INTERVIEW OF PAUL HASLINGER. FROM TANGERINE DREAM TO THE SONIC GEOGRAPHIES OF noion MUSIC (1)

[Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ]

From the sonic cathedrals of Tangerine Dream in the mid-80s to the intricate, pulse-pounding textures of Hollywood film scores, Paul Haslinger has spent his career at the intersection of formal academic rigor and cutting-edge technological experimentation. After two decades of defining the sound of modern cinema and television—from Underworld to Halt and Catch Fire—Haslinger is returning to his roots of total creative autonomy.

Alongside long-time collaborator Christian Wittman (of Lightwave), he has launched noion Music, a label dedicated to "atmospheric minimalism" and deep listening. The label’s inaugural releases, “Mallarmé” and “Borges,” serve as "curated sonic geographies" where mathematical precision meets the expansive, metaphysical depths of literature. We sat down with Paul to discuss the philosophy of the new label, his shared history with Wittman, and how a lifetime of "memory palaces" has led to this new chapter of sound art.



 

Paul, you’ve described noion as a platform for “atmospheric minimalism.” After such a vast career, what was the specific catalyst that made you feel now was the time to launch your own independent label?


When I think of record labels, the ones that truly inspired me always come to mind: ECM, New Albion, Made to Measure, Modern Love, Nonesuch. What made these labels stand out for me wasn’t just the excellent music, but the whole package: the control over artwork, the presentation as a whole, the conveyance of music. So after admiring all these labels for a long time, one quite naturally develops the wish to start something in the same vein on your own terms. A new field of possibilities, curated from the ground up and held to my impossibly high standards.

 

You and Christian Wittman have a creative history stretching back to Lightwave’s “Tycho Brahé.” How has your collaborative dynamic evolved from those early days to this new, paritarian partnership?


 
Friendships and musical collaborations often foster our “second family”: a group of people you encounter, interact with, and keep in touch with. In the case of Christian (and Christoph, a member of Lightwave), we first met in 1986, so we’ve known each other for 40 years. And we count quite a few chapters in that history.
We’ve also collaborated with an array of outstanding musicians. It was a 2004 project with Lightwave (Bleue Comme Une Orange) that introduced me to the late Jon Hassell, one of my key influences and musical father figures (together with Richard Horowitz).

I think the key to any long-lasting relationship, musical or otherwise, is the amount of electricity between people: how much you are able to inspire and propel each other toward something you would not have discovered on your own. This has certainly been the case in my friendship with Christian. No day and no conversation has ever been quite the same. We continue a process of discovery that started many years ago.

You’ve called the noion catalogue a “curated sonic geography.” How do you and Christian decide which "territories"—between Ambient, Drone, and Contemporary Classical—are worth exploring?
 

I think for both of us, a lifetime of listening to and absorbing music has resulted in a set of musical and creative preferences. They provide the foundations for most of our discussions and projects.
For the last 10–15 years, technological advances in music software have brought us to the point where we can create music in the style of Ligeti with just a laptop. And this approach—to create from memory and aesthetic selection—is very much aligned with the original concept of musique concrète.

This is a reactive approach, similar to photography. Haruki Murakami famously stated that he never knows where a book or story will end when he begins to write it. This is also our approach: we know the frame of a project, but we leave open all the possibilities within it.

INTERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN WITTMAN. FROM LIGHTWAVE TO ATMOSPHERIC MINIMALISM (1)

[Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ]

 While Paul Haslinger provides the architectural and creative backbone of noion, Christian Wittman represents its poetic and sculptural soul. A founding member of the legendary French ensemble Lightwave, Wittman has spent over four decades exploring the "geography of the unconscious," moving from the modular Cosmic explorations of the 1980s to a refined form of "ambient chamber music."

Based in Paris, Wittman’s work at Nina Studio has long been at the crossroads of sound design and surrealist philosophy. With the launch of noion and the dual release of “Mallarmé” and “Borges,” he invites us into a realm where silence is as vital as the notes themselves. We spoke with Christian about the “automatic writing” of sound, his shared history with Haslinger, and why literature remains the ultimate compass for his electronic explorations.

Christian, you have been a key figure in the French electronic scene since the founding of Lightwave in 1984. How does the launch of noion feel different from your previous label experiences, such as with Hearts of Space or Signatures?
 

I don’t know if I was a key figure, but thank you…! Since Lightwave’s early days, we’ve weathered the massive shifts in the music industry. We were first signed to “traditional” record labels, like Erdenklang, which allowed us to release our first CD, “Nachtmusik,” in 1990. Then came Hearts of Space, with the “Fathom” sub-series, for slightly experimental ambient music, where we found ourselves alongside the big names of the California scene—Steve Roach, Robert Rich, and Michael Stearns. Then came “Signatures,” a label created by Radio France, which marked a new phase in our music, as we moved away from space music and dark ambient toward a more abstract and experimental form of chamber music, combining electronics and acoustic instruments. This took us up to the early 2000s…  Then came the crisis of independent labels and the rise of streaming platforms, the dominance of the mainstream, and a reluctance toward musical experimentation, which closed many doors… Like many others, I opted for self-production in the early 2020s, using Bandcamp and a DSP that gave me access to streaming and download sites. These changes made musicians independent, free to create, and gradually building their audience. The rules of the game, however, are ruthless, even rigged, in an ecosystem driven by opaque algorithms and dominated by Spotify. To understand what goes on behind the scenes, you must read Liz Pelly’s enlightening book, *Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist*  (2025). The diagnosis is terrifying… The tidal wave of AI-generated music today is introducing another major upheaval—a tsunami, in fact—that is hitting all players in the music industry with full force: labels, publishers, artists, instrumentalists, as well as the designers of virtual instruments and sample libraries...

