After making his name with a series of remixes and cutting-edge EPs, Yuksek scored a club hit with his cult classic Tonight. And now the thirty-something mover and shaker from Reims finds himself well-positioned to take the tricky debut album test. Yuksek - also known to friends and family as Pierre-Alexandre Busson - honed his dance music skills serving up slick French electro-pop with the group Klanguage. But not many people know that before this young Pierre-Alexandre was a classically-trained pianist, studying at the 'Conservatoire' from the age of six to sixteen.

"One day I just turned round and quit the 'Conservatoire'," Yuksek explains, "It was clear I wasn't on course to be a concert pianist and I wasn't all that excited about the idea of becoming a piano teacher, either. But my years of classical training inculcated me with a rigorous approach to work and an aptitude for experimenting with chords." Not surprisingly each and every track on Yuksek's debut album is a lesson in the art of combining melodies, finely-tuned arrangements and pop vocals. And Away From The Sea manages to incorporate multiple musical styles, too, ranging from old-school keyboards and guitars to pulsating dance beats. Yuksek acknowledges his formative influences as well, closing his album with a "hidden" tribute track to the Beatles.

In short, Yuksek is a mass of musical contradictions. He inherited a taste for classical music, chanson and pop from his parents, whose record collection included albums by everyone from the legendary French 'chanteuse' Barbara to Liverpool's Fab Four. Later he went on to forge his own rock and hip-hop culture, hanging out with the skateboarding crowd. Then his teen electro epiphany came via early Daft Punk tracks, Aphex Twin and happening record labels such as + 8 and UR. "I've never been into minimalist techno or repetitive tracks that go on for twelve minutes or more," Yuksek declares, "I don't come from a club culture. I started out buying LPs, then vintage keyboards, but I've never been a proper DJ." We're not complaining, Yuksek's wonderfully eclectic past has now been recycled to maximum effect on Away From The Sea!

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 Listen to an extract from So Down

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