Yann Tiersen is a long way from Hollywood - a yacht anchored off the Faroe Islands, to be precise.
The musician first came to the attention of the Anglophone world for his work on the soundtrack to the Oscar-nominated film Amelie, though it's not an association he relishes.
Not only did its accordion-heavy sound become an audio cue for France and Frenchness - Tiersen is a proud Breton - but the BAFTA-nominated collection is not, as he makes clear on his website, a good representation of his "otherworldly" music.
The reason he's anchored off the coast of the Faroes is that, along with wife Emilie - AKA Quinquis - the 53-year-old has embarked on a unique tour.
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Aboard their sailboat Ninnog - named after a medieval mother superior, who travelled from Wales to Brittany becoming a protector of women and a champion of sustainability and forestry - the two musicians are embarking on an environmentally-sustainable tour of the Celtic countries and the Faroes travelling only under the power of the wind.
As well as a show at the Liquid Room in Edinburgh on August 8 they'll bring their music to Lerwick, Bigton, the Isle of Rum and basically anywhere else there's a venue to play.
Tiersen explains: "The idea was to try and do it differently. I’ve always felt, especially since the lockdown, that it feels a bit wrong to go from big city to big city in buses, and I kind of had the feeling it was more for commercial reasons than about sharing music with people.
“I think it’s really important to take the time to do things, and changing cities every day I don’t think is right.
“I live on an island (Ushant in the English channel) so I see water as a link, a connection, not as a barrier between countries. I wanted to try and organise a sailing tour and for me it just made sense to go to the Celtic countries, and in the Faroes I have some really good friends who I’ve played with for 15 years.
"We’re travelling with our home, and the wind is something you can use for free so there’s less pressure financially as well.
“Of course there’s the maintenance of the boat, and the things we need on there, but we’ve got the freedom to improvise gigs as well as having ones with ticket sales, we just ask people ‘do you know a place where we can play?’.
“For instance, right now we’re in the Faroe Islands and on Saturday we played at a festival, which was amazing, but then we decided to do another gig in Torshavn on Wednesday in a bar.
“I really enjoy the freedom to just see what happens.
"I live on a small island, I have my studio there and it’s a venue too where we do gigs.
“I always think that gigs are more special in small places, you feel more of a connection.
“If you go to big cities and these big venues it’s more cold, it doesn’t mean that it’s not good and you don’t have a great night and share things with people but it’s not as unique as when you go to places where there aren’t as many gigs, that makes everything more special and it’s easier to connect with people because you’re closer to the audience.
“I’ve always been really keen to do that, I think there’s something wrong in always playing big cities – the only reason is the money and the amount of people.
“I love playing in other places, taking the time to play out in the countryside and in the Highlands - it’s more my culture.”
Of course, as well as offering a sense of freedom and being kind to the environment, touring by boat can present its own challenges.
Even in the summer months the seas around Scotland can be unforgiving, and the pair are reliant on the wind being in their favour.
Tiersen says: "We’ve been quite lucky – I’m touching wood right now!
“We were supposed to play on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides but there was a storm coming and we decided, unfortunately, not to stop and just to carry on.
“We had a rough night, it was about 35 knots for 12 hours, but then after that it was really good and we got the right wind to go to the Faroes.
“It was such a shame not to stop but we took the right decision.
“We’re planning to leave the Faroes for the Shetland Islands on Friday or maybe Thursday, but I think on Thursday the sea is to be quite rough.
"This is the first time we’ve done this so we’ve kind of been learning while doing it.
“I spent a lot of time working out the schedule, so we always try to have a good margin so we don’t have to take risks and have a big window to choose what we’re doing.
“For example, it was always planned that we’d spend a lot of time in the Faroes because it’s a place that can be tricky to get to and tricky to leave.
“Sometimes though it just doesn’t work, like for the Hebrides.”
That the tour takes in the Celtic nations is no coincidence, with Tiersen making clear he feels more at home in Scotland or Wales than when, as he puts it, he crosses the border into France.
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He says: "That connection really important because my wife and I are raising our child in the Breton language, so that’s his mother tongue.
“I think in the UK everybody knows that Scotland, Ireland and Wales have that connection but when it comes to Brittany it’s less known that there are those common roots, and that’s really important (to highlight).
“It’s really nice for us to see the connection. When we were on tour when our little boy was very young, his nanny came on tour with us to help us with him and the bus driver was from Wales.
“She didn’t speak in English and they managed to understand each other – despite her not speaking Welsh and him not speaking Breton.
“The languages are quite far apart in terms of pronunciation and everything but the roots are exactly the same, and it was really nice to see.
“I feel more at home in the Celtic countries than when I go to France from Brittany. I love France but it’s not the same culture, so to me it makes perfect sense to do this first sailing tour in the Celtic countries.”
Yann Tiersen and Quinquis will play Tall Ships, Lerwick (July 26), Hymhus, Bigton (July 26), Community Hall, Fair Isle (July 28), Universal Hall, Findhorn (August 2), and Liquid Room, Edinburgh (August 8).
Tickets for Edinburgh can be purchased here, other shows are by RSVP and can be found on the Ninnog website.
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