As our collaboration project with Paul Haslinger began to gain momentum (in the spring of 2025), we approached a number of labels. But we finally opted for a different path: creating our own label, noion music, and taking full control of every aspect of our music’s production and distribution. Creative independence, control over our compositions at every stage, control over publishing, control over visuals and artistic identity…  With Paul, we fully embrace going against the tide of the major currents that, day by day, are upending the entire music ecosystem. Rather than going with the flow and losing our (artistic) soul, we’ve opted for a consistent approach and a long-term plan, without ignoring the difficulties that await us in the short term. There is something exhilarating about building a new label with strong artistic ambition and envisioning its gradual development over the years. We have a small team with us that helps us approach this project as rigorously and professionally as possible in terms of management and promotion...

noion is described as a platform for "atmospheric minimalism." From your perspective in Paris, how do you see this aesthetic fitting into the broader European tradition of "modern classical" and electro-acoustic music?

— Paul and I have followed parallel paths, even though Paul has had a much more prominent professional career and media exposure than I have. For his part, he started with the up-tempo, percussive electronic music of Tangerine Dream in the late ’80s, before successfully branching out into film and video game soundtracks in Hollywood—a world that offered creative freedom but also came with its share of constraints and stylistic clichés. At the same time, he developed a more personal and experimental solo project, gradually refining his music toward more intimate atmospheres. As for me, with Lightwave, we broke away from our early image—a French clone of late-70s Tangerine Dream, both in terms of instrumentation and music, quite Berlin School-esque, with sequences, etc. We shifted toward a more experimental sound, on the one hand by emphasizing abstraction and electro-acoustic atmospheres, and on the other by involving guest musicians on our albums and in our concerts, particularly Jacques Derégnaucourt (viola, voice), Renaud Pion (wind instruments), Pierre Chaze (electric guitar), and Jon Hassel (trumpet), as well as Paul himself for several projects, which led us toward a form of mixed and hybrid chamber music...

For my solo music, in parallel with and following Lightwave, I believe I pursued two main directions. One was ambient in the vein of Brian Eno and Harold Budd, who remain my absolute references; their albums are the ones I would take with me to a desert island, and not a week goes by without me listening to their music… The second direction led me toward “atmospheric classical,” as Stephen Hill—our label manager during the Hearts of Space/Fathom era and still a radio show programmer on the American public radio network—called it.

I’ve always been passionate about new music—from the New Albion label in San Francisco, the ECM New Series, and more recently from Another Timbre and Kairos, not to mention the albums by Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Max Richter, and Jóhann Jóhannsson. It’s true that there’s something very European about the latter, which also connects to the ECM New Series productions, and I’m also very inspired by composers like Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov. On the American side, the minimalist musicians of New Albion have also influenced me a lot—Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Ingram Marshall…. That doesn’t stop me from really loving Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and John Adams, but I haven’t pursued those directions.

As a French musician, my musical sensibilities have also been shaped by listening to the works of the Groupe de recherche musicale (GRM) and Ircam, which take an exploratory and experimental approach… I’d particularly mention Michel Redolfi, Bernard Parmegiani, François Bayle, and Luc Ferrary, but I also listen a lot to Pierre Boulez and the concerts of the Ensemble Intercontemporain...

So yes, I think my contribution to noion leans toward “atmospheric minimalism”—it’s a philosophy Paul and I share… “Minimalism,” in the sense that we try to refine our music, strip away the superfluous, open up our compositions, and get to the essence. Too many musicians overload their compositions, adding track after track, saturating the listening space—I’m thinking of Jean-Michel Jarre’s latest concerts, which I find unlistenable sonically and unbearable visually. With Paul, we’re going against this trend, and our mixes lean toward simplicity and highlighting what’s truly essential to a track.  “Atmospheric,” too, because in our choice of sound palettes and processing, as well as in the mixing, we try to create music that breathes, that diffuses into the listening space like colors or a scent, like a dream or memories...

INTERVIEW OF PAUL HASLINGER. FROM TANGERINE DREAM TO THE SONIC GEOGRAPHIES OF noion MUSIC (2)

 

[Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ] 

 

 The label manifesto cites Boulez, Cage, and Eno. Which of these thinkers most closely mirrors your current belief that music is an “ethical category” rather than just an aesthetic one?
 

In my mind, Cage is the one closest to our approach, in his appreciation of chance within defined frames.
Common to all three is an interest in discovery, and the drivers of those moments of new insight are not always musical. They often involve philosophical and ethical components, as well as synergies between Western and Eastern thought.
All three also shared a deep appreciation of architecture, because the experience of space is so central to both their definition—and our definition—of musical discovery.


The inaugural tracks were recorded between Nina Studio in Paris and your Large Array in Los Angeles. What kind of technical and poetic dialogue exists between these two very different geographic poles?


In 2026, geographical distance has become quite relative. Thanks to file-sharing and video-conferencing, we have meetings every week, and our conversations go from technical discussions all the way to creative-aesthetic exchanges. We’ve both been obsessed with music for a long time, and beyond that, with books, philosophy, history – and the most fun conversations are always those that can go from the most minute details, to the most universal aspects of creation. It’s our definition of having fun. Lately we've been hearing about attempts to revive supersonic civilian flight, so I haven't entirely given up hope that one day I might once again meet Christian for a coffee in Paris!


In “Mallarmé,” you were inspired by a radical 1897 poem known for its fragmented typography. How did you translate those visual "silences" and the "abolition of chance" into a fluid sonic environment?


Mallarmé saw this poem as the opening of a new space, and in so many ways he demonstrated principles that became central to avant-garde music in the 20th century: non-hierarchical structures, free association, and the breaking of barriers. It is all contained within this text. You could also relate this to the founding principles of musique concrète.

This “field of experience” that Mallarmé was after is also very much reflected in our compositional approach. We typically start with a few musical elements that create a specific atmosphere in line with the poem. This becomes the basis from which we develop a catalogue of ideas in the form of small musical lines, themes, and gestures.

Eventually, we begin reducing and shaping those accumulated ideas into a sequence and balance that achieves the greatest clarity and impact. This is a critical step in the creative arc of these pieces: by reducing elements, we try to get to and unveil the essence of the piece.


Moving to “Borges,” the music unfolds like a labyrinth. How does the sound reflect Jorge Luis Borges’ specific fascinations with infinity, memory, and the unstable nature of reality?


