He kindly responded and our subsequent chat is below, enjoy!
GF - Hi Yann, firstly - thanks for taking the time to chat with us, hope all is good with
you!
Can you tell our readers a bit of background information about yourself?
YL - You are very welcome, It’s a pleasure… All is well here! Man… how do I answer this without being boring?
Well, I was born and raised in a little town called Drummondville, about an hour East of Montreal, Quebec.
Yup… I’m a Frenchie. Recently moved to the West Coast (Vancouver) to finally, escape the horribly cold Eastern winters.
As far as music goes… I picked up a guitar around the age of 14, got
hooked on 80’s/90’s hard rock and metal and never looked back… or almost never.
Since a very young age, I was VERY fascinated with film music… or more
precisely, the relation between music and image. Both of them melded
perfectly together with the ultimate goal of telling the story, it just took me a
while to finally realize this was an actual job, people actually do this for a
living…ha!
I’ve been in multiple bands over the years and done a lot of other things that have absolutely nothing to do with music (like restoring vintage exotic cars, building race cars, owning a Speedshop as an actual ‘career’. Yes, I was also fascinated with cars).
Finally, in the past 4-5yrs, I have devoted all my time and energy back to my first love, Music! I now work full time as a film/video game composer.
GF - Looking at your website, some of your artwork shares titles with bands such
as Alice in Chains and Kyuss, did these bands, in particular, have a special
impact on you?
YL - Painting was something I was experimenting with a few years back (sort of a challenge brought on by my dad, a successful painter). While I was in the studio painting, I was listening to all these great bands that I loved - so naturally, the paintings all got inspired by them. Anything from Tool to Faith No More, Black Light Burns to Mastodon, Kyuss to AIC and so on. When I was in my late teens, I remember being at band practice, and during our ‘break’, MTV was on, so we were watching it… suddenly the video for WOULD came on… It immediately caught my eye (and ears), I thought to myself Holy F*&%, who is this??
I was mesmerized by Layne Staley’s ‘presence’, his slicked-back hair and goggles… and most importantly, his haunting vocals. I just couldn’t believe it. Fast-forward quite a few years after that and I found myself fronting an AIC tribute band (I tried my best to do so anyways) and that led to another great project (all original music this time) called Kiss of A Shovel. Unfortunately, KOAS has been on a hiatus for quite some time now. Me moving 4000km across the country certainly did not help… but one day we’ll be back at it. Oh yeah…back to your question… Yes! Yes, they did.
GF - We originally got in contact over your vinyl release of the ENCODYA soundtrack, which you composed - how did you get involved in writing the soundtrack for the game?
YL - Scoring ENCODYA was sort of a natural progression. Since it was closely based on the Robot Will Protect You anime that I had scored previously, I already had a good grasp on what the ‘sound palette’ should be… I just had to expand on it. Guess I did a good enough job on RWPY that The director/Developer decided to keep me on board. I might’ve harassed him a bit for the job as well :)
I truly enjoy writing on the darker/melancholic side and ENCODYA got me the freedom to do so. Falling to the ‘dark side’ is always easier for me and finding the right balance between that and something more on the lighter, “happier” side was a welcomed challenge. The game does have its gloomy/noir atmosphere to it but there is always a sense of hope. That’s what I tried my best to achieve with the soundtrack. I think it was a great match to the beautiful world Nicola had created.
GF - We hold your soundtrack in high regard here at GF, can you talk a little about
the creative process for ENCODYA? It feels unique in how it eschews beats
and percussion, for the most part, to really focus on atmosphere and mood.
YL - That is so nice of you to say, thank you so much! Even though it had its challenges, for the most part writing the music for ENCODYA felt very natural, it really suited my writing style. Other than a rare few, most of the tracks are done completely ‘free hand’. What I mean by that is that no click was used, it is completely based on feel alone. Whenever I felt like ‘this is where a particular chord change should be’… that’s where it went.
No ‘guides’ no ‘boundaries’, same for some of the melodies. I think this is why it might feel so atmospheric and moody… because it was completely written on mood and feel, it just flows and washes away like a wave. I truly love this way of writing… and an adventure game usually gives me the occasion to do so. Another game I did was done the same way, very textural and moody, a game is called ULTREïA, and the soundtrack is available on all your usual digital platforms - if you feel like giving it a listen. It’s the perfect ‘fall asleep to’ soundtrack… no kidding ;)
GF - There are a few guest musicians on the album that really make an impact, can
you tell us more about them?
YL - Absolutely… they all did such an amazing job. One approach I like to take when I have musicians collaborate on a soundtrack is to give them the freedom to do their own thing. Of course, I will have some stuff prepared like specific themes/melodies or things to ‘hit’, but I also want to give them the freedom to explore. After all… they are the masters of their instruments, they can play it way better than whatever I could write for them.
