He shot to fame as a music video director, framing some of pop's most notable names including Moby, Katy Perry, Lana del Rey and Rihanna.

Now, France's multi-talented creator Woodkid has turned the spotlight on himself, releasing a widely anticipated debut album set to merge Tolkien and Bergman as much as it does electro and classical strings.

With The Golden Age, Woodkid, or Yoann Lemoine, spills his heart out in an ambitious and personal four-year musical project that began to hit shelves Monday.

His first two singles "Iron" and "Run Boy Run" have already sold 300,000 copies worldwide and the video for the latter was even nominated as Best Short Form Music Video at the Grammy Awards.

In an interview with AFP, the 29-year-old classically trained pianist from Lyon says Woodkid was born after he mixed pretty much everything that inspired him: sounds, texts, and visuals.

The music could almost have been a Hollywood production. The French National Orchestra, the Paris Opera, DJ Sebastian and electro-group The Shoes, have all contributed.

But Woodkid has not just made an album. He has also made videos and written a book to go along with it.

Written together with his cousin Katarzyna Jerzak, a literature professor, Woodkid embarked on the project tracing his eastern European family, Poles whom he said "denied their Jewish roots after the war."

"With this project, I almost did an archaeological psychoanalysis, (and) I managed to answer some questions," he said.