Borges often takes scientific principles to extremes, and then, by distorting them, drives them into the absurd. Labyrinths are patterns that at one point become unpredictable, confusing. In music, we thought that patterns and sequences represent the starting point of order. And their deconstruction, fragmentation and modulation necessarily lead to an aleatoric structure. This, of course, brings us back to the open space of exploration. There is an obsessive quality in Borges, which we also tried to mirror in certain looping aspects of the music. There are always winks and a nice dose of humor in his descriptions of the absurd. Likewise, the music keeps a lighter tone, allowing for some of the comic qualities to shine through. 

INTERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN WITTMAN. FROM LIGHTWAVE TO ATMOSPHERIC MINIMALISM (2)

 

[Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ] 

 

The collaboration between you and Paul Haslinger dates back to 1993’s “Tycho Brahé.” After all these years, what is it about your creative “alchemy” that makes this new partnership so effective now?

Between Paul and us—Lightwave and me—there is above all a forty-year friendship, built on mutual esteem and respect, and shared trust. This friendship was unlikely between a member of Tangerine Dream with an international following and us, musicians from the French underground… But it has grown stronger over the years, during my stays in California and Paul’s visits to Europe. And between Los Angeles and Paris, the internet now allows us to forge multiple creative connections and create a kind of virtual studio, a shared musical workspace, despite the distance and the time difference. Yes, indeed… creative alchemy… building itself through the back-and-forth exchange of tracks, stems, mixes, and ideas across the Atlantic.

It’s a fascinating creative process, because it’s unpredictable, resulting from our interactions, our suggestions, our feedback, our edits, our approvals… We speak the same musical language and therefore have an intuitive understanding of one another. We also trust each other enough to approve or reject what the other is doing. Paul’s editing and mixes based on my basic tracks extend and deepen my initial ideas, while enriching them and sometimes radically reorienting them. The resulting music is truly a shared creation, and it’s often hard to tell who did what in the final composition. It’s a bit like mixing paint palettes to the point where the original colors are unrecognizable in the final phase…

Ultimately, it’s a privilege to develop such a creative collaboration, in such an atmosphere of trust and mutual understanding, and it extends the experience of Lightwave, where we also had the same kind of intuitive musical communication. The difference is that back in the Lightwave days, we worked in the same studio, in live and improvised sessions, whereas with Paul, we work remotely and on a staggered schedule.

Much of the new material was recorded at your Nina Studio in Paris. How does the atmosphere of a European city like Paris influence the “geography” of these recordings compared to the Los Angeles sessions?
 

Nina Studio is my home studio, set up in my living space, in the inner suburbs of Paris. Obviously, a studio’s location influences creativity: the climate, the light, the vegetation, the architecture, and also, of course, the entire social and cultural environment. But a home studio is also a very personal and intimate space, surrounded by memories and meaningful objects… I also think of it as a workshop I’m accustomed to; I have my work routines there, my tactics and strategies for composition and recording, my favorite tools and instruments…. My studio, moreover, is surrounded by my extensive library of literature and the humanities. I believe this environment contributes significantly to my musical creativity, enriching it with all my reading and my own writing...

For the “Mallarmé” project, you mention capturing the “random, abstract essence” of the text. How do you translate the visual spacing of words on a page into “recurring patterns” of sound?

 
Our album consists of three parts, each a journey through different sonic and harmonic landscapes, featuring interplay between echoes, transitions, contrasts, and symmetries that evoke the leaps and rebounds of successive dice rolls triggering different harmonic events.  We wanted to play with the effects of continuity and rupture, and with forms of sonic ricochets punctuating the listening space. And as if by a mirror effect, our music aims to break the predictability of listening, just as Mallarmé’s text subverted the process of reading: just as the reader of Mallarmé was meant to hear the music of his text (some sources report that he composed his poem by strumming piano chords for entire nights), so too should the listener of our music, ideally, visualize juxtapositions of forms, breaks in line, syntactic ellipses, etc.

You’ve cited “automatic writing” from the French Surrealist movement as a major influence on these albums. Can you explain how you apply this “relaxed state of consciousness” to the highly technical world of modular synthesis?
 

Unlike strictly programmed music, with synchronized rhythm tracks, etc., or music that is written in advance and performed from a score, Lightwave’s music—and my solo music—relies heavily on improvisation, that is, on unreflective and unconscious creative flows, driven by the internal logic of what we play and hear. Back in the Lightwave days, there were two, three, or four of us improvising in the studio, live. We’d start the tape recorder—first stereo DAT, then ADAT multitrack—and play live, building the composition in the moment, interacting with one another. The first side of *Nachmusik*, for example, was actually recorded live during a single nighttime session, with nothing planned in advance.

In my solo work, I record track by track, but I try to maintain the same spontaneity. At the start of a session, I choose an instrument and go through different sounds… At some point, I settle on one of them and start recording: that sound guides my playing on the keyboard. For the second track, I start with a different instrument, and I play over the first track, on the fly, reacting to what’s already been recorded. And so on. Next comes the real composition phase: I make a rough mix and edit each track on the fly, mainly by deleting isolated notes or entire patterns, creating silences, dialogues between sounds, a progression, and recurrences. This editing process is very intuitive; I essentially read the layered MIDI tracks, reshaping each one in relation to the others, and immediately listening back to each edited section. These are therefore chains of intuitive, uncalculated decisions, made with a kind of floating attention that actually resembles the writing practices of the French surrealist poets, in particular states of consciousness that let the flow of words—and, in my case, sounds—run free.

I think Paul works in a similar way when it comes to editing and mixing the tracks from our respective stems. It’s also with this same spirit that we experiment with different track sequences and settle on a final one we both agree on. 

INTERVIEW OF PAUL HASLINGER. FROM TANGERINE DREAM TO THE SONIC GEOGRAPHIES OF noion MUSIC (3)

 

[Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ]  

You’ve mentioned that your intellectual life is a “memory palace” full of books. Besides “Mallarmé” and “Borges,” what other authors inhabit the "rooms" of your current musical thinking?


