, mastering the ins-and-outs of checking gear onto planes as they played in various parts of the world. Their last album, The Current, was released in early 2020 and they had just begun a tour in support of that when the pandemic hit. Hacke recalls that he had planned to cancel the lease on their recording studio for that year, but had missed the deadline. It was “a very lucky coincidence,” he says. “Otherwise, if we hadn’t had that, we would have no place to hang out and work.” 

Their final pre-COVID gig was in Frankfurt. Back in Berlin, they caught up on sleep. “We weren’t jet-lagged for the first time in years,” jokes de Picciotto. They also gave virtual performances a chance, although it wasn’t really their thing. “We missed the interaction with the audience, so we didn’t go on doing that as long as we planned,” she says. 

“It is very different performing for an iPhone and a tripod than for people,” adds Hacke. 

Meanwhile, de Picciotto wrote another book and Hacke worked on film music. “We don’t participate in the Berlin nightlife as much as we used to anyway. We don’t go out drinking or anything like that, so we did not miss that,” says Hacke. “It was really a time to immerse yourself into things that you were only talking about doing in previous years.”

In the late summer of 2020, they started writing new material as hackedepicciotto. They also earned a grant to fund their work and were signed to Mute. “The stars were aligned in a good way,” says de Picciotto. 

Before they began recording at the end of 2020, they posed for a photo shoot with Sven Marquardt, an old friend of de Picciotto who is also well-known as the doorman at Berghain. “I always wanted him to take photos for our album, because I’ve done other shoots for him, but not of music,” says de Picciotto. While they don’t normally take press photos before recording the album, they did this time because of concerns of another lockdown. 

“It really influenced us,” says de Picciotto of the film shoot, which became the basis of the music video for “Kirchhain.” “He works with analog cameras and only works with daylight. In that way, his pictures have this incredible aura and that really helped us with our music.”

“Also, he projects this authority,” adds Hacke. “You cannot bullshit him. He looks straight through you and that’s what makes the pictures great, because you have to be yourself.”

Photo Credit: Sven Marquardt

The Silver Threshold is designed so that each song goes up a key in the scale, beginning with D. The music is as reflective of the tempestuousness of 2020 as the lyrics. Take “Babel” as an example. “We work with strategies to illustrate conflict, like rhythms counteracting to each other and stuff like that,” says Hacke. “It gives you a feeling of uneasiness or a feeling of [being] out-of-whack. Rhythmically, I like to do these things, stuff that makes you lose your balance or something.”

The album also includes hackedpicciotto’s first love song, “Evermore,” a duet that came as a result of the lockdown situation and sounds as if the couple are singing to each other while caught in the midst of downpour. “We had that feeling that this pandemic was a storm that came upon mankind and we were all standing in this storm,” says de Picciotto. “We felt that the most important thing during the storm was to keep in contact with your friends and loved ones… because everybody was so separated. It was us two and, during the whole time of the pandemic when lockdown was really heavy, we felt like it was us two standing in this tiny little nutshell, which was our studio, and the storm raging around us and the only thing that kept us alive in the storm was our love.”

With “Evermore,” they brought the connection that they share into the lyrics. Says Hacke, “This is the first time that we also actually speak to each other lyrically, rather than describing something or proclaiming something to the outside world.”

The Silver Threshold, and “Evermore” in particular, taps into a chemistry that has always been part of their collaboration as hackedepicciotto. “I think that what makes this project work so well is that we are so confident and we trust each other so much,” says Hacke, surmising that it’s this kind of honesty that appeals to fans. “It’s a different set up than a regular band in that way.”

Follow hackedepicciotto on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Ora The Molecule Wanders Far and Wide on Debut LP Human Safari

Photo Credit: Jonathan Vivaas Kise

Based in Oslo, Norway, 27-year-old Nora Schjelderup has spent the last 10 years collating ideas, travelling the US and Europe, and recording snippets of songs. Those precious fragments have come together as Human Safari, her debut album as Ora The Molecule, released July 23 via Mute Records.

It is a rainy morning in Oslo when Audiofemme catches up to Schjelderup. She is living in a cabin with her boyfriend and their dog Olive, a stray from Spain. “It’s pouring rain, but it’s been crazy hot the whole summer,” she says. “The hottest summer I’ve experienced in Norway, very strange.”

Though it is standard fare to talk about the weather, there is nothing really standard about Schjelderup or Ora The Molecule at all. In her world, and her lyrics, everything has life – the sky, the wind, the earth, the sun. This somewhat explains the band name. “It started off as Ora. I needed to be able to detach myself in a way. You can call it an alter ego or a concept that had more strength and power than my individuality,” Schjelderup explains. “The ‘Molecule’ came because I called my band a billion things, but I said to them, ‘You just need to fit together like mooolecules!’”

“Do you see the sky give you kisses and wash you clean?” sings Schjelderup on “Shadow Twin,” embodying the sentiment that nature – every molecule – is alive and sentient. But, like summer and sunny days, the promise of changing seasons and eventual thunder is ever present. To dismiss Human Safari as a tropical-scented, dance trip would be to miss its nuanced atmosphere, sonically and lyrically.

