Olivier Heim announces debut album A Different Life, shares ‘Ocean’ video

OLIVIER HEIM ANNOUNCES DEBUT ALBUM A DIFFERENT LIFE

Watch the video for ‘Ocean’ here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwViDGAwcDQ

Olivier Heim has shared a video for ‘Ocean‘, taken from the forthcoming UK release of his debut album, A Different Life, out 4 December 2015 via his own OH Recordings. Taking inspiration from the 1960s cult French film Last Year at Marienbad, the video – directed by Katarzyna Pacura & Jan Szewczyk – blurs the line between memories and dreams, resulting in a video that isn’t just one of the year’s best, but also one of its most visually arresting.

A Different Life finds Olivier reflecting on a highly relatable transitionary period in his life – one that’s gorgeously soundtracked by a familiar yet stunningly fresh guitar sound. Born in the US but growing up in Luxembourg, Olivier is no stranger to upheaving his life, having moved to Denmark to attend school with his friend and drummer Thomas Pettit, forming a band with him called Très.b. Taking the band to Poland via the Netherlands, they earned numerous Polish awards and have remained in the country for the past five years. “I started writing A Different Life around the time that the band split up,” Olivier says. “For me, it became a record about this transition that I was going through – a transition through two different lives.”

Everything about A Different Life is meticulously constructed to Olivier’s widescreen vision. Each song is another foot forward in his journey as he settles into place upon place; every woozy guitar line tracing his steps through relationships and friendships past and present. There’s a admirably distinct aesthetic to everything Olivier does, from the dreamlike qualities of album highlight and lead single ‘Ocean’, to the wood-lined ‘70s studio at Quality Studios – the Warsaw-based blind people’s institution where the entirety of A Different Life was recorded in under a week. A Different Life is the big screen adaptation of Olivier’s life so far – every song a still from a film that has a studious and scrupulous attention to detail. Produced by Michał Kupicz and mastered by Grammy-nominee Joe Lambert (Deerhunter, Toro y Moi, Cass McCombs, Unknown Mortal Orchestra), their understanding of Olivier’s ideas allowed the record to remain uncompressed, resulting in a transparent and lifelike sound that is simple yet razor-sharp.

From the age of six, Olivier and his siblings were always encouraged to play instruments, Olivier himself first deciding on the piano. After learning for seven years, he turned his eye to the guitar – his sister’s one, specifically, that was left untouched for some time in the corner of his parent’s living room. Whilst learning to play, he grew up on a diet of Marvin Gaye and The Delfonics, and while this classicism permeates through much of A Different Life, every song on the album also takes on a fresh, illusory twist on classic pop tropes. “I was never really interested in discovering new music, but I remember listening to a lot of Kurt Vile – especially his second album God is Saying This to You… – and Connan Mockasin around the time,” he recalls, explaining some of the more shimmering and serene moments to be found within. “The synthesisers were the real modern influence though. They sound really cosmic and produced, which I thought fitted nicely with the vintage bass lines and guitar.”

A Different Life is an album that feels like a forgotten favourite revisited in a lost memory. From the alluring opener ‘Far Apart’ to the slick, sensual pop of closing track ‘Drive By’, Olivier weaves tales that are born out of one universal feeling. “When I start writing a new record, I look for a sound that inspires me,” he explains. “I wanted to come up with a sound that fitted the mood of the record first. Once I found this sound, the songs came quite smoothly out of it.” Smooth is certainly one way to describe Olivier’s songwriting – from the pristine riffs of ‘It’s Getting Better’ to the luxuriant vocal display on ‘Pasadena’, Olivier proves that you don’t necessarily need winding metaphors to effectively write captivating and highly affecting songs about relationships, displacement, longing, loss and everything in-between. You just need a few honest, down-to-earth words and addictive melodies.

The lush tones permeating through A Different Life are undoubtedly hypnotic and absorbing – by the time the closing seconds of ‘Drive By’ roll around, you almost feel lost in reverie – but it’s the deeply personal stories that Olivier tells through his world of hazy sunshine and vibrant horizons that really draws you in. ‘Ocean’ for example chronicles a life that is constantly on the move, its subtle psychedelia tinged with the melancholy that comes in leaving good friends behind. ‘Italy’ on the other hand is an elegant tale of escapism, painting a picture of sweeping roads and summer air that we all long for at some point. “When I spend too much time in one place, the routine kind of brainwashes me,” he says. “Then I take a trip and none of that matters anymore. It shows that most things you struggle with are actually in your head.” Then there’s ‘Dive’, a breezy instrumental originally written for a documentary about the painter Kazimir Malevich – that bridges the albums’ two distinct halves and shows a different side to Olivier’s creativity.

An infectious, highly addictive listen, A Different Life is a refreshing summertime soundtrack that arrives in time to be a beacon of warmth this winter. However, it’s also a quietly reflective one – a sombre reflection of thoughts and feelings past and present; an album of hummable hits that carry with them a solemn emotional weight. “Will we ever go our separate ways / or will we eventually grow old?” Olivier questions on ‘Pasadena’, a velvety track that leads you on a trance-like journey through his daydreaming of other lifestyles. There’s a chronology to A Different Life that resonates in all our lives, from the feelings of listlessness and periods of struggle eloquently explored in the title track and ‘Far Apart’, to the cathartic feeling of relief that things are looking up in the exuberant ‘Drive By’. Olivier Heim may have lived many different lives, but A Different Life is his defining one thus far.

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