Originally from Toulouse, France, Olivier Alary created Ensemble as his musical persona in 1998, as a platform to explore the meeting point between melodic noise and disjointed pop. After dropping out from an architecture course at college, Olivier moved to London. Initially working under the name ‘Hearing Is Our Concern’, he was actually the first person the newly-founded FatCat label ever received a demo from, although nothing came of this at the time, as Olivier wanted to do further work on his tracks.