Excerpts, the gorgeous new album from Ensemble (aka French-born Montreal resident Olivier Alary) will be released on FatCat Records on January 25, 2011.

The long-awaited follow-up to his 2005 self-titled effort, Excerpts – the latest from Montreal-based Olivier Alary’s Ensemble - gorgeously occupies the middle ground between lush orchestration, absorbing pop, guitar-indie, experimental sonics and beyond. Though Excerpts offers no obvious or straightforward reference points, it is an album full of maturity, sophistication and romance, intricately and timelessly constructed.

Reference points range from Matthew Herbert’s sublime eccentricity, Yann Tiersen’s gentle nods to chanson française, or even the finale of “A Day In The Life” from Sgt. Pepper in its dense, unconventional take on pop music – but behind Alary’s musical charms is an overarching, unique personality that interweaves wide-ranging musical cultures and influences.

A major theme of Excerpts is the interplay of real and fictional memories, the capacity of imagination to fill in spaces - as Alary writes, the memory of "weddings I’ve never attended, kisses with someone I’ve never met, childhood landscapes that I only saw on screen, faces of friends I’ve never had.” Alary's
illustration of a sense of fictional nostalgia can be felt across the album. It is at once enlightening, dizzying, tragic and beautiful.

In 2006, Ensemble released his masterful self-titled album (featuring collaborations with Lou Barlow and Cat Power) also on FatCat. Alary co-wrote tracks with Bjork for her album Medulla, and contributed several remixes to Bjork singles, and has composed music for several exhibitions at the V&A museum; contributed to an audio-video installation by Doug Aitken at the Centre Georges Pompidou and at the MACBA in Barcelona; and received an honorary mention at the Ars Electronica Festival. Since 2007, Alary has provided soundtrack for several feature-length films and documentaries, some of which have received prestigious awards and screenings in Europe, the US and China. His film work includes the score for the 2008 film The Last Train Home, directed by Lixin Fan, which was screened at Sundance.

Ensemble - "Thing I Forget"


TRACKLIST:
1. Things I Forget
2. Les saisons viennent
3. En attendant l'orage
4. November 22nd
5. Mirages
6. Excerpts
7. Valse des Objets Trouvés
8. Imprints
9. Envies d'Avalanches
10. Before Night