It would certainly surpass the framework of this interview to take you on a full tour. And if I worked in advertising, I would say you need to check out the next few projects to find out.
But in expanding on my original statement, I would say that this personal memory palace is not only filled with books, but also with a vast catalogue of things my mind has bookmarked for one reason or another.

I believe that memories often drive creation, especially when, as in my collaboration with Christian, someone else’s catalogue of thoughts comes into play.

The original ceremonial function of music was often to support the recitation of poetry or religious texts. So the connection between story and sound has been with us for a very long time.
The knowledge of a vast catalogue of ideas creates the potential for new readings. No story is the same, and every story is the same. I think Borges would agree.


You handled the mixing and mastering for both releases. What was the greatest challenge in balancing the unhurried pace of these works with the meticulous precision required for such deep listening?


I think of this process as the ultimate treat for any composer: you are conducting the orchestra, you can fine-tune any detail down to a microscopic level, and you can alter the space and the relationships within that space at will.

As such, engineering and mastering this type of project requires the same degree of concentration that a conducting performance would.
In my mastering approach, I try to alternate between deep technical adjustments and general listening sessions away from the studio. It is a curious fact that in order to evaluate the flow of music, you have to alter your field of experience.

Many engineers do this by listening at extremely low volume, but I feel it is mainly a question of mindset. The absence of analysis while you listen.

What you feel often defies analysis.


You were classically trained in Vienna before joining Tangerine Dream at age 23. How much of that academic discipline still survives in the way you "sculpt" Electronic sound today?


While I certainly studied and always appreciated classical music, my real love was always in the studio and with the bands I was playing in.  I also studied musicology, so in many ways I am simply a music geek, endlessly obsessing over this or that thing I have just discovered.

The question brings us back to something I mentioned earlier: it is now possible to create and realize a piece similar to Varèse on a laptop with a collection of software tools. So even if you don’t have the resources or the training, many of the things you heard and admired are suddenly within reach.

I do think of music as an act of sculpting. And the aesthetic frame you use for that process ultimately consists of all the music you have heard before—and the quality of that music.

When I listen to strings, the fact that I grew up in Austria within a certain symphonic tradition will always influence how I evaluate string sound. A great deal of this simply becomes part of your system. It becomes part of your musical personality. 

INTERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN WITTMAN. FROM LIGHTWAVE TO ATMOSPHERIC MINIMALISM (3)

 

 [Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ] 

 

In “Borges,” the music is described as unfolding like a “labyrinth.” As a composer, how do you build a sonic structure that feels “infinite” and “layered” without losing the listener in the complexity?

— That’s an interesting question… When we look at a painting or a piece of architecture, when we read a text, when we listen to music, do we focus on the details and the complexity of their interconnections, or do we have a more holistic perception? It depends on our modes of perception—whether analytical or synthetic. Borges’ compositions aim to reflect the dizzying dimension of his writings: we did indeed have labyrinths in mind, with contours, detours, corridors, and staircases that make one lose one’s sense of space and time. We also thought of mirror effects—reflexivity is important in his texts—causing sounds to bounce and deepening perspectives, creating sonic illusions. I thought of Escher’s architecture but also of Jurgis Baltrusaitis’s beautiful writings on mirrors, anamorphoses, and the fantastic.

Needless to say, we did not seek to illustrate Borges any more than Mallarmé, but rather to offer a form of free interpretation that approaches their specific poetic worlds. We used sound rather than words or images to attempt a form of immersion in the quintessence of their writings.

The concept of "tonal poetry" is central to these releases. Do you consider yourself a musician who uses machines, or a poet who uses sound as his primary alphabet?

— I do not consider myself a technician or an engineer, nor even a musician in the academic sense, but rather a tinkerer, in the sense that Claude Lévi-Strauss gave to the term: my approach is defined less by calculation and planning, or technical mastery of machines, than by intuition, the subversion of instruction manuals, unorthodox experimentation in programming and assembling sounds, and unforeseen and sometimes provoked accidents. So yes, I do like the image of the poet who writes with sounds: I do indeed conceive of my music as a form of writing—not narrative, but descriptive and introspective: it describes landscapes, possible worlds that may be internal and psychological, but also have shapes, colors, materials, smells, and soundscapes. I also conceive of this “tonal poetry” in the form of gestures and movements, that is, as painting and sculpture of sounds, where I work with forms, surfaces, volumes, lines and curves, and colors. In other words, machines and technology are not ends in themselves; I am not a synthesizer fetishist, but I consider that I have a palette of tools—brushes, sculptor’s chisels, basic materials—from which I can freely draw for a given recording session. The mix of tools, their occasional chaining, their feedback, and their incompatibility sometimes are the secrets of my sound and musical craft...

Lightwave was famous for recording in unique locations, from the Gasometer in Oberhausen to the Choranche caves. Do you feel that the band will eventually return to these “site-specific” recordings, or is the focus now purely on the “inner world” of the studio?

— Yes, we’ve put on some extraordinary concerts, providing the soundtrack for sound installations in exceptional venues, where we were assisted, in particular, by our friend Michel Geiss, who was a close collaborator of Jean-Michel Jarre during the early part of his career. In Oberhausen, we provided the sound for an art installation designed by Anne and Patrick Poirier. They had created a miniature city—an industrial site crisscrossed by railroad tracks—which spectators could view through telescopes set up around the perimeter. Every movement of a telescope triggered a track of our music, creating an interactive soundscape that constantly renewed itself from the hundreds of tracks we had recorded—tracks designed to be mixed in every possible combination (thanks, Brian Eno, for the concept lol!).  In Choranche, we provided sound for underground galleries with soundscapes that followed the audience’s progress from speaker to speaker—guided by speleologists—and blended with the roar of the waterfalls… And upon their return to the large chamber of the underground lake, we treated them to a live concert, with all our instruments set up among stalactites and stalagmites… A completely crazy project, if ever there was one… It was Michel Geiss again who oversaw the entire technical production. And after several days, torrential rains over the Vercors mountains caused the underground rivers to swell; the water level rose, threatening to submerge the cave’s only exit, so the audience had to be evacuated urgently, and all our equipment had to be raised in a panic to avoid getting soaked…!

