A Dystopian Landscape? A new review of "Cités Analogues"

 

If you find white noise – or field music – relaxing, then this album, originally recorded and released way back in 1988 by the French duo Christoph Harbonnier and Christian Wittman, would definitely scratch that itch. However, I can’t promise you that your dreams will be sweet ones for its entire duration…

It’s something of a pioneering work, the gentle electronica of ‘Le Parvis‘ like an embracement of the soul, akin to a woozy, back seat of a taxi ride through the lights of the city at three in the morning. This comes after the ‘field music’ of ‘Intro‘, ‘Airport‘ and ‘Correspondance pour ailleurs‘ (effectively ‘Mail For Elsewhere‘), being, let’s not forget, a good six years before The Future Sound Of London’s seminal classic Lifeforms. Whether or not the latter act knew of, or took inspiration from, Lightwave, I am unsure, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

The otherworldly feel of much of this record is partly due to its sparsity, yet that somehow gives it an unexpected gravitas that is eerily beautiful – I guess in the same way that Vangelis‘s soundtrack to Blade Runner was – particularly on the thirteen and a half minute ‘Agora‘.

A night-time album if ever there was one, Cités Analogues sometimes has a creepier, ghostly feel about it, not least on the short ‘Cités de miroires‘ and the subsequent ‘Polycentre‘, which would absolutely work as incidental music in a psychological horror movie.

This is most definitely not an album for connoisseurs of ‘pop’ music or lovers of the contagious refrain. Instead, it requires the listener to use their imagination, or to lose themselves in the artists’ created world, though I would think fans of The Orb, at least, or of Brian Eno‘s ambient works, would be able to see the appeal in these recordings. The title track is arguably the only one that flirts with any kind of commercial bent, however – a 14-minute piece that feels like a carefree journey through stunning exotic landscapes. It’s odd how it often makes me feel like I’m a passenger, relaxing in one type of vehicle or another, but that, in itself, is strangely appealing.

After that, things become even more minimalistic, with the empty sky meanderings of ‘Ophelia‘ and the final void of nothingness that is ‘Lunar Parking‘.

Cités Analogues certainly feels like an important work anyway, and while I’m unlikely to be taking this to accompany you on many car journeys, it undoubtedly has a unique appeal, particularly if you’re a devotee of Dystopian soundscapes.

Cités Analogues is out now on Bureau B.

 

Loz Etheridge, God is in the TV Zine.

Memories from the '80s

 

 

Found on the web... A pic of me in the Lightwave studio around 1988... It was "Malibu Studio", not in Los Angeles, but in Parmain ... We gave this name to our studio because we drank some Malibu the night we recorded "Nachtmusik" (does it explain why we recorded these crazy tracks that night?)...

Cités analogues — Review on Rough Trade

"Cités Analogues is a mesmerizing album by Lightwave, released by Bureau B / Indigo. This ambient electronic masterpiece takes listeners on a journey through ethereal soundscapes and hypnotic rhythms.

Each track on the album is carefully crafted to create a sense of otherworldly beauty, blending intricate layers of synthesizers, pulsating beats, and haunting melodies. The music ebbs and flows, creating a dreamlike atmosphere that invites the listener to lose themselves in its immersive sonic landscapes.

Lightwave's attention to detail is evident throughout Cités Analogues, with each composition unfolding like a sonic tapestry rich in texture and emotion. The seamless integration of organic sounds with electronic elements gives the music a unique depth and warmth that sets it apart from other ambient works.

From the opening notes to the final crescendo, Cités Analogues captivates the listener with its evocative soundscapes and innovative approach to electronic music. It is a must-have for fans of ambient music looking for a truly transcendent listening experience."

 Rough Trade

"Cités Analogues" — Review on Groove.nl

Link

 

In the story of electronic music – and especially that with a more experimental, ambient viewpoint – the name of Lightwave will not be known to many. Christoph Harbonnier and Christian Wittman released their first album, Modular Experiments, in 1987, after which they recorded Cités Analogues in April and May 1988. It was released as a casette.

