Briand, Olivier

Artist: Bertrand Loreau + Olivier Briand
P:  2013
The style of Bertrand combines delicate sequenced lines and romantic -acoustic like- feelings although Olivier Briand works more on strong analog atmospheres, powerful and complex analog improvisations and often goes through avant-gardism, always exploring new directions and influences including traditional music. The two musicians have each one a strong personality but also many common points. They like to play acoustic piano, to work on subtle harmonies, to play expressive and delicate improvised solos in a jazz-like way, having always the Berlin school style of music as a main background influence. It took a long time before they decided to sign a complete album together. But now it is done with “Interferences” and with the help of Lambert Ringlage and Patch Work Music. “Interferences” is the best invitation that you can dream of, to go inside the universe of two of the best electronic french musicians, who have succeeded in listening each other and combining their differences for recording an original electronic landscape.

Artist: Mark Jenkins, Gert Emmens, O.Briand u.a.
P: 2023
LTD 100
The next in the ‘Modular Sessions’ series of monthly limited run numbered collaborative CD's is second in a trilogy introduced with MS10 ‘Rise Of The Robots’, and features a great list of European guest synthesists - Olivier Briand (France), Arend Westra (aka Eagle Synth from Holland), Gert Emmens (Holland) and Gilda Razani (Germany).
Once again the album picks up some of the more rhythmic, beats-oriented improvised tracks from the original Modular Sessions recordings by Mark Jenkins, overlaying them with sequencers, synth melodies, guitar and vocoders.

The 14 Tracks featured on the album will appeal to lovers of Jean-Michel Jarre, KRAFTWERK, SPACE ART, HELDON, STAR INC and other melodic synth acts - though there's plenty there for lovers of Klaus Schulze, Edgar Froese and TANGERINE DREAM around the ‘Hyperborea’ period, and particularly of Johannes Schmoelling and LOOM in the CD's many long, fluid MiniMoog solos.

‘Battle Of The Robots’ follows the story of seven little robots in the war against humanity, conjuring up the excitement of guarding the secret robot factory, saboteur missions, and night watch in the trenches.
French synthesist Olivier Briand creates short sonic "Robograms" as their encrypted orders arrive, while Arend Westra and Gert Emmens contribute wonderfully developing sequencer layers. Gilda Razani's expressive Theremin conjures up the sound of the giant robot cargo whales tasked with secretly delivering their new and ever more powerful weapons, while eerie digital and vocoder voices further the compelling plot...

All tracks produced at Unicorn Studio London by MARK JENKINS (synthesizers / guitar / vocoder).

Artist: Mark Jenkins
P: 2023
LTD 100
Issue 21 of the monthly collaborative synthesizer music CD series completes the trilogy started with MS10 “Rise of the Robots” and MS15 “Battle of The Robots”. Eons later, robots dominate the planet under the reign of a Robot Emperor, leaving the chaotic times of the humans far behind. Massive sweeps of synthesizer sound, thrilling sequences and robotic voices picture life on the robot planet, until the urge comes to leave for the stars…
One of the largest casts yet of collaborators from the UK, European, US and South American synth music scenes join in, one creating developing textures, rhythms or sequences while the next adds melodies, abstract sounds or dialog samples. There’s plenty to appeal for lovers of the TANGERINE DREAM “Sessions”, JEAN-MICHEL JARRE, VANGELIS, KRAFTWERK, KLAUS SCHULZE, and even HELDON or JAN HAMMER with touches of electronic jazz and avant-garde classical added by Rob Harrison (of Z Machine) and Hannah Chappell (of Cellistica) guesting on sax and cello.

Artist: Olivier Briand
P: 1992
This debut of the french electronic musician goes through a lot of different fields. Mostly we hear nice rhythms with melodic synthesizer atmospheres, which remind a little to TD around the mid 80s.

Artist: Olivier Briand
P: 2010
One long Berlinschool Sequencertrack in the style of TD or KS mid 70ies. Sometimes a little experimental and then with some light sequencerpassages.

Artist: Olivier Briand & Bruno Billaudeau
P: 1999
The music on this CD contains two artists that wrote their compositions for a special dance choreografie. The music is very moodfull and can be used for dance theathers as well as for listening.

Artist: Olivier Briand
P: 2005
This CD is a live recording of his performance from 2005 in Libourne. The titles speak for themselves. You could see, that the music as a kind of tribute to Klaus Schulze, as each track can be found in the style exactly built the way Klaus Schulze did. Only this time it is an interpretation of how Briand joins together the sounds for a new piece. Geniuss...

Artist: Olivier Briand
P: 1996
Liverecording from 1996 in Carquefou, France. Olivier  shows his Berlin School paragons within his musicstyle. The Style is like TD mid 80s. But Briand has also his own style with a lot of melodic tunes and synthesiersounds.

Artist: Olivier Briand
P: 2002
Briand in the footsteps of Tomita, with his search for new synthesizersounds and atmospheres.

Artist: Olivier Briand
P: 2013
Played in 2009, Random Control is a analogue modular system festivitie. Berlin School sequenzes and retro sounds at its best.

Artist: Olivier Briand
P: 2012
Live at Vertou - 13 April 2012.
This is the Video of the concert he played in 2012. 

Artist: Olivier Briand
P: 2014
A CD, which was recorded entirely in old traditional way to multitrack.
The music fits perfectly accordingly to the recording method. Berlin School solos and 70s sequences.

