Trans-Siberian Music Video Takes a Journey to the Beat [Premiere]

French electronic musician Thylacine recorded an entire album on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Premiere the video for the first single, "Train," only on The Creators Project.

by Kevin Holmes

April 6, 2016, 1:10pm

The Trans-Siberian Railway is over 5,000 miles long, making it the longest railway in the world. It runs from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan and is a place of tourism, adventure, and trade. It's also a place that French electronic musician Thylacine (a.k.a., William Reze) decided would be the perfect studio to record an album.

The album, called Transsiberian, will be released on Intuitive Records in May, but before that comes the first music video for track "Train," which premieres today on The Creators Project. Reze spent a whole summer last year on the railway line composing the album in his cabin, taking inspiration from the people and places he visited along with recording found sounds of the carriages, trains, villages, and the ever-changing environments.

The first single off the album "Train" really gives a sense of transit, of voyaging across vast landscapes as your mind syncs with the drifting rhythms of the train and passing scenery. The music video, by Tianès Montasser and Cassie Raptor, incorporates visuals from the trip, too. Reze took a film crew along with him to document the recording, which will be released as a feature later this year.

Footage incorporated into the music video includes sunlit corridors which visualize the chugging, driving beat of being in constant motion, and passing landscapes and vistas become abstracted travelogues set to the soundscapes, and dreamy rhythm of the journey.

We emailed some questions off to Reze to found out a bit more about the creative process that informed the album.

Image: David Ctiborsky

The Creators Project: Where did the idea come from to record the album on the railway line? What inspired you to do it?

Thylacine: I had this idea two years ago and this documentary is the result of a lot time spent researching the best conditions for me to compose music in. I love how a place can impact a track, and I also realized that even in a fully equipped studio I often can’t find any inspiration without going outside and discovering something firsthand.

I used to try and compose a lot on train rides between concerts. I really like the comfort they bring but also all the things you see and people you can meet. When I discovered the Trans-Siberian Railway, with its 160 hours and 9000km from Moscow to Vladivostok, I realized it provide the perfect studio for composing my album. It was also about creating a project that tells a story.

Image: David Ctiborsky What equipment/software did you have with you to compose the album?

I brought my computer, a good keyboard controller with the Komplete Ultimate from Native Instrument (bank of sounds and instruments), some little synthesizers like the OP-1 and the pocket operators, my old MPC-500, a good sound card, and a portable audio recorder with a lot of different microphones.

How do you go about recording and composing the album? What is a combination of taking inspiration from your surroundings along with incorporating found sounds from the environment too?

Yeah, exactly. I made some stops in cities and villages during the trip where I recorded a lot of voices and sounds, and then I went back on the train with a lot of time to compose using these materials whilst surrounded by incredible landscapes and the sounds of the train around me. It was about trying to translate the different atmospheres and emotions I’ve been through in music, and mixing the sounds that surrounded me.

Image: David Ctiborsky Were there any particular incidents that really stuck with you and had a big impact on the album?

Good incidents, yes. For example the first musical meeting wasn’t planned at all—I met a graffiti artist in Kazan, and after lots of conversation he took me to a little village in the Taïga by car where his parents grew up. And here, all the singers of the village performed a concert as a welcome. It was a really intense and moving experience. This kind of story happened quite a lot during the journey. I didn’t encounter any real problems surprisingly!

How do you feel recording the album in such unusual and constraining conditions differed, and what benefits did it have, over recording an album in a home studio or more conventional environment?

I think it’s just my way to get inspiration and not repeating myself. We have this chance now with technology to compose almost anywhere and I find it really helpful in finding new things. The only real restricting factor was the time—I spent just one month in studio after to finish the tracks as I wanted to release it very quickly after the trip. So basically I made an album from A to Z within two months, and that was really a lot of work. I didn’t sleep much during that period!

Image: David Ctiborsky

In what ways did the train journey as a whole, for instance the motion of the train and the sense of a journey, inform the style and pace of the album?

The many human encounters I made during the journey had a great impact on the album. I didn’t expect to record and use so many voices and they directly inspired the style of the album. Hopefully you can feel the emotion in the tracks and get a sense of where they were composed and why they sound the way they do. Sometimes direct sounds like the trains became a part of the tracks—as a rhythm or an instrument.