Their relative neglect is a mystery, but the restoration of this album should ensure their profile is raised. Bureau B have done the duo proud with a reissue on LP, CD and download. Their press release lists an inventory of RSF, ARP, Roland and Oberheim modular systems, mixed on A&H 12/2 and recorded to tape on a Revox B77 tape machine – a complex set-up but one aimed at what they describe as ‘a concept album, comprising of a series of discrete compositions and atmospheres assembled into two continuous tracks. The tracks are split out a little by dividers, with field recordings and tape processing softening the join between sections.

This is a fascinating listen, and if you didn’t already know you might suspect that Cités Analogues had been recorded in the last year, such is its reach and originality. Whether they work in long or short form the duo make subtly shifting soundscapes that are unexpectedly intense in their realisation.

On occasion they hit some winsome grooves, as in the slow but elastic Le Purvis. Agora is lost in thought, musing over a slowly shifting bass, while the eerie Polycentre and activity of News are at once complementary. Cités Analogues itself is an effective long form piece, its quarter-hour duration packed full of ideas and fragments that are given an assured and compelling development. As the album evolves Lightwave create soundscapes with industrial roots but with added splashes of instrumental colour. These are especially evident on Ophelia, a dream sequence with feather-light textures, suspended in mid-air.

 

"Cités Analogues" — Review on babyblaue-seiten.de (German)

 

 

Review by Achim Breiling in Babyblaue-seiten.de

(English translation below) 

 

Lightwave aus Paris, 1985 entstanden, veröffentlichten 1987 mit "Modular Experiment" ihr Debütalbum, erschienen in kleiner Auflage auf Tonbandkassette. Da war das Projekt ein Trio, mit Serge Leroy neben dem Gründungsduo aus Christian Whitman und Christoph Harbonnier. Bei den Aufnahmen zum Nachfolgealbum "Cités Analogues" war man dann nur noch zu zweit. Dasselbe erschien 1988 wieder als Kassette, und gilt nach dem recht experimentellen Erstling als erstes Album mit dem typischen Lightwave-Sound.

Im Januar 2025 haben sich nun bureau b des Materials angenommen und "Cités Analogues" erstmals auf CD veröffentlicht. Das Album wurde dazu von Christoph Harbonnier höchstselbst neu abgemischt und gemastert. Vergleicht man die Spielzeit der CD mit im Weltweiten Netz zu findenden Angaben zur Kassettenversion, stellt man fest, dass Harbonnier das ursprünglich etwas über einstündige Werk offenbar um rund 7 Minuten gekürzt hat. Vor allem das ursprünglich fast 10-minütige "Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis" ist davon betroffen. Beim Hören stellt man keine sonderlichen Brüche fest, so dass ich einmal annehme (ich kenne die Kassettenversion nicht), dass das Werk von der leichten Straffung profitiert hat. Der Sound ist exzellent.

Zwei lange Suiten (nach "Agora" gibt es eine kurze Pause – davor und danach gehen die Nummern ineinander über) aus Elektronikspielereien, Tastensounds, Tonbandkollagen, Geräuscheinspielungen und Stimmfetzendurcheinander (in "Airport" z.B.) und nur selten elektronisch-perkussiven Mustern (vor allem im schon erwähnten "Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis" - vielleicht ganz gut, dass die Nummer gekürzt wurde - und im Titelstück) ist auf "Cités Analogues" zu finden, die sehr farbig instrumentiert dahin wogt, ohne direkt Bezug auf irgendwelche Vorbilder oder Inspirationsquellen zu nehmen. Eher frei schwebend arbeitet sich die Musik voran (von "Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis" abgesehen), voluminös hallend, klangvoll rumorend, getragen schreitend, mysteriös flüsternd oder experimenteller klangbastelnd. Berliner Sequenzermuster sind eigentlich nur sporadisch im langen Titelstück auszumachen. Ansonsten erzeugen die beiden Franzosen durchaus eigene, sehr kreative Tongebilde.

