Grammy-Nominated Director Woodkid Releases Debut Album THE GOLDEN AGE

Woodkid, aka Yoann Lemoine, the critically renowned French musician, director and producer behind acclaimed videos for Lana Del Rey's Blue Jeans and Born To Die, Drake & Rihanna's Take Care and Katy Perry's Teenage Dream, steps out from behind the camera with the release of his debut album The Golden Age today, March 19th.

With The Golden Age, we follow the life and loves of a young boy as he grows into manhood and ultimately reaches a tragic end. Says the singer-songwriter-keyboardist-producer of his soaring, often orchestral songs: "I want people to feel like heroes when they hear my music." Fans will have the chance to hear him perform live on a European tour this spring and summer as well as in the U.S. on May 8th at The Fonda Theatre in Hollywood.

The eagerly awaited album follows Woodkid's 2011 EP Iron, the video of which attracted more than 25 million views on YouTube, and the 2012 EP Run Boy Run, of which the video just recently was nominated for a Grammy as best Short Form Music Video in 2013.

The Golden Age was written and produced by Woodkid and among the 14-track set one can also find the lead single "I Love You," released earlier this year. According to NME magazine "his debut, is full of the multi-instrumentalism, Antony Hegarty vocals and super-clean production". The Sunday Times finds "intense songs paired with magnificent visuals" on the album whereas The Sun describes The Golden Age as epic as the promo for Born To Die [Woodkid] made for Lana last year". The Clash Magazine classifies "this painfully impeccable solo debut" by Woodkid as a "mosaic [...] soaring from alien-movie soundtracks to the show tunes of Rufus Wainwright or Elton John" that "is an utterly grandiose project, incorporating organ, church bells, Taiko drums, timpani, brass, strings, woodwind - a fully orchestral work, bravely centering on Woodkid's voice."

Woodkid's "Iron" was also chosen by the successful video game franchise Assassin's Creed for use in its blockbuster launch in 2011. The collaboration continued when Woodkid's second single "Run Boy Run" was used for the global advertising campaign of the release of Assassin's Creed 3 in 2012.

Apart from all this praise, Woodkid remains the musical artist and subtle producer of his incredibly moving stories and images "and the depth of feeling, tenderness, awe and melancholia that they evoke" (The Clash Magazine). He is directing all his videos on his own and turns every live performance into a spectacle rarely seen in the world of pop music. Together with a 30-piece orchestra, he turned the venerable Le Grand Rex theatre in Paris in September 2012 into a place of ecstasy in front of 3.000 adoring fans. "When I started playing my own music, I wanted it to be as tall as a skyscraper. Images can achieve that. A really big orchestra can also achieve that."

This creative ambition and artistic freedom have allowed Woodkid to make such a unique sounding ("delicate and impressive", The Clash Magazine) and powerful album as The Golden Age. "It's all about that time of passage between adolescence and adulthood, into that confusing hyper-reality," Woodkid notes. "I talk about those perceptible changes". "It's about love, life and death, striving for your own identity, those basic crises of adolescence. [...] I always play the part of the sympathetic observer."

Track listing:

1. The Golden Age
2. Run Boy Run
3. The Great Escape
4. Boat Song
5. I Love You
6. The Shore
7. Ghost Lights
8. Shadows
9. Stabat Mater
10. Conquest Of Spaces
11. Falling
12. Where I Live
13. Iron
14. The Other Side