ABOUT

CYANN  is the solo project of French born Composer, Keyboardist & Singer-Songwriter Alex Simon, currently based in Berlin and former member of Parisian experimental indie rock band CYANN & BEN. She shapes an earnest and bleak beauty through experimental and atmospheric soundscapes.
It's a heavily dark matter, analyzing the sonic depths of sound. Her unique voice swims like a diving whale through an ocean of piano layers. Everything is full of electronic noises, glitches and broken beats. Music of sombre and pure, fragile beauty. Her current project is the experimental concept album Glance at The Sun... Now Think!, a tapestry of voice, classical orchestration, ambient synths & straight-edged beats that presents an uncompromising vision of the modern world.

 

BIO

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Having studied classical music, piano and composition at the conservatory and university levels, and played in rock bands throughout her teenage life, Alex SIMON first came into the public eye as the front woman for the Parisian experimental indie rock band CYANN & BEN.
Between 2001 and 2009, the quartet released several EPs and three albums across Europe and North America: Spring (2003), Happy like an Autumn Tree (2004) on the independent labels Gooom/Pias (EU) and Locust (US), and Sweet Beliefs (2006) on the Berlin-based label Ever Records (the indie-rock subsidiary of !K7). The Albums were met with acclaim by indie music critics and the public, receiving positive reviews from a variety of international outlets, including the American online magazine Pitchfork.

CYANN & BEN also toured internationally, including the festival SXSW in 2007, in Austin, Texas, USA, and has opened for bands such as Grizzly Bear, Bonnie Prince Billy and Lali Puna. They have collaborated with many artists, including label-partner M83 on their second album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts. Notably, CYANN & BEN's remix of M83's In Church appears on the soundtrack of the US director Marc Foster's 2006 movie Stranger Than Fiction.

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After eight years of a rich musical collaboration, SIMON decided to pursue her solo career. She has kept the name CYANN.

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In 2011, she moved from Paris to Berlin to explore a new environment and find new sources of inspiration. In 2013, she produced and released her own EP, Tongue of Ashes, before touring Russia, Estonia (TMW 2014), and the Czech Republic. She also played concerts in Germany and France, opening for Shannon Wright and Elysian Fields and Adrian Crowley. Simon's work has been described by Matthew Solarski of Pitchfork magazine as being "like a shuttle launch in slow motion," as her music "propels with quiet majesty...". In 2014, Sidestage Blog wrote, "Cyann shapes an earnest and bleak beauty through her soundscapes. Blending haunting piano with ethereal vocals, her music is best experienced live." She uses only analogue instruments on stage, combining samples and keyboards with her voice to create mesmerizing effects and feedbacks, distorting the original sounds to produce loud and singular soundscapes.

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Her current project is the experimental concept album Glance at The Sun... Now Think!, a tapestry of voice, classical orchestration, ambient synths & straight-edged beats that presents an uncompromising vision of the modern world.