Woodkid
Iron

I have never played Assassin's Creed. I admit it with a bit of remorse even though I'm a newbie to the "new" consoles, yet while browsing YouTube I happened to come across the E3 trailer for the newly released chapter: Revelations. Curiously, the author of the piece, "Iron", which serves as the soundtrack to those intense three minutes, is also the director of the "Teenage Dream" video by Katy Perry.

Yoann Lemoine is a versatile young Frenchman, directing music videos also for Moby, Taylor Swift, and even a short film for an AIDS awareness campaign. And naturally, he's the one directing the video for his "Iron", the first single from the eponymous EP and currently his only release (though there is already talk of an album in the works). Perhaps Lemoine got tired of watching without touching, and he ventures into this project of his own, Woodkid, which stylistically has very little to do with his "assisted" works. Four tracks of raw indie, with little hints of electronics or special effects, almost without guitar.
In its simplicity, it is an intimately warm, direct music, and Yoann's voice is calm and deep. In "Iron" there is something tribal, epic, and solemnly martial in the rhythms and the organ of the title track; melancholically autumnal in the emotional tones of the fanfares of "Baltimore's Fireflies", in the strings and almost country piano of "Wasteland".

It would be the ideal soundtrack for a walk in Central Park in November, and who knows, maybe Yoann is considering it for the next video. In the meantime, given the debut, best wishes for Woodkid's career.