Saturday, October 18, 2025

CHANCE

John Cage during his 1966 concert at the opening of the National Arts Foundation in Washington, D.C.

 

"Most people who believe that I'm interested in chance don't realize that I use chance as a discipline — they think I use it — I don't know — as a way of giving up making choices. But my choices consist in choosing what questions to ask...

If I ask the I Ching a question as though it were a book of wisdom, which it is,  I generally say, "What do you have to say about this?" and then I just listen to what it says and see if some bells ring or not"

 

John Cage, quoted by Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats. John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, The Penguin Press, 2012, p. 213. 

Sunday, October 12, 2025

LOOKING TO COLLABORATE WITH EXPERIMENTAL FILMAKERS ON ATMOSPHERIC, SOUND-DRIVEN WORKS.


I’m looking to connect with filmmakers or visual and video artists creating experimental or conceptual short films — works that challenge form and perception. My aim is to create immersive audiovisual pieces where sound and image interact as equal elements, shaping mood and meaning together.
 
This is a creative and non-commercial initiative, focused on exploration, dialogue, and artistic process. 
 
If your visual practice moves through atmosphere, concept, abstraction, or emotional resonance, I’d love to hear from you. 
 
contact: DM or mail: wittman.christian [@] gmail.com
 
some links to my recent albums: 
 

THE SOUND CHARTS OF JOHN CAGE

John Cage "Music of Changes" Manuscript Fragment 

Courtesy the John Cage Trust

 "Until that time, my music had been based on the traditional idea that you had to say something. The charts gave me my first indication of the possibility of saying nothing"

John Cage 

 

"(These elaborate sound charts) resemble checkerboards laid out with combinations of sounds. In composing, Cage makes "moves" by drawing lines — diagonals, horizontals, verticals — on the chart to determine which sound comes next" 

 

Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, Penguin Books, 2013, p. 168.

THREE TRACKS INCLUDED IN THE "DESCENDING DUSK" PROGRAM OF HEARTS OF SPACE!

 


 Link

Saturday, October 11, 2025

MUSIC AND SELF-EXPRESSION: ARE WE IN A TOWER OF BABEL?

John Cage (1988)

"The need to change my music was evident to me earlier in my life. I had been taught, as most people are, that music is in effect the expression of an individual's ego — "self-expression" is what I have been taught. But then, when I saw that everyone was expressing himself differently and using a different way of composing, I deduced that we were in a Tower of Babel situation because no one was understanding anybody else; for instance, I wrote a sad piece and people hearing it laughed. It was clearly pointless to continue in that way, so I determined to stop writing music until I found a better reason than "self-expression" for it"

 John Cage, quoted in: Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, Penguin Books, 2013, p. 119-120 

Friday, October 10, 2025

Q & A. COLLABORATION WITH PAUL HASLINGER?

  

One last question about Paul Haslinger: how did you meet him and what was your collaboration like? It seems that you currently have a project with him?

We met Paul in March 1986 during the two Tangerine Dream concerts at the Olympia, organized by Serge Leroy. Paul returned to Paris a few days later, and we met him again thanks to mutual friends. We had the opportunity to play him  Cités analogues  and discuss our musical activities. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that has lasted for decades, as it continues to this day. Our collaboration took many forms: we played two concerts together (in Paris and London), and Paul participated in five of our albums, either for occasional edits on our mixes or for direct creative input on certain tracks. It is thanks to Paul that we were sponsored by Atari at one point and signed by Hearts of Space/Fathom. Paul also recorded Jon Hassell's contribution to one of the tracks on Bleue comme une orange in his studio in Los Angeles. Paul has given us so much, both technically and artistically, and we have wonderful memories of rehearsals and composing in the studio, as well as the two concerts we gave together, not to mention the convivial moments in Paris and Los Angeles... 



Studio session in Paris in 2002 for the Lightwave album "Bleue comme une orange"

We had been discussing a reboot of our musical collaboration for some time. I took the initiative to get things going again in April of this year, and we started working remotely, exchanging audio tracks. Almost immediately, we found a common musical language, both minimalist and sophisticated, combining our expertise and personalities, and exploring directions that we had both ventured into. A first track emerged, then a second and a third, which Paul refined and improved in successive mixes, and whose direction we consolidated through exchanges of feedback and ideas.

 

Draft cover of the forthcoming album (SOOND label)


We named this album Mallarmé, in reference to the famous 19th-century poet who paved the way for modern poetry through his creative deconstruction of the French language and the typographical space of the handwritten and printed page. The three long pieces on the album are based on slowness, space, and the gradual metamorphosis of sounds and textures. Mallarmé is a project that opens up a listening space that is both minimalist and abstract, ambient yet quite contemporary. IMHO, its is a very beautiful album…  

Our album will be released by SOOND in the first quarter of 2026 (CD and digital), a label specializing in classical, contemporary, and electroacoustic music, from Johannes Brahms to Philip Glass, from Gesualdo to Bruno Letort.

We have also agreed with Paul to continue this collaboration, in a format different from Lightwave, but which may involve Christoph Harbonnier in future projects, recordings, and live performances.