Since Oberhausen and Choranche, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, so to speak… For noion, in 2026, technologies have obviously evolved, and so have concepts… Paul and I are thinking about possible performances based on our music. Traditional concerts, with laptops and screen projections, no longer make much sense to us. So we need to move toward installations or immersive productions, in collaboration with multimedia artists and architects, in venues other than traditional concert halls. We’ve made preliminary contacts with creative partners. Now we need to find festivals or institutions likely to take on our projects… We’re not short on ideas; we want to break away from the concert format in the traditional sense… 

INTERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN WITTMAN. FROM LIGHTWAVE TO ATMOSPHERIC MINIMALISM (4)

(concert Shift, 12 March 2006: Jon Hassell, Lightwave, Michel Redolfi. Christian W. in the background).
 

 [Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ] 

You’ve worked with avant-garde giants like Jon Hassell and Hector Zazou. What did those collaborations teach you about “sculpting” sound that you still use in your solo and collaborative work today?

— Hector Zazou marked an important moment in our journey… We shared the same studio for a few years, a loft located in a repurposed industrial site. He listened to us a lot, and we also listened to his music a lot… He invited us to participate in some of his projects, and we were lucky enough to appear on three of his major albums, Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses, Sahara Blues, and Chansons des mers froides. We have one exceptional memory: when we improvised live in the studio with Ryuichi Sakamoto. We had moved all our instruments to the Davout studio in Paris; Sakamoto arrived and sat down at the piano, and we improvised. Zazou extracted and edited parts of that memorable session… We also met David Sylvian, with whom we co-wrote a track that appeared on the first version of the album...

I think Hector Zazou taught us new ways of working, a certain rigor. He also encouraged us to step outside our musical comfort zone to adapt to more complex projects, as collaborators and sound designers… We worked with him on an album project in the style of The Orb and KLF, a project that wasn’t finalized but for which we still have the demos… A very unusual sound and style for Lightwave!

As for Jon Hassell… He’s been one of my favorite musicians for years… I’ve seen him in concert many times; his discography is also on the playlist I’d take to a desert island. Taking part in this concert as part of the Présences Electroniques festival at Radio France was a unique musical and human experience. Jon brings to his breath, to his trumpet playing, a kind of immemorial memory, emerging from the depths of time, somewhere between Africa and Asia. He has a unique sound—a chant, a lament, human breath—or perhaps it is the breath of the winds, or the breath of every living being, human, vegetal or animal. Working with him on the Shift concert was a privilege.  We recently rediscovered the recordings of the rehearsals for thaat concert, and we’re hopeful we’ll be able to release them on noion soon...

Your recent solo work, like “Views of Mind,” leans toward “ambient chamber music.” How did that introspective style bleed into the more expansive, genre-defying textures we hear on “Mallarmé” and “Borges”?

— My solo music has naturally evolved since I started posting it online in 2022. I think I’ve gradually moved away from the space music and dark ambient atmospheres of the Lightwave era, toward a more minimalist and airy approach—more atmospheric and experimental… I’m trying to engage in a more experimental and demanding approach, moving away from the clichés of ambient music to gradually subvert them, asking listeners to make the effort to step outside their comfort zones at times…

The most important thing for me is to follow my own creative path, without compromising for what might be more or less commercial or mainstream. I’ve never been concerned with fitting into the narrow confines of popular ambient playlists. I’ve gradually moved toward a hybrid style of music, combining electronic sounds with sampled acoustic instruments, enriched by various spatialization techniques. I’m thus moving toward a form of music that’s both minimalist and contemporary, blending various influences—particularly that of Morton Feldman in my recent recordings. My music leans toward slow evolutions, compositions that are both aleatory and based on combinatorial algorithms. During my recording sessions, I envision sculptures in motion, somewhat like large mobiles where colorful, sound-producing objects are in perpetual rotation along different orbits and rhythms. These new approaches led to the basic tracks for “Mallarmé” and “Borges”; they are at the heart of the aesthetic that Paul and I are trying to develop in noion. 

In your early days, you utilized legendary machines like the Polymoog and the RSF Polykobol. How has your relationship with your instrumentarium—specifically the ARP 2600 and modular systems—evolved since the 80s?

— Indeed, since the early days of Lightwave in the second half of the 1980s, we have witnessed a spectacular evolution in electronic instrumentation. We started out working with analog synthesizers, modular systems like the ARP 2600 and the RSF, or the Korg 3300. Then we saw the arrival of the first MIDI synths, samplers, and the first sound editors and DAWs on computers. Next came the first virtual instruments, and Native Instruments’ Reaktor played a major role in my setup, alongside hardware instruments. We still have a few hardware instruments in the Lightwave studio, which is now located at Christoph’s house in the countryside, but we’ve sold most of them over the years.

My current studio is entirely virtual. Virtual instruments have seen exponential development and can now adapt to all genres of music, even if the most commercial genres, like techno and IDM, are favored. Having composed for a long time with analog and modular instruments—where we had to build the sound ourselves using complex wiring and often minute adjustments—has given us real expertise in sound programming. From this perspective, certain virtual instruments open up unlimited possibilities, particularly when they feature algorithms for randomizing their parameters.

I’m particularly interested in specialized and experimental instruments created by independent developers, often within the MAX environment. They allow for the generation of highly sophisticated sound textures, often by hybridizing different technologies—granular synthesis, sampling, random retroactions, and so on. I am also a heavy user of sound processing plugins, often multi-effects, that offer experimental sound transformation chains. These processes are an integral part of the final result: they sometimes radically transform the initial sound material. I am thinking in particular of GRM Tools and Ircam’s fantastic Time Stretching application.

