Yann Tiersen - Kerber (LP) - White Vinyl

Kerber finds Yann Tiersen quietly rebuilding his piano from the inside out. Released on 27 August 2021 through Mute, it’s a record of repetition, decay and small movements that open into big spaces, the kind you only notice when the day goes still. Tiersen made it at home on the island of Ushant off the coast of Brittany, and you can feel the place in the grain of the sound. He’s long been associated with Amélie, but this sits miles from postcard whimsy. It’s patient, tactile and, in its own way, radical.

The title nods to a chapel on Ushant, and the track names slip into Breton place names too, grounding the album in the island’s map. But this isn’t a field recording project. Tiersen recorded piano motifs, then chopped, looped and processed them until the electronics carried as much weight as the felt and wood. He’s said this isn’t a piano album so much as an electronic one that happens to use the piano as a source. That’s exactly how it plays. Notes blur into pulses, harmonics swell like low tide, and rhythm comes not from a drum but from the mechanical heart of the instrument, sampled and set in motion.

Ar Maner Kozh sets the tone with a simple figure that gradually accumulates over a soft throb, like light gathering in a room. Ker al Loch pushes harder, its arpeggios shaped into a gentle engine that keeps tugging the ear forward. Ker Yegu feels more suspended, as if a phrase had been frozen mid-gesture and then turned in the sun. The closing title track, Kerber, lands somewhere near reverie, all soft focus and memory. None of this screams for attention. The scales are small. Yet when you pay attention, the detail is rich. You can hear the surfaces of the piano and the subtle variations in each loop, the human slightness that keeps the repetitions alive.

What’s striking is how little Tiersen relies on overt melody to hook you. He uses texture and pattern instead, building tension from micro shifts. It’s a compositional approach that lines up with the minimalism of EUSA, his 2016 set of solo piano pieces, but the sound world is more electronic, more sculpted. If you came for grand romantic themes, you might wonder where they’ve gone. Give it time. The romance is in the atmosphere, not the chorus.

Critics picked up on the shift. Reviews in places like Pitchfork and The Guardian noted how Kerber trades lyrical flourishes for a deeper focus on process and space, and they were right to. There’s a confidence in how little Tiersen feels the need to announce. He’s not chasing the old narratives. He’s building a new one from tiny parts, which suits an island record. You don’t get skyscrapers on rocks in the Atlantic. You get wind, stone, light and a steady rhythm of the sea. Kerber’s rhythms feel like that.

On vinyl the album lands beautifully. The dynamics are modest but clean, and the quiet passages breathe in ways that digital sometimes pinches. If you’re flicking through a Melbourne record store looking for something to soundtrack a late night or a slow morning, Kerber vinyl is the sort of sleeve you clock, take home and then live with. It’s also a tidy gateway if you want to buy Yann Tiersen records online and wonder where to start beyond the obvious soundtrack. Among Yann Tiersen albums on vinyl, this one rewards proper speakers and a patient listen, the kind that turns the room into another instrument. For anyone searching vinyl records Australia wide, it’s an easy recommendation.

There are little pleasures throughout. The way a phrase will stutter for a moment, then smooth out. How reverb is used sparingly so the room feels real, not glossed. The piano’s imperfections are embraced, and the electronics never muscle in front. Instead, they frame and stretch the notes, almost like long exposure photography. It makes sense that Tiersen later revisited this material live and in reworks, leaning even further into the electronics. The seeds are all here.

Kerber won’t convert listeners who need big melodic payoffs. But if the notion of repetition as revelation speaks to you, this is a gem. It’s one of those records that deepens with every play, as if each needle drop reveals another small corridor inside the same house. For fans who already rate Yann Tiersen vinyl on the shelf, it sits comfortably next to his earlier work while pointing to new ground. For newcomers, it shows there’s a whole world beyond the film associations. Small ideas, carefully tended, grown into something you can walk around in. That’s Kerber’s quiet magic.