Surprised by this invitation, Prigent wrote a satirical song, "Son Alma Ata" (later included on Sarac'h) about the incongruity for a Breton singer to be sent to perform in Kazakhstan.
Although the album was, at first, intended for promoting Prigent's songs to festival organizers rather than for being sold to the general audience, its sales approached 50,000 copies.
When Prigent failed to receive compensation from Auvidis/Silex for sales of the album, he sued the label and signed with Barclay Records for his subsequent releases.
E trouz ar gêr, about the artificial aspects of living in a city, and An hentoù adkavet, about the revival of the Tro Breizh, are his first songs devoted to Brittany, its culture and its relation to nature.
This combination of ancient singing and modern music is illustrated by Ar rannoù, one of the oldest known Breton texts, for which Prigent recomposed the traditional tune using electronic sounds.
Thanks to musicians like Alan Stivell, who quickly understood that academising Breton music would shortly condemn it, it is now completely anchored in daily life.
[12]Although the extreme difference between his a cappella songs and his new tracks using electronic samples received mixed reviews, Prigent considered that he remained faithful to the arrhythmic, unmeasured aspect of Breton music.
According to Prigent, a measured gwerz loses the identity of Breton singing, while an electronic accompaniment faithful to the arrhythmic song is perfectly natural.
It is also essential for him to remain faithful to the writing rules of gwerz, with very long lyrics of which only a part is recorded, and its eternal topics that prevent this genre dating back to the 5th century from going out of fashion.
In 1998, he took part in Alan Simon's Excalibur, la légende des Celtes, with Roger Hodgson (the singer of Supertramp), Angelo Branduardi and Didier Lockwood.
This idea of a link between two worlds, between life and death, also appears in Daouzek huñvre, where seven lost spirits clothed in flesh walk in line on a foam path.
[14] The main invited musicians are the jazzman Louis Sclavis, the viellist Valentin Clastrier, and the uilleann piper Davy Spillane.
[15] Gortoz a ran has garnered recent attention (2016) after being featured in the American adult animated sitcom South Park during the second episode of season 20: 'Skank Hunt.'
[16] In Denez Prigent's version of the legend, the gendarmes kill and hang the musicians in order not to admit to having let the real thieves escape, also insisting on the reputation of debauchery which the conformists gave, at the time, to festive music.
Lisa Gerrard is again invited, as is Yanka Rupkina, the soloist of the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir, Karen Matheson of Capercaillie, and the Sami singer Mari Boine.
The album begins with two traditional songs : An hini a garan, with Lisa Gerrard, and E garnison !, with Louise Ebrel, who had already toured with Prigent.
[4] Two previously unreleased songs written in the beginning of Prigent's career are part of the album, Son Alma Ata and Ar gwez-sapin.
N'eus forzh… is about the importance of singing, thanks to which Prigent never loses hope ("leskiñ a ra va zan atav" : my fire always burns).
He describes his despair about this situation, writing that those who dreamt of a return to harmony between generations linked by the Breton language and culture were crazy.
It relates his own return to nature, when, used to the never-ending noise of the cars on the highway next to which he lived in Rennes, he decided to buy a house in Lanvellec (Côtes d'Armor).
This album, comprising 12 original songs written by the singer, including one in English, is the result of several years of writing (a hundred gwerzioù of 80 verses), trips and experiments on stage.
[23] Denez's vocal, "enigmatic and inspiring" (accompanied by the hang on "Before dawn"), is like a link between the real and the invisible, supported by the writing of timeless stories, sometimes tragic, satirical or burlesque, such as "Peñse Nedeleg", a Fisel dance describing the shipwreck of a freighter that makes the happiness of the inhabitants for Christmas[24] or "An tri amourouz" whose black humor recalls that of Tim Burton.
[26] His song "Gortoz a Ran" is used for two minutes in the episode "Skank Hunt" of the animated series South Park which first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on 21 September 2016.
[27] In November 2016, the live album "A-unvan gant ar stered - In unison with the stars" released, recorded during the tour 2015–2016.
[29] The sadness that Denez Prigent feels when he lives in a city is the topic of E trouz ar gêr, which concludes as the world ends, and in Melezourioù-glav, in which he finds a new hope in the last remaining natural element: rain.
The narrator wishes to be buried in a foam path to be eternally cradled by the tide, watched over by his real family: rain, birds, wind, the sea.
[30] Given before her thirteenth birthday to a man who makes her a slave, she sheds her tears on the tree she planted, which bears the best fruit in the world.
An iliz ruz is a very graphical description of the massacre of 2,000 people in a church in Nyarubuyé, Rwanda: "they cut their heads off mercilessly / like one reaps wheat in summer".