So I would say that, paradoxically, VSTs and processing plugins come together to form a sort of modular, evolving, and reconfigurable system, where the sounds and stems from the recordings enter into truly fascinating feedback and modulation chains. From my perspective, new digital technologies, while they may encourage a certain laziness due to the immense sound libraries available, also offer tremendous creative possibilities, just as adventurous as the analog synthesizers of the 1970s. 

INTERVIEW OF PAUL HASLINGER. FROM TANGERINE DREAM TO THE SONIC GEOGRAPHIES OF noion MUSIC (4)

 

[Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ]  

 In Edgar Froese’s autobiography “Force Majeure,” he shares several stories about your time together. Looking back at the 1986-1990 era, what do you feel was your most significant contribution to the band’s evolution during those years?


I have not yet had a chance to read Force Majeure, but I think any story involving two people will inevitably be told differently from each side. I will always be extraordinarily grateful to Edgar and Chris for asking me to be part of the band and, ultimately, making possible the career I have had.

It is difficult for me to assess the significance of my own contributions in Tangerine Dream. If you asked me which album I feel has stood the test of time, I would single out Underwater Sunlight. If the question were directed toward soundtracks, I would mention Miracle Mile.

The most significant event during those five years, viewed from my current perspective, was the split between Edgar and Chris in late 1987. It fundamentally changed the fabric of the band, and from that point onward an important aspect of balance was missing.


You remain in occasional contact with Chris Franke in Los Angeles. Is a future collaboration between the two of you something that remains a possibility, or is that chapter purely part of the "memory palace" now?


 
Haha… my impression is that Chris has his hands full with all kinds of technical projects, and he is pretty happy and content where he is. When I worked with Peter on Neuland, we had some contact with Chris, but he was then as he is now keeping very busy with his various projects. Chris, like Edgar and Peter, has a very unique musical talent, and his guidance and production support were crucial in making Underwater Sunlight what it is. I remember driving with him one grey Berlin morning to Hansa Studios to record the piano parts for the album. And knowing that Chris was out there, making sure it would sound good, directly enabled that performance.


You recently collaborated with Peter Baumann for “Neuland.” What did that project teach you about your own musical roots that you’ve brought into the foundation of noion?


I originally met Peter when Tangerine Dream signed to his label, Private Music, in 1988. He was also instrumental in helping me begin a new phase of my career in Los Angeles during the 1990s.
So we’ve known each other for quite some time. And like with Edgar and Chris, we always had a lot of fun, whether we were simply spending time together or working on creative projects.

If you will, Neuland was a significant step in the direction of NOION. It was a first attempt to play by our own rules and build a label ecosystem around the work.

Unfortunately, not everything worked out as planned, and we were unable to realize the project in a live setting as originally envisioned. In retrospect, I think we should have focused more on the label aspect and built everything a bit more slowly.

But as is often the case in life, those learning experiences eventually led to NOION and to a different approach in launching and managing both the label and the projects it supports. 

INTERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN WITTMAN. FROM LIGHTWAVE TO ATMOSPHERIC MINIMALISM (5)

 [Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ]  

Does the "minimalist simplicity" you embraced for these albums also extend to your live setup, or do you prefer a more complex, "orchestral" array of electronics on stage?

— The last concert Lightwave gave had a relatively light setup, with MIDI keyboards and computers for both videos and virtual instruments. I haven’t given any solo concerts to date, because I haven’t been offered the opportunity, and to be honest, I’ve preferred to focus on composing and recording in the studio. As for possible live extensions of my work with Paul, we’re considering various options, including bringing in classical instrumentalists to perform with us and interacting with them using different stems and atmospheres that we could mix and spatialize in real time. The venues and setting of these performances would of course play an important role, as would the accompanying multimedia elements on stage...

Are there any "hidden rarities" or unreleased archives from the Lightwave era that might find a new home or a new interpretation through noion?

— We have dozens of hours of unreleased recordings: studio sessions, and sometimes live recordings. Christoph spent months transferring everything to a hard drive, indexing it, and sometimes restoring it. This allowed us to revisit all our musical work since the late ’80s, and we were sometimes surprised by the quality of these studio improvisations. Yes, clearly there is a lot of material that deserves to be released, and there is a first album project in the works, for a possible release this fall on noion music.

What advice would you give to young electronic musicians who are interested in "deep, mindful listening" but find themselves overwhelmed by the fast-paced, "tumultuous" nature of the modern industry?

— That’s a difficult question, because who am I to give advice to today’s young electronic musicians? The current situation has immense advantages, but also immense challenges. Among the positives are the ability to set up a home studio at a low cost, the abundance of virtual instruments and sample libraries, and an ecosystem that makes it very easy to put your music online—directly on platforms like Bandcamp and Subvert, or through a digital distributor like Distrokid, Symphonic, or Tunecore—giving you access to all streaming and download platforms. This ecosystem makes life considerably easier for independent, self-produced musicians. The flip side, of course, is the exponential tidal wave of new tracks flooding platforms every day, amplified by AI that allows some to upload hundreds (thousands?) of new tracks daily. 

How do you stay afloat, how do you survive in this torrential flow? How do you catch the attention of streaming platform algorithms and get featured on influential playlists?   The first, easiest answer is to go with the flow, follow the trends of the moment, and create that “how-to” music that sends Spotify stats through the roof: music for napping, for sleeping, for doing math homework, for studying physics and chemistry, for brushing your cat, for cooking pasta, for eating a hamburger, for running in the countryside, for running in the city, and so on and so forth. This means molding yourself into a mold, giving up anything too personal, any rough edges, any dissonance, anything that steps outside the very narrow confines of the playlist. If you’re willing to make these concessions, then yes, the number of streams can skyrocket… but at what cost! You’re anonymized in playlists that endlessly stream a continuous flow of sound without anything to distinguish or recognize the musicians… You’re no longer a musician, but a product, repurposed by Spotify’s “Mood Machine.”

