Album review

Emilie Simon

La Marche de l'empereur

Paris 

26/08/2005 - 

Émilie Simon has ventured into the world of cinema for her second album, composing the soundtrack to Luc Jacquet's extraordinary feature-length documentary about Emperor penguins, La Marche de l'empereur. Émilie's soundtrack is as surprising as it is moving, with long instrumentals conjuring up visions of ice floes cracking in winter and vocal tracks charged with pure emotion.

Émilie Simon is not yet 27, but she possesses an artistic sensitivity and maturity which other musicians of her generation must envy. Growing up as the daughter of a musician (her mother) and a sound engineer (her father), Émilie went on to forge her own distinctive style. The young singer and composer has taken French-style electro into previously unexplored territory, concentrating on writing intelligent lyrics and integrating instruments normally used in classical and traditional music. In Émilie Simon's universe, it is not unusual to find the Celtic harp, flutes and violins cohabiting with the beats of a rhythm box.

Émilie's debut album proved to be an eclectic affair, featuring everything from guest vocals by the Irish singer Perry Blake to covers of songs by The Stooges. Interestingly enough, on several tracks the young French innovator handed over the studio controls to Markus Dravs (a German sound engineer famous for his work with Iceland's alternative pop diva Björk). This proved to be a winning mix, for Émilie Simon's eponymous album went on to carry off a coveted "Victoire de la Musique" in 2004.

Émilie had already started work on her second album when she was approached by French filmmaker Luc Jacquet, who asked her if she would be interested in composing a soundtrack for his upcoming documentary. "It's funny, when Luc contacted me, I was right in the middle of working on the song ‘Ice Girl’,” she says, “I was playing around with all these different sounds which could be used to represent the cold. I was experimenting with recording things like ice cubes being jiggled around in a glass and sampling the sound of footsteps trudging through the snow."

Call it providence or coincidence, but when Luc Jacquet and his producer Yves Darondeau got back from filming in the Antarctic, they thought about inviting Emilie to compose the soundtrack – without ever having heard Ice Girl! The soundtrack to La Marche de l'empereur, which Émilie worked on between February and November 2004, is not all glacial arrangements and sub-zero ambiences, however. Émilie's album shifts between radically different musical universes, veering from the tempestuous rock'n'roll of Songs of the Storm to the cool, crystalline perfection on All is White and The Frozen World. Émilie Simon's soundtrack works on content (the 'mise en abyme' of Jacquet's extraordinary images) as well as form (the representation of cold through sound).  

 
Rare instruments

One of the great strengths of the soundtrack to La Marche de l'empereur is the way in which Émilie uses electronic technology to produce clever stylistic effects. In one scene, she superposes several layers of her vocals as the penguins huddle round in a circle in their traditional mating ritual. In another scene, the haunting sound of a violin accompanies the demise of a sickly baby penguin, freezing to death at his father's feet while his mother goes off in search of food. Émilie's music manages to give Jacquet's film a whole variety of tone, atmosphere and colour without ever overstepping the mark and becoming invasive.

As for the question of how she went about composing the soundtrack, Émilie explains, "Luc sent me the rushes once they were finished without the sound or the voices of the actors. In fact, at the time I didn't even know he was thinking of using actors to do a voiceover and that gave me enormous freedom in thinking about what I wanted to do." Émilie exploited that creative freedom to the maximum, mixing her echoey vocals with samples of rare instruments such as the glass harmonica. "It's a totally amazing instrument," she enthuses, "It has these crystal discs which revolve around a central axis and produce a really interesting vibration." The innovative young composer also made interesting use of the Crystal Baschet (an instrument which produces a metallic sound when its glass rods are rubbed by the musician's wet fingers).

Émilie's own vocals reinforce the dreamlike atmosphere of the soundtrack, although she admits, "I wasn't too sure whether it would be a good idea to sing on the soundtrack or not. After all, Luc Jacquet had said he wanted something surprising, something that couldn't be pinned down." Émilie need not have worried. The soundtrack to La Marche de l'empereur certainly works on that level. And she has managed to capture the magical universe of the Emperor penguins, huddled up against one another to survive the bitter – 40° temperatures of the Antarctic wind. "I think there's a special kind of poetry in the birds' breath streaming out onto the air and the way they walk,” she says, “As I worked, I tried to imagine myself amongst them, what it would sound like to hear the ice cracking beneath my feet. I tried to project myself into their world, even though I've never set foot in the Antarctic in my life!"   

The Antarctic expedition appears to have been successful for all involved, including Émilie Simon who was so pleased with the soundtrack that she has decided to present it as her second album. Fans will also be pleased to learn that she will be performing extracts from the album live on a forthcoming tour.

Émilie Simon La Marche de l'empereur (Barclay/Universal) 2005

David  Glaser

Translation : Julie  Street