Miguel Gomes – Tabu 
Ulrich Seidl – Paradise: Love 
Emad Burmat – 5 broken cameras 
Werner Herzog –  On Death Row 
Haruki Murakami – 1Q84 
Maurizio Cattalan – All 
Ryoji Ikeda – db 
Mario Garcia Torres – One Hotel 
Chassol – X-pianos 
François Sarhan – Pop up

The star-studded Golden Horse Awards played host to such worldwide stars as Jackie Chan and 'Resident Evil' actress Li Bingbing. The film, which is directed by Canadian-Chinese Yung Chang, won Best Documentary at the prestigious event. Olivier Alary's releases as Ensemble are available at our online store here.

The Guardian picked China Heavyweight as one of its top twenty films to look out for at Sundance, among other films by directors such as Spike Lee and Stephen Frears.

Olivier Alary of Ensemble wrote the music for the soundtrack after previously working with director Yung Chang on his last film Up the Yangtze. Henry Barnes writing about China Heavyweight describes how:

Director Yung Chang follows coach Qi Moxiang, an ageing fighter hoping for one last jab at the big time. Competition is fierce, as personal fortune and Olympic glory beckon for the few fighters that can escape rural poverty by slugging their way past China's state selectors.

China Heavyweight  a film featuring a soundtrack written by Olivier Alary (Ensemble) will be at Sundance next year.

The film is about, a Master coach in China recruiting poor rural teenagers and turning them into Western-style boxing champions. The top students face dramatic choices as they graduate -- should they fight for the collective good or for themselves? A metaphor for the choices everyone in the New China faces now.

Sundance describes how it  'artfully captures the playfulness among the trainees, their grueling conditioning, and the guiding principle that athletic achievement is for their country, rather than themselves. Director Yung Chang returns to the Sundance Film Festival (Up the Yangtze screened in 2008) with an intimately observed film that both explores and reflects social change and development in modern China.

Olivier also wrote the music for Yung Chang's previous film a documentary Up The Yangtze, which was nomiated for the Grand Jury Award at Sundance as well as winning a twelve awards at other film festivals.

This excellent performance also features Darcy Conroy on vocals and flute, and Johannes Malfatti on keyboard and accordion - both of whom feature on 'Excerpts'.

You can listen to the session here.

Ensemble - Envies d'Avalanches acoustic from FatCat Records on Vimeo.

Tomorrow (3rd November) Ensemble will be peforming as part of the Inrocks Festival. The festival will be taking part across over the next few days until the 8th November in six different cities.

They've been invited as part of the M is for Montreal showcase. You'll be able to catch the peformance in Paris at Divan du Monde. Also at the showcase will be Braids, Karkwa, Jimmy Hunt. Follow this link to buy the tickets

For a taste of Ensemble's live peformance, you can watch the acoustic video above.

Fatcat Records Podcast – Ensemble – Podcast 8 by Fatcat Records on Mixcloud

As part of an ongoing series of mixtapes created by Ensemble head Olivier Alary and his collaborator Johannes Malfatti, here we have the 8th podcast from the cross-continental artists. This mix was put together by Johannes.

Each mix is designed to flow rapidly and fluidly through the influences and inspiration that affect Ensemble’s songwriting and interest in music. Picking at the edges of forgotten trends, lost film soundtracks and some of indie music’s higher profile gems, Malfatti boldly marries Nick Drake with Stina Nordenstam; Ennio Morricone with The United States of America, and makes for some tremendous listening.

You can purchase Excerpts from our webstore.

Click here to read the full interview.

Click here to read the full article and to hear the track.

The single Excerpts begins with a sprightly, full string arrangement. Alary's long-term collaborator Darcy Conroy here on lead vocals lends a breathy, beautifully expressive counterpoint to the skipping strings. It is a piece of music that encourages headphone listening to fall fully into the stunning studio intricacies of the track. pizzicato strings dart around the ears, while sheering noise waves occasionally push the dynamics to breathtaking peaks.

A collaboration with the well-regarded French singer Dominique A, Norilsk backs this single. Its drifting, choral squeaks and squeals back Dominique's lush singing voice. The critical acclaim heaped on the vocalist is certainly explicable, given his wonderful performance here.

In anticipation of the release of this single, The Line of Best Fit have posted an exclusive video of a great acoustic performance of Envies d’Avalanches here

Order the single on our webstore and check out the Ensemble profile page.

The thirty first FatCat podcast is now out and available from iTunes.

Following the release of their album Excerpts on January 17 2011, Ensemble have put together another podcast to enjoy. Featuring artists such as Marcel Duchamp, La Monte Young and Marina Abramovic this hour long journey comprises 18 wonderful tracks spanning Olivier’s genre-spanning record collection.

You can buy Excerpts here from the FatCat web store, and preorder the digital single of this track (backed with a new b-side.

You can purchase Excerpts by going to our webstore, either on CD or as a digital download, and the title-track is released as a digital single, with an all-new b-side ‘Norilsk’, on January 31st – available to pre-order now.

The twenty-fifth FatCat podcast is now out and available from iTunes.

After putting out five beautiful mixtapes, this podcast will be the last of the series. In this issue, ensemble‘s Johannes Malfatti has compiled a collection of twenty three songs to enjoy, released in anticipation of ensemble‘s brand new Album released on January 17th, For ordering options click go to our web store.