So what to do? It’s a matter of choice, goals, time horizon, and personal philosophy… My own answer has been to stay true to myself and not create impersonal, run-of-the-mill music. I aim to chart a coherent path by creating music that I love and that reflects who I am, music that aligns with stages of development, experimentation, and exploration. In short, I make music that interests me, that challenges me, that makes me think and imagine. You have to have the means to do it—not rely on music to make a living—and give yourself the time, but also prioritize a base of followers and listeners who are genuinely interested in the music, in short, listeners who actually listen and aren’t just consumers of background noise. I’d add that any independent musical endeavor must be accompanied by intense promotion on social media; it’s the only way to break out of anonymity… And the younger generation of musicians certainly has a better grasp than I do of the ins and outs of TikTok, Instagram Stories, and Facebook…! Being comfortable working with multimedia files, Reels, and other videos is definitely a major asset!

Finally, Christian, if “Mallarmé” is about “chance” and “Borges” is about “infinity,” what is the next literary or philosophical territory you’re eager to explore with Paul?

— I can already reveal that the next literary world Paul and I will be exploring is that of the Comte de Lautréamont, the enigmatic author of *Les Chants de Maldoror*, a dark and wild epic, laced with black humor and tinged with provocative nihilism...

We have two other major projects in the works, each of which will span several albums, but I’d rather keep you in suspense for now…!


Through his work with noion, Christian Wittman continues to prove that electronic music is not merely a technical exercise, but a profound "way of being in the world." By bridging the gap between 19th-century poetry and 21st-century sound design, he provides a necessary sanctuary of "clarity, silence, and space." Whether he is sculpting textures in his Parisian studio or exploring the mathematical precision of a modular sequence, Wittman remains a dedicated “sculptor of unknown worlds.” “Mallarmé” and “Borges” arrive on July 10, marking not just a release, but the start of a new, contemplative journey for anyone willing to listen deeply. 

INTERVIEW OF PAUL HASLINGER. FROM TANGERINE DREAM TO THE SONIC GEOGRAPHIES OF noion MUSIC (5)

 [Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ]  

 

After decades of scoring for film and games, how liberating is it to produce music that functions as a "field of experience" rather than a support for a visual narrative?


This is, of course, an important aspect. The freedom to create, shape, and explore is quite different from supporting picture.
 

The difference is not technical. I still enormously enjoy scoring films and television projects. It is more the openness of the playing field that is different. The fact that there is no script; rather, the script is written alongside the project. There is no film, but we may create a film in connection with the project. Those conditions create a fundamentally different framework for exploration. And once again, the old West Coast notion that “everything is possible” shines through.


Through “10 Phantom Rooms,” you develop virtual instruments. Do you see technology as a boundary to be pushed, or a tactile extension of the composer's hand? 


I think it is quite natural for musicians to continually tinker with their instruments. Mozart’s friend Anton Stadler developed a clarinet with an extended range, and it inspired Mozart to write new music that took advantage of those possibilities. New possibilities lead to new ideas. As such, I am simply trying to find ways to expand our virtual instrument palette, with the hope that these instruments, too, will become tools that enable new forms of creation.


It took eight years to find your solo voice for Exit Ghost. What advice would you give to the new generation of composers who feel pressured by the "speed and abundance" of today's music industry?


If I am being honest, there is very little advice I can give.
I am fully aware that my path has benefited from many moments of unplanned good fortune. And while you can give luck a chance—by studying, working, and playing with other musicians—it is never a guaranteed outcome.
 

I also believe that our strongest influences are often the people we look up to. As mentioned before, the examples set by Richard Horowitz and Jon Hassell continue to inspire me to this day.
There is also the fluidity of music itself. You can be absolutely certain about something today, and two years later it may look completely different.
 

In my view, it is extremely important to allow that process to happen. Allow yourself to be wrong, to rediscover. Stay open to change. Never carve your rules in stone.



Are there plans to bring the noion projects into a live setting—perhaps as acousmatic performances—or do you view these works as experiences destined strictly for the studio and home listening?

Some of our future projects could certainly have a live component (whether it’s a concert, sound installation, or part of a cross-disciplinary performance). For the moment, we have our hands full with the label, and we hope to start releasing physical editions, box sets, immersive formats, and eventually media expansions (books, films).

Paul Haslinger’s journey through noion is a testament to the enduring power of intellectual curiosity and the necessity of silence in an increasingly noisy world. By bridging the gap between scientific precision and evocative sound art, he and Christian Wittman have created a new compass for the contemporary experimental scene. As the label evolves into a platform for like-minded musicians, it promises to remain at the forefront of redefining artistic expression. “Mallarmé” and “Borges” will both be released on July 10, inviting listeners to embark on their own meditative journey through these meticulously crafted sonic labyrinths 

[REVIEW] MALLARMÉ [PROG ROCK WEBZINE, Review by Jacopo Vigezzi]

 

 

"The founding of noion Music is not merely the launch of a new label; it stands as an act of creative independence against an industry dominated by algorithms and functional “background music.” This project is the culmination of a forty-year creative relationship between Paul Haslinger (former Tangerine Dream member) and Christian Wittman (Lightwave), rooted in a mutual respect dating back to 1986. Together, they define their genre not as traditional composition, but as an exploration of Atmospheric Minimalism—searching for the sonic quintessence where silence is as vital as the note itself.

Conceptually, Haslinger treats music as a curated soundscape, a field of meditative experience that invites deep, mindful listening. The premise relies on Haslinger’s view of intellectual life as a palace of memory full of books, where literature serves as a compass for Electronic exploration. With “Mallarmé,” alongside the projected “Borges” project, this is the inauguration of that journey—a space where mathematical precision meets metaphysical depth. Released on July 10, 2026, “Mallarmé” features three massive tracks hovering around the twenty-minute mark, culminating in an edited version of “Jamais n’abolira.”

The album’s core is Stéphane Mallarmé’s seminal 1897 poem, “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard” (A throw of the dice will never abolish chance). Wittman and Haslinger have translated the fragmented typography and visual silences of the page into a fluid sonic environment. Central to the album’s development is Wittman’s use of surrealist automatic writing to generate unconscious creative flows, which Haslinger then refines and sculpts technically. The objective was to capture the abstract essence of the text through a calm rhythm and recurring motifs, creating a geography where the intellect maps the sound.

