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ON THE COUCH WITH: Ensemble

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: Firstly, can you give us a bit of background of Ensemble and how the name came about?
Olivier: At first we were a duo... it was a duo with a british singer... ensemble means what it means in english but in France it means 'together' so Ensemble works in french and in english and means 'together' and so we can do global things together that's how I picked up the name and then when the singer left I had to reinvent Ensemble and how it could be a wider and bigger project.

Access All Areas.net.au: Your original name for the band was Hearing Is Our Concern, why the name change?
Olivier: Hearing Is Our Concern was more of a side project idea. The idea behind Ensemble was do disjointed pop where it was a different take on production, with Hearing Is Our Concern, that was basically a band without a singer... I only ever released one song and that was it.

Access All Areas.net.au: Your first album was 'Sketch Proposals' and although it wasn't released widely, it still managed to create ripples for you... how much did this album contribute to the current success of Ensemble?
Olivier: What happened that through Dave Collese at Fat Cats [records] I got in touch with Bjork and she was aware of what I was doing and so she started to send through more material through him [Dave]. That's where it all started.

Access All Areas.net.au: Your style of music is somewhat different to what you'd usually expect in a commercial market, how do you found audiences to have taken to Ensemble so far?
Olivier: Well its very hard to quantify it... I know theres people who enjoy it where as others are thrown off by the structure of the songs I think. Lots of people are buying the album but it's not an experimental or electronic record, it's not a pop album, it sits in the middle and I think that both parties are thrown off and not used to such mixes but to my eyes makes sense...

Access All Areas.net.au: What would you best describe your style of music as being?
Olivier: God... once I was trying to do find some sort of terminology to sum it up and the best I could come up with was 'op music' in reference to 'op art'. With op art you're trying to use a lot of physical and visual effects to carry what the artist wanted to bring. What I wanted to make was some music that’s phyiscal and uses a lot of rumble and melodic aspects as well so it’s tough to say but I call it op music... disjointed pop!

Access All Areas.net.au: The artwork for the album is simple, a heap of objects thrown in the air, what is this meant to represent?
Olivier: The thing is firstly the album booklet itself is 10 pages and it's a pretty big photo shoot of New York City that I did with my cousin. We shot 200 kilometres of traffic and went on top of a building in Brooklyn and threw everything in the air... the music contains elements lyrically and in the music itself of a very fine line, everything is very edgy, the voice is on the verge of being a little off. So the cover itself had to be something that was suspencional or have some sort of suspencinal element on the cover to give the same feeling of the end of the world, very edgy.

Access All Areas.net.au: You have collaborated with many other musicians with this album, what have you found that each collaborator has brought to the album?
Olivier: They brought their own opersonality! Its kind of a wierd process behind it... they improvised and gave me takes and I made the songs out of these. They gave me control over material they generated so they definately brought their own personalities to the album.

Access All Areas.net.au: When a fan goes to an Ensemble show what can they expect to see?
Olivier: Well we're touring with the Trios which has a female singer that sings with me and doubles my voice and plays guitar also a drummmer. We use some of the laptop for bakcing tracks for the techstrial background but it's a very light show but dynamic. Its definately more confrontational and definitely more dynamic and powerful I find.

Access All Areas.net.au: Any plans of bringing your show to Australia?
Olivier: We'd love to but we've got no idea and no plans to yet but I would love it.

Access All Areas.net.au: Whats next for Ensemble?
Olivier: Well Im going to work more with the actual singer of the band [Trio] who features on the EP on two songs so Ill be working with her a little bit but I am also back living in Montreal now and my french infulence is starting to come back in to the music so I want to do a more collaborative record but more from Montreal to elevate the talent pool here and try keep it more local.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Originally from Toulouse, France, but now resident in Montreal, Olivier created Ensemble as his musical persona back in 1998, as a platform to explore the meeting point between melodic noise and experimental pop. Initially working under the name Hearing Is Our Concern, Olivier was actually the first person the newly-founded FatCat label ever received a demo from. They stayed in touch for a while, but subsequently the name was changed to Ensemble, and a chance meeting with Aphex Twin's Rephlex Records in 2000 resulted in the release of his debut album, 'Sketch Proposals'. While not widely released, 'Sketch Proposals' gained a small, dedicated audience, and saw Olivier develop a reputation for the stunning quality of his programming and sound-work, and led to a number of writing collaborations with Bjork, along with several remixes of her work.

This collaborative spirit has continued with the album ‘Ensemble’, his latest, most fully-realised body of work to date - an album that fully refreshes and updates the Ensemble sound. After his original partner in Ensemble, Chanelle, left the project, Olivier re-thought Ensemble, deciding to find a number of occassional collaborators with which to expand the ensemble sound. Drawing upon artists whose work he admired, the album features collaborations from singers Chan Marshall, Lou Barlow (Sebadoh / Dinosaur Jr), Mileece, and Camille Claverie; with drummer Adam Pierce (Mice Parade / Múm / Dylan group / HiM); and orchestral arrangements by Johannes Malfatti, performed by the Babelsberg Film Orchestra in Germany.

Oliver, fan of her work as Cat Power met Chan briefly in Paris, and following further conversations via e-mail and filesharing, went to Cabbagetown, Atlanta for 3 days to record with her in May 2004. The resulting track – lifted as a single - is a delicate fusion of symphonic, wall-of-sound production, and intimate folk-pop vocals. As a teenager, Olivier was a fan of the early Sebadoh records. Finding his site on the internet, he contacted Lou Barlow and sent him 'One Kind Two Minds'. They exchanged CDs back and forth and when Lou came to Toulouse in May 2005 for a gig he spent the night finalising the song with Olivier. Mileece is a long-time collaborator, whom Olivier met while studying sonic arts in London. Two tracks, "All We Leave Behind" and the stirring opener, "Summerstorm" were recorded at the 'beauftiful and decrepit' farm she lives on in Dordogne. As founder of the Bubblecore label (now running FatCat USA), Adam Pierce was actually the first person to release Olivier’s music, putting a 'Hearing Is Our Concern' tracks on a Bubblecore sampler in 1997. Here, Adam returns the favour laying down drum tracks which he then sent back on DAT. Olivier then re-sequenced some of the material he played and layered these takes.

"A real Piano genius" according to Olivier, Johannes Malfatti was someone Olivier met whilst living in London. The work he did here was actually his first ever orchestral work. Johannes put together the arrangements in Berlin, with the Babelsberg Film Orchestra and then sent Olivier the recordings. Olivier then altered parts and mixed all these layers together. At the end of all these various recording sessions he was left with at least 70 sound layers to play with on each song! He went to Berlin to meet with Johannes again and mix the album with him during 2 weeks (working 15 hours a day).

The result is this stunning and beautiful album - a labour of love that coheres into something far greater than the sum of its parts. A high-class, organic integration of the electronic and acoustic, it floats free in its own luscious world, and sounds like little else around right now. Ensemble 'Ensemble' is released September 23rd thru FatCat/Inertia

XLR8R "Nothing is more cathartic than hearing Cat Power's Chan Marshall pouring her soul out, over Oliver Alary's moody single, 'Disown Delete.' As Ensemble, Alary has crossed the atmospheric folk threshold with some bittersweet love songs that will stick to your heart stronger than a lifetime of fast food. This debut may be the start of something really, really big."

URB – "Olivier Alary, the man behind the Ensemble mask has come out of the ether with his first major work for five years. It is a soaring, breathy, majestic affair. Alary has produced a seriously composed, ornately detailed work of modern-pop-music-studio-craft that heralds to lusher movements in popular music such as early 4AD and Creation records. Lovely"

www.ensemble-home.com

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