"Cités Analogues" ist ein interessantes Album mit progressiver französischer Untergrund-Elektronik, das erfreulich wenige typische 80er-Jahre-Verunreinigungen aufweist (bis auf das Bisschen E-Perkussion – glücklicherweise wird man von Plastikklatschen verschont), und es schafft, im Gegensatz zu den meisten damals noch aktiven Begründern des Stils, den progressiven Geist der 70er auch gegen Ende des darauffolgen Jahrzehnts am Leben zu halten. Die Scheibe hatte es durchaus verdient durch die Neuauflage vor dem Vergessenwerden bewahrt zu werden. Elektronikadepten können bedenkenlos zugreifen. Nun bleibt noch zu hoffen, dass bureau b auch den schon erwähnten, nicht weniger interessanten Lightwave-Erstling ("Modular Experiment") neu auflegt.

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 Lightwave from Paris, formed in 1985, released their debut album “Modular Experiment” in 1987, published in a small edition on tape cassette. At the time, the project was a trio, with Serge Leroy alongside the founding duo of Christian Wittman and Christoph Harbonnier. For the recordings of the follow-up album “Cités Analogues”, it was just the two of them. The same album was released on cassette in 1988 and, after the rather experimental first album, is considered the first album with the typical Lightwave sound.

In January 2025, Bureau B took on the material and released “Cités Analogues” on CD for the first time. The album was remixed and mastered by Christoph Harbonnier himself. If you compare the playing time of the CD with the information on the cassette version found on the worldwide web, you will notice that Harbonnier has apparently shortened the original one-hour work by around 7 minutes. The originally almost 10-minute “Le Parvis” is particularly affected by this. Listening to it, you don't notice any particular breaks, so I assume (I don't know the cassette version) that the work has benefited from the slight streamlining. The sound is excellent.

 Two long suites (after “Agora” there is a short break - before and after that the numbers merge into one another) of electronic gimmicks, keyboard sounds, tape collages, noise recordings and vocal shredding (in ‘Airport’, for example) and only rarely electronic-percussive patterns (especially in the aforementioned “Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis” - perhaps it's a good thing that it was shortened - and in the title track). )  can be found on “Cités Analogues”, which undulates along with very colorful instrumentation without making direct reference to any role models or sources of inspiration. The music (apart from “Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis”) is rather free-floating, voluminously reverberating, sonorously rumbling, striding along, mysteriously whispering or experimentally tinkering with sound. Berlin sequencing patterns can only be detected sporadically in the long title track. Otherwise, the two Frenchmen produce their own, very creative soundscapes.

“Cités Analogues” is an interesting album with progressive French underground electronics, which has pleasingly few typical 80s impurities (apart from the little bit of electric percussion - fortunately you are spared plastic claps) and, unlike most of the founders of the style who were still active at the time, manages to keep the progressive spirit of the 70s alive towards the end of the following decade. The album certainly deserved to be saved from oblivion by the reissue. Electronic fans can pick it up without hesitation. Now it remains to be hoped that bureau b will also reissue the aforementioned, no less interesting Lightwave debut (“Modular Experiment”).

 

 

"Cités Analogues". Review by Paul Simpson

 

 review by Paul Simpson on AllMusic.

 

During the '90s, French electronic outfit Lightwave worked with Hector Zazou several times, and former Tangerine Dream member Paul Haslinger joined the group. Cités Analogues, however, was one of Lightwave's early cassette releases, recorded soon after their core lineup of Christoph Harbonnier and Christian Wittman was established. Recorded and mixed live in the studio, then produced and edited soon afterward, the effort was made using modular synthesizers, Roland sequencers, and digital effects. Subsequent Lightwave efforts ventured into neo-classical territory, and with some of them appearing on Hearts of Space sublabel Fathom, they might've been found in the new age section at record stores. This recording is a bit too dark, cold, and collage-like to fit in such a category. The bustling sounds of a crowded airport are heard near the beginning of the album, segueing into radio airwave noises and trickling analog synths. "Le Parvis" establishes a sinister groove, with sneaking electronic drums and synth playing approximating wild flute trills. Another passage of sampled crowd noise segues into "Agora," an extended, ambient reflection that feels like an escape from society in order to seek a tranquil, meditative space. Following a few brief pieces consisting of uneasy, haunted textures and more found sounds, "Cités Analogues" makes greater use of the duo's sequencers and drum machines, recalling Tangerine Dream's rhythmic side while foreshadowing the type of cerebral ambient techno that would be much more common five years later, and adding a bit of analog crunch. Lightwave would go on to do bigger, more ambitious, and more accomplished things, but Cités Analogues is a set of promising early steps containing some innovative moments which sound slightly ahead of their time.