See the tracklist featured in the podcast below:

1) Rainbows, II – Stephen Scott
2) Minutia – Max De Wardener
3) O relógio – Os Mutantes
4) Suddenly There Is A Tidal Wave – The Magnetic Fields
5) La Venexia Tema per oria – Ennio Morricone
6) Song Song Song – Final Fantasy
7) The Vampire Sound Incorporation – Necromania
8) In un Sogno il Sogno – Ennio Morricone
9) Sinfonia – Monteverdi
10) Je Changerais d’avis – Françoise Hardy
11) Sinfonia – Monteverdi
12) Love Song For The Dead Che – The United States Of America
13) Music Three for Bowed Strings – Stephen Scott
14) May I – Kevin Ayers
15) Pretty Ballerina – The Left Banke
16) Centrali Termishe – Piero Umiliani
17) Lust, Caution Desplat – Alexandre Desplat
18) L’appel du verre – Philippe Sarde
19) The Pond – Octet
20) Trust – The Pretty Things
21) Gharbzadegi – Robert Wyatt
22) To Here Knows When – My Bloody Valentine
23) 4 seasons – Vivaldi

“Excerpts is, for all intents and purposes, the last word in what an orchestral pop record should sound like… there aren't this many records that are this finely crafted at the present time… I'd be willing to bet that nothing quite like this will be released this year, which makes this work of utter genius all the more precious. An astonishing work of art.” – AAA Music

“...From the skin-shivering vocals…to the layers of melodic noise, there is a lot here to attract your favouritism…If you’re simply a fan of elegant, intelligent music, Excerpts is for you.” – 405

“...an album that aims to add a modern art-pop twist to the perennially stylish poses of Gainsbourg and Francoise Hardy…Alary concocts wistful chansons and widescreen waltzes with an elegance and deadpan humour that evokes Sebastien Tellier, Stereolab and Matthew Herbert…” – Uncut

The new album by Ensemble, the wonderously rich and rewardingly multi-faceted songwriting work of Frenchman Olivier Alary, becomes available to buy today from the FatCat online store and other outlets. The album, entitled ‘Excerpts’, finds a middle ground between lush orchestration, absorbing pop, guitar-indie, experimental sonics and beyond, offering no obvious or straightforward reference points, yet full of maturity, sophistication and romance. A major theme of ‘Excerpts’ is the confusion of real memories with fictional ones, the capacity of imagination to fill spaces left by real memory – as Alary writes, the memory of “weddings I've never attended, kisses with someone I've never met, childhood landscapes that I only saw on screen, faces of friends I've never had”. Represented by traditional musical forms and a mixture of contemporary and experimental recording techniques, Alary’s illustration of a sense of fictional nostalgia can be felt across the album. It is at once enlightening, dizzying, tragic and beautiful.

To purchase the album, either on CD or as a digital download, go to our webstore.

‘Excerpts’ was preceeded by a digital single – the track ‘Envies D’avalanches’ – as well as a series of mixtapes provided exclusively by Ensemble to the FatCat site. A 6-piece band is being readied for live performances in support of 'Excerpts' in Canada and the States, with European dates to be arranged for the end of the year.

Ensemble’s Olivier Alary has compiled the fifth podcast in the Ensemble Mixtape series. An hour-long nostalgic journey from a total of six podcasts each created by a different member of the band, this selection is released in anticipation of Ensemble’s upcoming album Excerpts which is out on January 17th 2011.

This is the twenty nineth podcast from Fatcat records and all the episodes can be downloaded from iTunes.

Films
Todos vosotros sois capitanes (Oliver Laxe)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Film socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Ditch (Wang Bing)
Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé)

Music
Heartland (Owen Pallett)
Rock Bottom reissue (Robert Wyatt)
Dirty French Psychedelics (Various)
Before today (Ariel pink)
Jane Birkin / Serge Gainsbourg reissue (Serge Gainsbourg)

Books
Michel Houellebecq: La carte et le territoire
Olivier Adam: Le coeur régulier

Websites /blogs
http://www.ubu.com
http://www.alainfinkielkrautrock.blogspot.com/
http://tontonmahood.blogspot.com/
http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/

“...unique and simply brilliant…an aural spectacular. 5/5 (Easily)” – South Sonic

'Excerpts' is the gorgeous new record from Montreal resident and former Bjork / Cat Power / Lou Barlow collaborator Olivier Alary, the songwriter/composer behind Ensemble. A middle ground between lush orchestration, absorbing pop, guitar-indie, experimental sonics and beyond, it offers no obvious or straightforward reference points, yet here is an album full of maturity, sophistication and romance, architectured carefully and atemporally.

The album's opening track 'Things I Forget' could be an exercise in achieving textual fullness through restraint. Pizzicato violin and female voice are embraced by a canopy of breathy brass and skipping, melodic string rhythms. Seemingly never afraidof pure noise, Alary (with arranger / collaborator Johannes Malfatti and vocalist Darcy Conroy) eventually craft the song into a beautiful waltz of cut-up spoken word snippets, harpsichord, feedback and sumptuous string arrangements. 'En Attendant l'Orage' employs a thick, distorted guitar line reminiscent of shoegaze or his local Montreal post-rock scene, but Olivier's singing voice - with lyrics in French – is soft and clear, untouched by the floating reverb that one would usually associate with that style of guitar playing. A shimmering urgency is achieved through erudite friction, darkly melodic chord changes perhaps intended to mimic the 'orage' ('storm') alluded to in the title.

The album is Ensemble’s second for FatCat, and will feature the single released this week ‘Envies d’Avalanches’ amongst its 11 tracks.

As a bonus, the first, self-titled Ensemble album will be sold for only £4.99, during the whole pre-order period for Excerpts, from his web store.

Excerpts will be released on January 17th, but pre-orders are available from today. Click here for Ensemble‘s profile page.