Maxence Cyrin

Maxence Cyrin’s career is unusual for straddling electro and classical, piano and synthesised sound. After a conservatoire training he went on to explore the heavier ambience of the new wave before becoming one of the pioneers of the French electro scene. Around 1995 he returned to his roots and the last 20 years have seen the release of three albums of original compositions (The Fantasist, Nocturnes and Aurora), “neo-tonal” or “modern classical” in their approach. In this he belongs to a whole new generation of composers enjoying a dual musical career, with the added boost from streaming services. Alongside, he works as a composer and arranger in the fields of pop and film music and has also released three cover albums, Modern Rhapsodies and Novö Piano 1 and 2. His legendary cover of “Where Is My Mind?” by Pixies, with its hypnotic and melancholy vibe, has made him internationally known through its use on several US TV shows (including Mr. Robot and The Leftovers) and has been listened to more than 100 million times on various streaming platforms. Melancholy Island (Warner Classcis / 2022) THE FRENCH PIANIST IS BACK WITH A 7TH ALBUM COMPOSED OF NINE ORIGINAL TRACKS AND TWO COVERS, WHOSE TOUCHING MELODIES, ENRICHED WITH SUBTLE ELECTRONIC TONES, EVOKE THE THEMES OF TRAVEL, EXILE, CONTEMPLATION AND THE PASSAGE OF TIME. In Praise of Escape There’s a special vibe of freedom tinged with regret running through Maxence Cyrin’s new album, Melancholy Island. The title draws its inspiration from two works – “Éloge de la fuite” (In praise of Escape) by Henri Laborit and “La Possibilité d’un île” (The Possibility of an Island) by Michel Houellebecq – an essay and a novel whose discovery unleashed a powerful yearning for other places in the French composer’s imagination. “I love the idea of islands, evoking as they do a feeling of sanctuary”, he says. It’s an idea that’s present form the album’s opening track, the intensely luminous “Faro Bay”, whose essence the pianist sums up as “the idea of departure, of breaking free, of escape”, which is also a kind of “interior voyage” allowing you to “escape yourself and your own time”. With its 11 compositions variously inhabiting moods of gentle melancholy, Baudelairean spleen, stillness and languor as well as more luminous moments of meditation and contemplation, the album opens in the blazing light of Faro and southern Portugal, gradually clouding over and darkening before a brighter outlook returns at the end. Composed over a period of nearly two years, the tracks on this album can be understood as a kind of intimate journal or series of communiqués documenting the moods and feelings as well as the places, towns and landscapes the pianist experienced, from Burgundy to Montmartre (where he lives), by way of the coasts and islands of the Algarve region. For he has often felt the need to escape Paris to recharge his batteries by way of sun and sea and to regain his inspiration : a feeling he describes as a “longed-for sense of who-leness” and wich he gives expression to not only in “Faro Bay” but in several other tracks, for example “Rivages” (Coastlines) and “Voyage”. Seasons, Voyages and Dust Recorded on a Steinway Model D concert grand at the studios of the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France, the 11 compositions featured on this new and relatively short album (the second to be released by Warner Classics) attest to the pianist’s love of formal concision, firmly linked in his mind to the format and duration of the pop song. Each of the tracks is also produced and sculpted with a specific recording technique, combining the piano sound with effects and at times augmenting it with sober bass lines and synth pads. The hazy tones of “Soft Skin”, for example – a piece evoking the memory (or the regret) of past caresses – were achieved by means of a strip of felt placed over the piano strings. The same idea of sensual recollection recurs later in “Antica”, the most feminine of the album’s pieces, a subtly flowing composition in triple time, expressing, in the pianist’s words, “the ripple of unsated desire”. “Seasons” is a light and free-flowing evocation of the passing of time, an idea inspired by Cyrin’s encounter with the writer Maurice Pons, author of the cult novel Les Saisons (The Seasons, 1965). Sharing a similar theme, “As the Darkness Falls”, the most contemplative of the pieces, is a haunting depiction of dusk, that brief moment when day gives way to nightfall. More intense in mood, “Dust” is about time weighing down on us and our nearest and dearest, while the more relaxed “Voyage” brings a welcome feeling of clarity to the part of the album. The collection concludes with two covers, allowing Maxence Cyrin a return to his formative musical passions. First up is “Der Räuber und der Prinz” (The Robber and the Prince), a disquietingly perverse electropop ballad which came out in 1981 and was the biggest hit of D.A.F., the flagship band of the Neue Deutsche Welle or New German Wave. The final track is a toned-down version of “The Carnival Is Over” by Dead Can Dance, another influential band from the New Wave and Gothic scenes.