The album unfolds through three primary movements that explore temporal elasticity and the perception of sound, effectively turning the listening experience into an active intellectual pursuit. The monumental opening, “Un coup de dés,” establishes the spatial parameters of the record. It serves as a game of mirrors and sonic ricochets, evoking the successive throwing of dice cited by Wittman to trigger unpredictable harmonic events. Here, the use of advanced virtual synthesizers and complex spatialization processes creates a sense of impressionistic abstraction. Motifs appear and vanish cyclically, challenging the predictability of traditional listening habits while establishing a vast acoustic gravity.

The focus shifts toward reductionism to reveal the work’s essence in “Jamais n’abolira.” This movement embodies the minimalist simplicity required to isolate harmonic clusters, mirroring how Mallarmé visually separated words across the page. Wittman and Haslinger have treated every harmonic element as an isolated word on a blank page, giving each sound a distinct semantic entity. Through a calm rhythm and imperturbable tempo, the track strips away the superfluous to reach maximum clarity and impact—an exercise in free association transporting the listener to a realm of pure tonal poetry.

“Le hasard” is the chapter dedicated to Chaos explores the fragmentation of structural predictability. The composition alternates between continuity and rupture, creating an experience of impressionistic abstraction. Characterized by sonic ricochet effects and a continuous interplay between flow and interruption, the structure reflects a multidimensional perception. Electronic modular systems (utilizing both the ARP 2600 and virtual MAX systems) generate evolving forms and timbral colors along an elastic temporal continuum. This is not a closure of discourse, but an open reflection on the fugitive nature of acoustic perception.

The album concludes with, “Jamais n’abolira – edit,” a condensed iteration of the second movement. Running just over six minutes, this version offers a more synthesized approach to the track’s core motifs, providing a focused entry point into its architecture. “Mallarmé” is the result of a poetic dialogue between the Nina Studio in Paris and Large Array in Los Angeles, overcoming geographical distances through technological integration. It is a necessary sanctuary of clarity, silence, and space amidst the noise of the 21st century.

This is not merely a technical exercise but a “mode of being” through sound. The production process itself—based on a continuous exchange of files and stems between the two studios—was treated by Haslinger not just as a mixing stage, but as a microscopic orchestration. Every detail was sculpted to alter the relationship between sound and space, inviting the listener to a mindful state that defies the current industry’s noise culture.

As the artists declare, this is only the beginning: noion will serve as a platform for like-minded musicians, with the Count of Lautréamont as the next literary territory to be explored. For those willing to undertake this meditative journey, “Mallarmé” is available from July 10, 2026."

Jacopo Vigezzi 

 

 Link

[REVIEW] MALLARMÉ AND BORGES [STAR'S END]

 

"There is a lot of unresolved tension throughout the two releases inaugurating their Noion Music label. From start to finish Mallarmé (65:15) and Borges (41:53) are engaged in developing a new kind of tonality - a mode of expression that would absorb tradition without becoming trapped by it. Every track flickers with a very different kind of life. Dispatching swirling sonic symbols with meticulous abandon notes slow from a spatial compression into polite stasis.

Filling a listening space with music as fluid occupies a vessel, or smoke might circulate through a room, every new moment of Mallarmé and Borges is quickened by a fleeting darkness - alive and free. Varying in density, lightness and atmosphere these albums offer an experience akin to roaming the boundless corridors of a dreaming mind. We imagine encountering breathing strings, dislocated piano chords, a distant dissonant orchestra, and maybe even our own brains slowly reacting - as thoughts go off course in a concerted current of harmony and timbre. 

Musical lines collide, collude and combine in a ramble of melody, a flight of resonance, a search for consonance. With chords moving in contrary motion the mind is lead through a shadowy realm, concluding then in light. Haslinger & Wittman develop a poetic idea, suggest a scene, conjure a mood. Even as its accord of sound is opposed by dissonance we hear a unity in the arrangement and the message this collaboration is attempting to convey.  

Ambient Chamber Music could certainly do with more sophisticated takes on the genre like this one. With the shadows of history all around, our imaginative duo clears the stage for an aurally adventurous future."

Please tune in to the 07.19.26 broadcast of STAR'S END for music from Mallarmé & Borges the recent releases by Paul Haslinger & Christian Wittman, and more... Thanks! 

 Chuck van Zyl 

 Link 

[REVIEW] MALLARMÉ (ECHOES AND DUST)

 

(((O))) : Paul Haslinger & Christian Wittman – Mallarmé 

Mallarmé  by Paul Haslinger & Christian Wittman

Paul Haslinger & Christian Wittman on the web:
Website | Bandcamp |

Release date: July 10, 2026
Label: Noion Music

by Ljubinko Zivkovic | July 17, 2026  

 

Music inspired by another art form has always been there, and like any other, it can range from truly inspired to really pretentious and practically unlistenable.

Trying to go the inspired and inventive way are two already established musicians – Emmy-nominated Austrian composer Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream) and French composer Christian Wittman (Lightwave). For their new project, the duo has formed a special record label, Noion, that is starting by creating works inspired by big names in literature, with the first two releases being devoted to French poet  Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) and Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)

Of course, having in mind what Haslinger and Wittman have previously done, and based on the first release, simply titled Mallarmé, we get (and will keep getting) music that some label as atmospheric minimalism, that is, sound exploration, and genre-defying music – from ambient to contemporary classical and drone.

Many might consider that broad musical spectrum as overpopulated in these times, and you really have to be inventive and know what you are doing to make it all work, with Haslinger & Wittman adding another level of complexity to their concept – trying to draw the right elements from literature and transferring them into music, conveying at the same time the spirit of the written word while including elements that will indicate why it is those words that inspired them.

Yet, with all of their background and musical experience and knowledge, Haslinger & Wittman successfully turn their concept on Mallarmé into music that is both complex and understandable at the same time.

 

Link