2002: "Helium Sunset"
One thing is sure, when you’ve heared her second album, “Helium Sunset”, it gets more complicater to categorize singer/pianist An Pierlé. An Pierlé, born in Antwerp, but living and working in Gent, seems to have too much personality to withdraw in the role of a nice pianist, who strums cheerful on her piano or even lums into it, meanwhile whispering or yelling her sensitive artist moods. On her new record, she escapes in a miracle way from her own clichés: the uninhibited … and the youthful seriously of “Mud Stories” made way for a more mature and at the same time more subtle musical complexity with much more pop influences. As a result “Helium Sunset” will surprise friend and enemy.
According to reports, most of the 12 songs on “Helium Sunset” came into being on synthesizer and guitar and this during sunday afternoon sessions somewhere about the house of Pierlé & Gisen (life companion and gitarist/producer). The free moments during the two years continuing tour (1999-2001) were diligent made use of and systematically recorded on a simple walkman and only finished later on. Meanwhile they started to try a few things live, assisted by a cellist/bassist and a drummer. Pierlé & Gisen are known for the fact that they like to do things different then the rest. Last summer the two shut themselves up on the attic of a former labo near the station Gent-Dampoort, in the company of the equipment and the person of Karel De Backer (engineer/live mixer/producer of for instance Zita Swoon and FES, who accompanied them last time on “Mud Stories) and assistant engineer/live mixer Patrick Van Neck. After recording the basic tracks (song piano and guitar) systematically and according to the needs of each song guest musicians were invited like Thomas van Cottom (percussion), Thomas Klaas Delvaux (cello and bass), Diederik De Cock (drums), Joost Zweegers (bas), Peter De Bosschere (drums), Klaas Delvaux (cello and bass). We can also hear engineer Patrick De Neck on bass and drums and Karel De Backer on bass and timestretching interventions.
“We recorded everything quite ‘acoustic’, with much ‘real’ ritme, but each time each instrument seperately. We alse gave the musicians sometimes quite rare, specific tasks which handicapped them slightly; things like forcing a metal specialist to play a slow beat with brushes on a rickety jazz drumkit etc.” “… we also considered the voice more like a group instrument, and the result is, although quite accessible and even sometimes ‘sweet’, tonewise something bizar, of which we even don’t know by which we can compare it. We especially looked for tone colours and a specific atmosphere, and this is certainly in it.“
Those mysterious tones are certainly not lacking on this cd and “Helium Sunset” will certainly charm a lot of peoply with his warm atmosphere, his sensuel roundings, which show up well the subtly arranged melodies. It’s remarkable that on no occasion the obvious was stated. The opener ‘Sorry’ is already immediately a hit. It’s one of those soft ballads which are spread all over the album, where the sensitiveness is more integer and mature, where the piano gets more caressed then hit. The guitar is at the same time instrumental judge and sometimes psychedelic canapé. In the first single “As sudden tears fall’ is a stunning piece of Rhodes piano. On ‘Nobody’s Fault’, a duet with Koen Gisen, a flirtation with a kind of psychedelic country feeling. “Sister” unleashed a little storm; two cellos, guitar and piano are crossing swords with a Roxy Music, but then more 80’s pop manner. The quiet returns with the daydreaming “Kiss Me” where time stands still for a spirited piece of slowcore. “Helium Sunset’ is larded with the strangest accordion tones and percussion on ‘prepared’ piano. The light-footed lethargy becomes almost poisonous in “Medusa”, a song Nick Cave would certainly appreciate and “Once Again” could be a homage to Neil Young, Elvis and Nick Drake together. With “Sing Song Sally” the course changes via a self-willed variant on light-footed pop (the infectious Woehoewoehoewoehoewoehoe hoe hoe will certainly be succesful during the summer festivals). On “Leave Me There” we discover a swampy atmosphere which fades into a Smiths alike final, before ending with a nice, surprising “Walk” along snowy plains. The underlying ‘spooky’ atmosphere continues for a while on the extra ghost track “Here in the woods” , which reminds one of a possessed Walt Disney song…
While it would have been so simple and profitable to bring the recept of “Mud Stories” (more than 23000 sold records in Belgium & The Netherlands) again to the surface, An Pierlé has chosen to follow a new path together with Koen Gisen, where a melody is not always so obvious as you think. The mud stories made place for warm and exiting quicksand, full of universal stories, where irony is never far away. If a record could heal, this one would do it.