When she first formed the band in Los Angeles in 2015, Schjelderup was working for Warner Brothers as a songwriter and making money on the side as an Uber driver. “I had a biological father who was American, so I went there and got citizenship. Then I met some other musicians who encouraged me to make music,” she says. Until then, “I’d made music in my bedroom, but the American spirit is very different to the European in a way. They’re like, ‘go for it,’ really supportive. In Norway, we have musicians as well but people are much more focused on the classical way.”

She’d had guitar lessons as a kid, and given up on the violin and piano lessons her mother had enrolled her in. But her lack of formal training has forged an experimental attitude, and that sense of discovery and lack of inhibition on Human Safari is so inviting. It was recorded over years of travelling, none of it in a studio.

“There was something about being able to experiment on your own terms. I learned music production, everything I did, from YouTube. You can take your time. You can stop whenever you don’t understand something. There’s not pressure like at school,” she explains.

The layered harmonies that build like a summer rain of voices on “The Ball” reel you in with their loveliness. There’s a bouncy, minimal synth beat driving “Die To Be A Butterfly” and a breezy house vibe on “Shadow Twin.” The overall sensation is one of travelling, youthfulness, and joy. “I grew up listening to a lot of Suzanne Vega because my mum loves her so much. She has this very comforting way of singing that draws you in,” Schjelderup says, and the influence on melody, musicality and storytelling is evident. “The first time I heard Fleetwood Mac as a kid I started crying. It’s timeless, very melodic, but also musical.”

Schjelderup uses her own voice as an instrument in each of the songs, sometimes layered acapella-style, and sometimes in place of a piano or percussive instrument.

“This is funny,” she muses. “Most of the melodies made by my voice started off as the idea for an instrument, which comes from my lack of training. I’d go to rehearsal, and say, ‘I want the horns like this: la la la la.’ Then I’d hear it and get attached to the first, initial idea, the sound of the voice recording on my phone and think, ‘Maybe I’ll just keep the voice.’ My boyfriend jokes that it’s ridiculous. Especially on songs like ‘Silence,’ it’s just like ‘da da da da.’ I was inspired by non-talk, sounds with no talking, and language as a barrier. It was important to me to use the voice in a way that is universally understandable. You create boundaries if you limit yourself to English, or only Norwegian.”

Though the band lineup has changed over the years, and especially since COVID, there are current plans to assemble a solid band to work on the next album (yes, already underway) and to tour once restrictions allow.

“Right now it is Sju Smatanova – she’s a Slovakian drummer – and Jan Blumenthal is our German synth player who co-produced a lot of the album… but he’s not sure that he’s as committed as before. We’re in a changing process. We met in LA but now that everyone is in their home countries it’s difficult to rehearse and play across borders,” Schjelderup says. “We have a new keyboard player from Sweden, Lotta [Karlsson], and I met her at this gig in Oslo. I had to get a band together pretty fast and I went on this feminist Facebook group in Norway and asked ‘Who can play a gig in a week?’ and the first girl that wrote me, I called her up in the middle of the night and her voice was so enthusiastic, I didn’t even ask if she could play an instrument! It turned out amazing. I asked if she could play any horns and she brought a saxophone.”

Schjelderup left Los Angeles to tour as a techno DJ, and had planned to return to Norway to pursue music purely as a hobby. But fate stepped in when Blumenthal, who had been touring with Eliot Sumner’s band, met Schjelderup and heard her song “Creator.” He introduced her to his manager, who ultimately introduced her to the folks at Mute Records who would release Human Safari.

“We ended up moving to Spain to rehearse with the whole band, because it’s cheaper to live,” Schjelderup remembers. “I lived in Granada. We had that as a base for two years, until last year. We were living in a little village with only old people; we were the youngest in the whole village. All these pueblos, the villages, are emptying. They’re so happy when younger people come. I really miss that – they’re all farmers so they’d share their vegetables and we’d play music in the plaza for the old folks.”

The beautiful layers within Human Safari might deceive listeners into thinking it was a lush studio production, but in fact, it was largely DIY and so much the better for it. “It’s maybe surprising, but it’s a really simple recording setup: literally a computer, a midi keyboard and a good microphone. We could record anywhere,” Schjelderup says. “I would just sing and record throughout the whole journey. I was recording on friend’s sofas around Europe.” She says she awoke early one morning in London with the melody for “Helicopter” in her head, so she recorded it right away. “‘Sugar’ was made in the early morning too, just after we’d been out to a party,” she adds. “We were super hungover and didn’t want to get out of bed. The whole song was written like that, super fast. I prefer that type of working. I have anxieties with going into big studios.”

She is afraid that if the band has money, it will take the magic essence out of Ora The Molecule.

“Some of the songs are written in basements with no windows, just because we didn’t have money at all while doing this, like nothing,” she says. “We had to find cheaper solutions always, while travelling. I’m worried if money was to come into touring it would feel less personal. You wouldn’t meet as many people if you weren’t asking for favors, or if you had a nice hotel.”

It is hard to imagine that a nice hotel would change her relationship to music, nor her philosophy in general, influenced by seventeenth century philosopher Spinoza.

“There’s a sense of not trying to be judgmental of bad and good, more an observation of everything around, and a respect of everything. Like a molecule that doesn’t understand its own purpose, but it’s part of everything,” she says. “The way we structure society, it’s very functional and we look at every element alone. But you cannot separate elements from their natural habitat.”

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