Artist: Olivier Briand
P: 1996 / 2013
I have already written it; the French EM conceals small hidden jewels and Olivier Briand is one of them. Those who enjoyed his performance during the Nantes concert in August 2010, and which is at the origin of the SpaceFish Live Inexxa's DVD, will be delighted to find again the complex and progressive electronic structures of the synthesist from Nantes. Pulled of recordings not used during his concert at Carquefou in 1996, Transparences is a mixture of the kinds and influences which gnaw Olivier Briand. We can hear there some good reminiscences of Klaus Schulze (especially), Jean Michel Jarre (at the level of the rhythms) and Tangerine Dream (on a melodic level). In brief, a beautiful meshing of styles which become entangled in a sometimes claustrophobic but often melodic vision. A beautiful album of forgotten but unforgettable rests!
The title track begins with notes of an electro-acoustic guitar of which the bluesy soul roams under stars. Jean Jerez pinches his strings with pain and makes them resound among sinuous resounding lines which bite the fragility of their emotions while that quietly "Transparences" deviates towards a more nervous rhythm. A rhythm at the crossing of a cosmic free blues where chords of an undisciplined guitar fight arpeggios of a nervous synth that percussions support with a good steady tempo. The intro of "Prophetic Steps" slides into the fiery rhythms à la Jarre where resonant metallic percussions and arpeggios of an iridescent coolness collide on a beautiful rhythmic stuffed by crystalline serpentines, robotic vocalizes and sequential momentums as dynamic as melodious. It’s very good. We would believe to hear a merger of Kraftwerk and Jean Michel Jarre. Although its intro is quite honeyed with its fluty breaths which float above an angelic mist and fly among jets of industrial gases, "Gladiators" falls into a furious electronic rock where Pascal Férré's electric guitar bites out and spits out incisive solos which throw their venom on spasmodic and stormy sequences. An infernal storm fills our ears with a din of steel before that the calm smoothes all the musical surface with a superb melodious approach packed of Tangerine Dream musical souvenirs, area of Legend and Underwater Sunlight. It’s another great track which allies easily complexity and melody. "In the Temple of Graal" is simply hallucinating! Philharmonic crisscrossed stratas open the intro, such as a Pharaonic ballet. Somber vocals are grafted to this enchanting dance of sands which is sucked up by a multitude of aspirators holes which siphon the waltzing envelopes under great drum rolls. Such as the claustrophobic and encephalographic world of Klaus Schulze, the voices multiply and become entangled with the synth violin stratas in a strange cerebral ballet which has immoderation only the limits of a fanciful imagination. It’s an incredible track which spits all its fright and depth at high volume.
"KS Revival" is a wonderful immersion into the digital years of Klaus Schulze and of his unchained glockenspiels area. The solos are juicy. They wrap with a repressed intensity the jerky movements of riffs and pads of a synth curt and incisive, while the percussions roll in loops under a structure of which the evolution brings us near a cosmos overturned by an undisciplined finale. A finale which repents in the short tranquility of a mislaid astral movement. "Fonik 707" is a short electronic ballad where twinkling arpeggios skip on a bed of slithery spectral strata. The line of bass is superbly musical quite as the finale which is carried away by an abrupt and stormy movement, witness of the conceptual and melodious divergences which liven up the creativity of Olivier Briand. Very dark and ambiguous, "Mortal Nightmare" caresses effectively the doors of an insomniac night where the nightmare navigates on the black waves of synth which are overlapping among iridescent and tinkled breaths as well as whispers of paranoia. "Cold Emotions" offers a hard and cold rhythmic with oscillations which caw, borrowing (taking) the colourful universes of Schulze and the Caribbean rhythms of Jarre. The synthesist of Nantes weaves a musical universe rich in tones by grafting unreal vocalizes, nervous riffs and echoing spins on a rhythm in permutation and its pulsations as heavy as hypnotic. Rainy drops and thunderclaps scatter under the minimalist breaths of a flute to the colors of a rainbow singing under the furtive keys of a romantic keyboard. The music of "Après L'Orage" bears poetically its musical prose with a delicate ballerina approach where arpeggios sparkle and float among an iridescent mist, envelopes of cellos from fantasies and this suave flute of a centaur of the cosmic dunes.
To date, what I heard from Olivier Briand is very powerful. His musical style full of abrupt movements and random rhythms where his melodies are caressing corridors soaked of a mesmerizing paranoia confers him a unique and very particular place and this as much as in the universe of EM ( I’m situating him on the same place as Remy) as in firmament of French school EM. With its steady and tortuous rhythms, its abstruse ambiances and its melodies as metallic as poetic, Tranpsarences navigates on a complex but rather accessible musical odyssey. It’s a very good album which is going to please to the fans of Klaus Schulze, Jean Michel Jarre(this is rather curious to hear these two names and styles to hobnob with) Tangerine Dream and Remy. It’s an album which is amply worth the money spent and Olivier Briand is definitely a name to discover in the universe of EM.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)

Artist: Various Artists
P: 2005
A good collection of the french garde of electronic musicians with Berlin School style tracks.

Artist: Kryfels, B. Loreau,Alpha Lyra,Sequentia Legenda,
Age, Moonsatellite, O. Briand u.a.
P: 2021
Nice compilation of the new french electronic scene.
This is dedicated to Klaus Schulze. Most of the tracks cover the Berlin School style.