Some music is simply heard; other music seems to draw pictures before our eyes. With Woodkid, I often feel both things happening at once. A deep voice, percussion marching forward, strings rising into the air, and suddenly a landscape appears. Behind the name is Yoann Lemoine, an artist who has never truly separated sound from image.
An Eye Before a Voice
Before becoming known as Woodkid, Yoann Lemoine worked in images. He directed music videos and developed a striking visual language: strong contrasts, bodies in motion, monumental architecture, and a way of giving the simplest gestures an almost mythological weight. That background explains a great deal. For him, a song never arrives alone; it seems to come with its own setting, light and rhythm.
What I enjoy about this approach is that the visuals do not merely illustrate the music. They extend it, sometimes challenge it, and open other doors. The black and white of certain videos, the mineral textures and tiny silhouettes facing enormous spaces feel like watching a memory that has been invented. We may not always know exactly what story is being told, but we feel its power immediately.
The Breath of The Golden Age
In 2013, The Golden Age brought this world fully into focus. On tracks such as “Iron” and “Run Boy Run”, Woodkid combines a restrained voice, sweeping orchestration and almost martial rhythms. Yet beneath the sonic grandeur lie fragility, growing up and memories we wish we could hold on to. That contrast is what makes the music moving: it travels with the scale of an epic while speaking about deeply human wounds.
Matter, Bodies and Machines
Seven years later, S16 revealed a different landscape. Released in 2020, the album embraced a denser, more industrial aesthetic, as though metal had taken the place of stone. Sounds scrape, rumble and breathe; the imagery evokes bodies caught in forces larger than themselves. The title refers to sulfur’s chemical symbol, and the idea of matter undergoing transformation runs through the project. Woodkid is not simply changing scenery: he is changing texture.
I find that evolution compelling because it resists repetition. He could have remained within the grand percussion and spectacular imagery that first brought him recognition. Instead, he explores a more unsettled territory, where beauty can also emerge from tension. The music still feels cinematic, but not in the usual sense: it is an inner landscape, built from sounds, shapes and sensations.
Building a World, Not Just a Song
Perhaps what connects Woodkid’s projects is the desire to build a complete world. Music, video, stage design and graphic identity are not separate decorations; they belong to the same creative language. At a time when songs are so often consumed in fragments, that ambition to make something we can both watch and hear feels especially valuable to me. And when the final note fades, sometimes an image remains. Perhaps that is the clearest sign that the music has found its way.
