Olivier Alary

Olivier Alary, a French multi-instrumentalist and composer, crafts compositions of cinematic intricacy whether performing as Ensemble or solo. Toulouse is his birthplace in France. Following his architecture studies, he relocated to London during the closing years of the 1990s for electro-acoustic composition training at Middlesex University. Initially, his musical output appeared under the moniker Hearing Is Our Concern, with demo submissions reaching imprints such as FatCat. The project adopted the Ensemble designation in 1998, leading to the 2000 issuance of Sketch Proposals on Aphex Twin's Rephlex imprint. Björk took notice of this release, enlisting Alary for remixes drawn from Vespertine and Medúlla while also featuring him on the Medúlla cut "Desired Constellation." Chan Marshall, Lou Barlow, and Germany's Babelsberg Orchestra joined forces on the 2006 self-titled Ensemble album, enabling a fusion of folk-infused pop and orchestral elements. Further Ensemble material emerged as Excerpts in 2011, though soundtrack compositions increasingly occupied Alary from the latter part of the 2000s onward. These efforts encompass Yung Chang's documentary features Up the Yangtze from 2007 and China Heavyweight from 2012, alongside narrative works including Matias Meyer's Yo and Maxime Giroux's Felix and Meira, both from 2014. His inaugural solo effort, Fiction/Non-Fiction, gathered pieces from these cinematic projects, with the classical division of FatCat known as 130701 issuing it at the start of 2017.