 

https://www.allmusic.com/album/cit%C3%A9s-analogues-mw0004412360

"Cités Analogues" Review by Cal Cashin (The Quietus)

Re-issued from a 1988 limited-run cassette, this piquant slab of progressive Parisian electronics simultaneously looks back to 1970s kosmische and forward to the uncanny tones of the Ghost Box label.

Since its invention, the synthesizer has been a powerful tool that has allowed artists to harness feelings of utter loneliness and detachment in their music, often to match feelings of disenfranchisement and disassociation with a technologically transforming world. Alongside the rise of Kraftwerk, the emergence of Britain’s alienated synthesists in the 1970s’ tail end is one of electronic music’s most widely documented happenings and for good reason. As synthesizers became commercially accessible, a collective of rogues and eccentrics used them for a series of experiments and projects that had a profound impact on popular music. The analogue antics of Daniel Miller, Chris Carter, and Cabaret Voltaire have been deservedly mythologised, and generations have taken influence from those synth experiments of Sheffield basements and London warehouses past. As we hurtle closer and closer to a technology-driven extinction, this kind of music feels more prescient than ever.

The 1980s saw a period of refinement and fragmentation for synthesizer music. Its enthusiastic embrace at the hands of pop music, and its dominance of dancefloors and discotheques, probably live longest in the popular imagination. But on the fringes, the world over, the limitless possibilities of the instrument were being explored, its limits were still pushed by a cast of fearless experimentalists.

One such group was Lightwave. A Parisian progressive electronic ensemble formed around the core duo of kindred dabblers Christian Whitman and Christoph Harbonnier, Lightwave’s discreet and novel synthesizer pieces place them somewhere between the industrial alienation of the late 70s British pioneers and the meditative textural works of The Berlin School adventurers like Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching.

Freshly reissued for the first time this month, 1988’s Cités Analogue is the first album that Whitman and Harbonnier collaborated on, the project’s true inception. Largely recorded live, it’s a rich tapestry of disjointed melodies conjured up on an arsenal of synthesizers, of clunking percussion and disembodied vocal fragments. One vast liminal space.

The end result is an album that sounds, surprisingly, so thoroughly modern in its execution that it could easily slip under the radar as a new release.

The title track is the record’s centrepiece. A stirring composition that sees the duo slowly adding, and adding to an undulating synth texture that slowly evolves into a mechanical colossus over its fifteen-minute runtime. It’s a collage that sees the group wide-eyed, excitedly adding layer after layer with joyous aplomb; juddering arpeggios, soaring string-sounds, the track is punctuated by everything from percussive slams and scrambled vocal samples.

‘Airport’ and ‘News’ are two of the album’s more discreet tracks, but a duo that see Whitman and Harbonnier’s vision perhaps best realised. Skeletal, eerie textures meld with samples of airport chatter and a fading-in-and-out English language radio signal respectively, creating the cold, urban sound that Lightwave strive for in perfect microcosm. There’s something of the uncanny, of the Ghost Box, about the group’s presentation of different spaces here, a machinelike coldness that is only drawn into sharper focus by the addition of human chatter.

In contrast stands ‘Le Parvis’, which was put out as a single last year, a real stomper that leans heavily on a phantomic low-end bass groove, which, whilst not necessarily out of place, is way more pummelling, writhing, grooving than the rest of the album. It sees the group channel the same urban soundworld, but into something that sounds more optimistic, all fizzing and crackling, automaton joy.