Helicopter / Wea
WMB 02/2002
1999-2002: "Mud Stories"
Theatrical musician who – seated on an ergonomic hassock and duelling with her piano – makes very exiting music, by turns energetic and collected, sweet and violent.
Born in 1974 as An Miel Mia Pierlé she already pronounced at a very young age that she would like to ‘act and sing and make music and dance and this preferably all together’. But she hated her classic piano education and at the age of seventeen she signed up at Studio Herman Teirlinck in Antwerp. In the third year of her education she made a soloprogram with own songs, on the piano.
After a few careful acts on smaller rockstages – especially to check if the combination Pierlé/piano also worked outside the protected environment of ‘the artschool’ – she tried her fortune and send a cassette to Humo’s Rock Rally, edition 1996. Her participation immediately gave her a place in the final. Despite presence of Arid and Novastar in that final, afterwards she seemed to appeal the most to one’s imagination. Her strong version of Tubeway Army & Gary Numan’s “Are friends electric” became a radiohit. The live recording also appeared on the british Gary Numan tribute “Random” (with work of Dave Clarke, The Orb, Moloko and Damon Albarn of Blur). Gary himself announced to be very impressed of Pierlé’s arrangement.
As a result there was a modest An Pierlé hype, but that didn’t force her to a quick exploit of this situation : ‘After the Rock rally I had to slown down a little bit: it took me by surprise, everyone said I was fantastic and suddenly everyone expected a lot of me… I was lucky. Some people now know my name and appreciate me. I’m getting the chance to develop myself… no one bothers anymore about local talent, you have to aim immediately for other countries. And then it has to be good. Music is a game, but a serious game: I want to keep doing this all my life and I rather make one good thing then ten complete worthless one’s”, she said in Knack.
A record didn’t follow immediately, but there was a tour with the roll play “Bernadetje” from Victoria who lasted for almost two years and a roll in the VTM serie “Moeder waarom leven wij”. But there was a serie of solo concerts in Belgium and The Netherlands (for instance “Gentse feesten”, “Lokerse feesten’, “Boterhammen In Het Park”, “Marktrock ‘98”, “Crossing Borders”, “Lowlands” and “Pukkelpop ‘98”, where she met soundengineer Mark De Bakker). A cooperation with Kloot Per W (In the belly) ended nowhere, a cooperation with Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung (DAAU) came on the track “Broken” on the cd “We need New Animals”.
Only in the beginning of 98 she signed a recordcontract at Warner Music Benelux. After some struggle to find the right producer – she choose to work with Karel De Bakker (soundengineer of for instance Zita Swoon, A Group …) the recordings of “Mud Stories” were made in the winter of 1998-1999 with an electrical Yahama CP-80 piano on the attic of a theatre room in Gent. During the spring of 1999 extra takes with the acoustic grand piano were added together with Jo Bogaert (known from Technotronic). And like the biography says it : “The debut, “Mud Stories”, glows with healt and offers an all-round amalgam of surprisingly various, mostly brand-new work. Everything in pure singer-songwriter tradition, with influences from Bach to John Cale to Dolly Parton and even Kim Wilde. An Pierlé uses there elegant ingredients: an impressive voice, sometimes an electric, then again an acoustic piano, here en there combined with mostly sober, but higly effectiv ‘arrangments’. Concluding that this is a ‘sweet record’ is a misconception: this ‘wild freshness’ hides now en then a stiff ‘distorted’ barb… Pierlé has clearly done what she likes and she’s proud of it!
Belgian Pop and Rock Archives
1999
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