With the right people, it’s pretty damn cool to let them loose and see what they come up with, and there is quite a bit of that on ENCODYA. On Forget the Ones You Love, Khris did such a good job, he came up with the lyrics, recorded them with the vocoder at his studio and that was it.
He understood the track and the mood we were going for right away. I dropped it in, added a few effects and splices - and we were done. It’s one of my favourite tracks on the album. For Bright Blue Eyes, I asked a good friend (Sylvain Marcotte). Sylvain is an amazing Jazz Pianist, I wrote a basic track, took it to his studio and he did his thing. He kept it quite
close to the original demo that I wrote but just added his touch… with great results. On Noir Alley, I asked a very good friend of mine - Jerome Boisvert - to lay down some tracks. The slide guitar idea actually came from the games’ developer Nicola Piovesan, for this, I hadn’t prepared anything.
Jerome is a great guitarist (and pianist, and producer, and recording/ mixing engineer and sound designer… the guy does everything…don’t you hate him for it…haha!!) anyways… like I said, I hadn’t prepared anything for him, he knew exactly the mood we were going for… very textural, spacey, (Pink) Floyd ‘ish’… and he just did it, it just floats perfectly in the background…totally ambient!
Last but not least, Katherine Plante. Katherine came recommended to me by Jerome… yes that guy that does everything!! I had written a lot of Violin lines/themes for the game, and I was just going to use some good sample libraries to do it., but because they were such a ‘focal point’ in supporting the theme of the game it just felt like it needed the ‘REAL’ thing. So basically, the same thing applies here… I wrote all the melodies and Katherine came to my studio and recorded them. I also had her ‘jam’ to the track. I opened my trustedLexicon 224 all the way up and splashed her ears with lush reverb tailsand she just went for it. Both tracks (Les Arbres Mécaniques and Neo Berlin Blues) are a mix of the originally written melodies and Katherine just jamming to the track.
GF - There’s a moment in Bright Blue Eyes - at around forty seconds in - that’s
pure magic for me, a saucy little melody that I always look forward to when
listening. Are there particular moments/songs on the album that you are
most proud of?
YL - Ahhhh Yeah! Are you talking about that little flute melody in the background? I’ll take the credit on that one, Ha! But seriously, it is actually quite a hard one to answer. Out of over 30-40 tracks for the actual game itself, these are the 10 that I personally picked for the OST (I had help from Nicola as well) anyways…so I’m quite attached to all of them.
I could pick out a few things here and there… Like the unique/ quirky sounding Forget the Ones You Love, or the beautiful theme played on the CS50 in Solarpunk. Both Les Arbres Mécaniques and Neo Berlin Blues because of the beautiful soaring violin solos… I’ll stop there, I guess! This is like trying to pick your favourite child, Haha!! I’m so very grateful to have had the opportunity to work on such an amazing project, I just love them all… I would have to say that I am very proud of the entire process. The end result and overall mood or vibe I’ve achieved feels like it's 100% me…it’s who I am.
GF - How does composing music for a video game differ to other musical creative
endeavours, and what projects are currently keeping you busy?
YL - So far, all the video games I’ve had the pleasure of working on have been
adventure / point-and-click type of games. This genre seems to fit my style
of writing quite well… being very ambient and textural. Or, like I’ve
mentioned before, without time constraints or boundaries - as far as having
to follow a very specific tempo. What I mean by that is that you are not
following a specific scene or moment as you would typically do on a
movie for example… where you would have to ‘hit’ things happening on
the screen, so that is one thing that would differ from when I work on
films/series and such.
As far as projects, 2022 is off to a good start - a few
more games coming up as well as some pilots for series, feature films and
a few shorts as well… keeping busy and having lots of fun doing it.
GF - A question we always ask - what video games are ones that shaped your
tastes, and what are you playing at the moment / looking forward to over the
next year?
YL - Awww Man. I wish I had a good answer to this… I might disappoint you…
I’m actually not a gamer at all. Other than a brief period in the ‘90s with
the N64 playing Super Mario hahaha!! Seriously, I do enjoy playing games
randomly, just nothing very specific. Some older Nintendo stuff, vintage
reissues, some driving/racing ones… random crashing/bashing and
causing chaos in GTA… stuff like that… It just very rarely happens :)
GF - What is the best way for people to keep up to date with your projects?
YL - Hey! if you find me interesting enough to follow… ;) hit me up on FB or
Instagram. I try to post a few things on there, little hints on what I’m
working on when I can. There’s always also the good ol’ website:
yannlatour.com
GF - Finally…favourite Alice in Chains track?
YL - I’ll go with 2 of the earlier stuff, Would & Them Bones just because those
are the two that completely blew me away as a kid. (But again…so hard to
choose, so many great ones). William DuVall does an amazing job fronting
the current AIC line-up, but the early stuff with Layne is just mind-blowing.
Words of wisdom from Bill & Ted, Be EXCELLENT to each other.
You guys take care!
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