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Q & A. ABOUT THE MAJOR CHALLENGES FOR AN INDEPENDENT MUSICIAN IN 2025

 

What do you see as the major challenges for an independent, non-commercial musician in 2025?

These challenges are immense. However, you have to overcome the discouragement that often threatens to stop you from continuing, when musical creation is part of who you are, of your life. I think many people will recognize themselves in my experience... Not being backed by a major record label or a publishing or management agency leaves us a little helpless in today's musical jungle. I'm just stating the obvious, but the democratization of access to music production (which is a good thing in itself) leads to a continuous flood of new albums, in the most popular genres as well as in niche genres such as ambient. How can you stay afloat among the tens of thousands of new tracks poured onto streaming and download platforms every day? This is the realm of algorithms, which operate on self-fulfilling prophecies: a musician who does not exceed a certain threshold of streams will never be featured on editorialized playlists, quod erat demonstrandum! Added to this are the challenges of music generated by artificial intelligence, uploaded in droves by rogue companies. This system crushes independent and non-mainstream musicians, remuneration rates are ridiculously low, and the vast majority of tracks put on platforms earn no income at all. Earning a few dozen euros a year, I consider myself one of the happy few.


Except for the most established musicians, Spotify is a machine that erases differences and produces uniform, anonymous playlists, with nothing that stands out. The coherence of albums and the very identity of musicians disappear into a continuum that serve as a backdrop for sleeping, napping, studying, reading, running, doing anything and everything. Utility music, calibrated to be heard without being listened to, formatted into tracks of three or four minutes maximum because beyond that, attention wanders, doesn't it? I have never managed to break into this algorithmic ecosystem, and after investing significant sums in platforms that serve as interfaces with playlist curators, where you have to pay between $2 and $3 just to have your track listened to, and more often than not rejected, I gave up. I think I'm past the age of being lectured by the little ayatollahs of streaming who reject my music because it's too abstract, not melodic enough, they don't like the piano, it needs more bass, your music is creepy, we're looking for up-tempo, it needs vocals, etc. LOL

                                  My Spotify dashboard


So much for the dystopian side of things. But it's not all doom and gloom. Even with fairly low streaming statistics, platforms provide global visibility, and every listen, every addition to a personal playlist, whether in Japan, Brazil, or Denmark, is a way to expand your network and reach new listeners. Bandcamp remains a great platform for musicians and independent labels, allowing them to build their discography, measure their audience, and earn decent compensation for their music....




There are also a host of small independent labels, often only existing on Bandcamp, which are niche and specialized, managed by enthusiasts, often musicians themselves, offering limited edition CDs, vinyls, or cassettes, often with beautiful artwork and sometimes original, high-end packaging that makes the CD a collector's item. I have had the opportunity to have my music published on some of them: Disco Gecko, Cyclical Dreams, Shimmering Moods, Slow Tone Collages, Whitelabrecs, Driftworks. Each label has its own audience, loyalized by newsletters, and while most of them do not provide financial returns, they do shine a spotlight on the musician and help expanding their audience. It should be noted that musicians grant a temporary license, retain the rights to their music, and can generally republish these albums on their own Bandcamp page and platforms a few weeks later. This is an alternative micro-economic model, where these small net-labels can have a very high-end artistic policy and self-finance in order to, ultimately, do promotional and public relations work for the benefit of their artists.

Another positive element is the multiple relays of podcasts, radio shows, blogs, and webzines, which act as echo chambers, delayed, localized, or broad, for independent musicians. Each of these outlets has its own audience and its own musical filters, and often features mediators with in-depth, long-term knowledge of the evolution of electronic music—Audion magazine, among others, is a remarkable example of this.

So, to sum up... The current music ecosystem forces independent musicians to be versatile. Music creation is only part of their job. They also have to manage their own press relations, maintain their presence on social media, promote themselves, build a personal brand, and try to stay afloat in a world where everything is fast-moving, from newsfeeds to playlists and podcasts: it's a constant struggle to stay on the radar...

Being an independent musician today therefore involves making fundamental choices, which have as much to do with career strategies as with artistic projects and personality. For my part, I have never sought to follow the trends of the moment, especially the very specific stylistic criteria of the dominant ambient playlists. I also think that the term “ambient” has lost much of its meaning today and now covers what used to be called “new age”—nothing pejorative in itself, but it's not the music I listen to or create. I think it's important to stick to a clear and readable roadmap, to a consistency that is ultimately a guarantee of human and artistic authenticity and integrity. Musicians such as Steve Roach, Robert Rich, Ian Boddy, and Tangerine Dream, in its successive lineups, have had this merit and have built long careers on this consistency. Lightwave's journey has been more confidential because our music was undoubtedly more difficult, situated at the crossroads of different genres, and therefore intended to a smaller audience. As for me, my solo journey is relatively recent, and I have only been able to rely partially on Lightwave's reputation, which I believe is totally unknown to the younger generation and the vast majority of the ambient audience.

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi.