On a June evening, in the intimacy of an apartment in Bordeaux, Yann Tambour revealed to a hypnotised crowd the timeless compositions of his new solo project, THEE, STRANDED HORSE. Several weeks before this date we'd repeatedly heard these tense strings (kora, guitar), this either low or nasal voice, this sketch where silences talk so much. We just felt like going with the infinite grace of these melodies, yet still not knowing it would go this far.
Yann Tambour appears on the French musical landsape around the year 2000 with a first instrumental 7" (Active Suspension 2000), followed by an eponymous album with his project ENCRE (Clapping Music 2001) : a singular and intransigent universe, dark and often intimate, combining samples, electro-acoustic instruments, guitar (acoustic and electric) and whispered vocals.
In 2004 is released the second opus by ENCRE (" Flux ") then an EP (" Marbres ") of which track 'Toumani Diabaté', in tribute to one of the masters of kora, namely writer of the sumptuous "New Ancient String" recorded as a duo with Ballaké Sissoko (Rykodisc, 1999): a first turning point in his compositions, announcing future project THEE, STRANDED HORSE.
In hardly two years, Yann Encre has made the kora his own, in a untraditional way, to produce a fully luminous folk music at times recalling the " finger-picking " by Mississippi John Hurt. With a both a warm and dark voice, Yann Tambour delivers crystalline arpeggios while his strings intertwining paints a sweet nostalgia enriched by a genuine melodic journey. (Africultures.com, June 2006, extracts).
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