Magical Yann Tiersen Sells Out CUK Kino Šiška for the Second Time! (2015)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Concert date: February 21, 2015
Attendance: 800
Ticket price: €23.00

The independent French musical artist Yann Tiersen rolled into the Slovenian capital on the back of his eighth studio album »Infinity« (2014), and it was a musical experience you’d be a fool to miss. He first played here, also at CUK Kino Šiška, four years ago. The renowned French musician, who got his big break when his pieces were picked as the soundtrack to the film Amelie, is already on the second leg of the new tour with »Infinity«. Joining him is Emilie Quinquis, who has worked with Yann on his artistic ventures for years and is also a superb photographer. Most recently, Emilie Quinquis lent her vocals to »Infinity« as well. The very same Emilie Quinquis also has her own material to brag about, performing under the artist name Tiny Feet. She got the opening 40 minutes almost exactly at nine in the evening! In that time Emilie presented her studio debut »Silent« (2014). This brave young woman handled every role in building the soundscape, all on her own. Emilie, a true little D.I.Y. sorceress, switched between bass and guitar, layering in programmed drum samples and other sound loops tied to a musical experiment in »weirdness«, twisting and bending the sound with her knobs. She memorized and looped every line she played and topped it all off with her own vocals, which often worked as an extra instrument as Emilie gave herself over to free vocal improvisation. A cold, dark, melancholic and even extraterrestrial-cerebral experience, hypnotic through the repetitive loops of its lead motifs, especially thanks to the uniform rhythmic backbone, it made for a perfectly fitting warm-up before stepping into the musical world of Yann Tiersen.

Half an hour later, at five past ten in the evening, Yann Tiersen walked onto the stage with his crew of backing musicians. At first he’s alone on stage. Keeping company with muted red spotlights and flickering white stage bulbs, he sits down at the keyboards, but the other musicians soon join him in building the scenery. Tiersen and the crew mostly played material from the new album »Infinity«, but he also wove some older pieces into the repertoire, there was even a little room for a »tribute« to the film Amelie, and in the second half Tiersen set about reviving works from recent history that Martin Zeichnete left behind in the days of the German Democratic Republic, but more on that a bit later. Already in the first few numbers the band of musicians was roaming from one end of the generously packed stage to the other, taking up positions at various instruments and devices. Tiersen showed up right from the start as vocalist, keyboardist, percussionist, acoustic and electric guitarist, and the crowd was properly jolted awake for the first time by his harmonica intro in La Dispute. Later on, of course, his violin spiced up the show too.

The album “Infinity”, recorded partly in Brittany and partly in Iceland, is a weave of delicately spun veils of minimally shaped sonic structures that fit together so well they form a perfect symbiotic whole. Whether the band builds the scenery on stage with vocal harmonies alone, or layers harmony upon harmony in layer after layer, with digital and analog sound structures reaching out to each other in an astonishingly conciliatory way. Tiersen repeatedly turned to old-school analog sound modules, and the range of keyboards above the electric piano even added the occasional harpsichord sound, but everything was subordinated to a single goal: to deliver the musical message with deep feeling and great sensitivity, and to share it as authentically as possible with the audience. Tiersen and the crew pulled it off with remarkable tightness, and the crowd was eating out of the musicians’ hands. CUK Kino Šiška was completely sold out once again, and a lot of visitors from neighboring Italy had found their way to the venue.

Since Tiersen has moved in alternative rock circles, you can pick that up in his music too, which is otherwise remarkably accessible and highly musical. The weave of rhythmic structures takes over, or tries to sensitively follow, the organic sounds of nature, which fits especially well with the spirit of the new album, recorded in the tundra of a volcanic island in the middle of the northern sea. The repetitive forms, often decorated with elements of folk music, also work in loops in a proto-post-rock way.

In the second part of the show Tiersen also unraveled the mystery behind Martin Zeichnete’s works, collectively labeled »Kosmischer Laufer«. The story goes like this: Zeichnete, as a citizen of East Germany, back in the mid-seventies, in the days when Trabants and Wartburgs were racing around the Eastern Bloc, secretly listened to Western European radio frequencies. Under the heavy influence of German krautrock pioneers, especially Kraftwerk, NEU! and Harmonia, Zeichnete developed his own music too. Zeichnete wasn’t innovative, but he was a good »copyist« of the originals, so it’s hard to call him a musical visionary. His works were meant for the drilling and training of athletes representing East Germany, and the pieces Martin created are themed to individual sports of the Olympic Games. While training, athletes were supposedly meant to enjoy music tailored primarily to the sport they represent. The whole thing suits Tiersen down to the ground and blends perfectly with the elemental starting points of how he perceives information and transforms it into a musical message. Tiersen is, after all, a superb tightrope walker between the organic and the synthetic. Evidently there’s also a little piece of the avant-garde creative pioneering of his French compatriot Jean Michel Jarre living inside Tiersen, especially from the days of the revolution of his albums »Oxygene« and »Equinoxe«. Hypnosis and a blast-off into a parallel world, where switching off the rational mind is a must. The crowd was visibly enjoying itself, basking in the caress of the »intergalactic« sounds.

A Yann Tiersen concert is a blend of exceptional softness and gentle sounds, woven into a fascinatingly orderly musical body where everything serves the creation of a hypnotic atmosphere that frees the spirit and, as a result, expands consciousness. All these minimalist tricks of endlessly layering instruments, sound-modulation gear and vocal harmonies mark Yann Tiersen as a unique, one-of-a-kind musical painter and acrobat. With all his modesty and down-to-earth warmth, which the crowd instantly identifies with, he enchants the listener and carries them off into a parallel musical world where time and space vanish and only boundlessness remains. Infinity. A concert experience of pure artistic brilliance.