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Christian Wittman’s “Temporal Fragments” – An Immersive Journey in Sound (electronica.org.uk)

 

"Christian Wittman’s latest track, “Temporal Fragments,” envelops listeners in a warm, rich soundscape characterized by gentle piano elements and metallic, percussive tones. The track’s ethereal synth elements drift seamlessly, shaping the structure and creating an engaging, atmospheric experience. The combination of emotive piano echoes and rhythmic percussive accents lends an organic, meditative quality to the music.

“Temporal Fragments” is part of Wittman’s new album, “Music for Sound Installation,” an ambient project designed to evoke immersive and atmospheric soundscapes. Drawing inspiration from the pioneering work of Brian Eno, each track in this album serves as a sonic counterpart to a visual experience, inviting listeners into a realm of auditory exploration. Just as a sculpture or painting transforms physical space, Wittman’s compositions aim to transform auditory space, fostering a serene and contemplative atmosphere.

As a founding member of the French group LIGHTWAVE, Wittman has been a significant figure in electronic and ambient music since the 1980s. LIGHTWAVE has collaborated with notable artists such as Paul Haslinger (ex-Tangerine Dream), Jon Hassell, Michel Redolfi, and Hector Zazou. Wittman’s music sits at the crossroads of ambient, space, and contemporary classical genres, with a strong emphasis on sound design and atmospheres. His work draws inspiration from a wide range of influences, including Brian Eno, Harold Budd, the early “Berlin School,” and the atmospheric classical genre."

 

Link to electronica.org.uk

 

About the process of musical creation...

 

I don't claim to be an important musician on the ambient scene...
I know there are many of us in this crowded niche... And there are far more talented than me...
I do what I can, what I know how to do, I chart my course, and I make music first and foremost because it's an important part of my life, of who I am...

As I was thinking tonight about how I make music, I was thinking that improvisation and spontaneity are essential aspects... Of course, there's the mediation of the computer, software and sound banks, but it's improvisation and intuition that are at the forefront...

I have the impression of approaching composition and mixing with a "floating attention", intuitive, spontaneous, making decisions in the moment.

It also reminds me a little of the automatic writing of the French Surrealist poets André Breton, Philippe Soupault, Tristan Tzara...

These poets emphasized the role of the unconscious in the creative process... Letting the flow of words unfold without trying to control the writing hand...

I likewise let the flow of sounds, silences and harmonics unfold...

I slice and dice into what I've recorded, I move, I shift, I erase.

Reflective, rational thinking is not at the forefront. It's intuition that provokes my gestures on my DAW. Cut, copy, paste, move. Listen, re-listen. Saving. Or deleting.

I imagine myself as a painter retouching a sketch until my hand is in suspension: "Do nothing more".

I imagine myself as a sculptor, reshaping a block of stone, rounding angles, polishing surfaces, until my hand remains suspended: "Any further chiseling is useless...".

I imagine myself as a poet, letting words, sounds, rhymes and rhythms flow from my pen or typewriter: "Don't change anything, preserve the flow...".

In my modest musical practice, I don't see myself as an engineer, nor as an artist... But rather as a medium: something passes into me, through me, and materializes in a musical artefact

Maybe that's what inspiration is all about... Something wants to pass through me...

TACTILE AMBIENT

 

Sometimes, at the right moment, the right person finds the right words, when energy, self-confidence and creativity need to be restored...

Thanks to Thierry Moreau for this magnificent text on my music, a veritable aurora borealis in my night sky!

 

          CHRISTIAN WITTMAN OR TACTILE AMBIENT

Ambient has changed a great deal since the early days of Discreet music's Brian Eno, to the point of distorting the original concept. In the meanders of Bandcamp's plethora of productions, Christian Wittman's work stands out.

Exploring divergent sound cardinal points, Christian Wittman marks his cartographies with tactile reliefs that resemble decorative environmental structures or lunar chords, suspended modulations and filigree percussion.

These are all sonic incidences that occupy our inner spaces, and go hand in hand with filmic visions without actors. We're reminded of David Lynch or Wim Wenders atmospheres.

His tableaux d'une exposition sonore invite us to procrastinate on our temporal fragments. As if savoring Proust's madeleines. Medical music.

In a world of time-compressed reality, he reinvents the praise for slowness, repose, the value of timbre and suggestion.

His virtuosity is not "dazzling" but layered and subtly organized.

Christian Wittman's music proposes a relative time, a tactile music with a poetic sound design, far removed from elevator music. Precisely.

Thierry Moreau

A CRAFTSMAN'S JOB...

 

I see my activity as a musician as a craftsman's job...

It's a job, insofar as I try to impose several weekly recording sessions on myself.

A craftsman's job, because I see myself as a do-it-yourselfer, a sculptor or painter of sounds, and in my musical craftsman's workshop, there are projects in various states of progress, sometimes sketches, sometimes variants, sometimes finished and waiting tracks…

So I have an attic (or cellar?) where I store my tracks, my works in progress...

Some are dormant...

Others are periodically reawakened and sometimes put back on the drawing board...

To date, since 2022, I have 543 maquettes or basic tracks or alternate tracks on hold...

Archive of a musical craftsman's work...

IS MUSIC A LANGUAGE?

                                                 (“Lunar - Kaleidoscope Sonata” Montez Magno - 1992)

 

Is music an autonomous, untranslatable language, or something other than a language?

Or can music be translated into words, statements, propositions? Do musical vocabulary and syntax compose verbalizable sentences?

In other words, am I trying to express, through my music, what words cannot say? Or what words can't say in the same way?

These questions, which I ask myself as a creator of music, obviously also arise from the point of view of the listener of my music.

Does this listener (if I have listeners, that's another story!) decipher a message, understand what I want to express, or is his or her reception on a completely different level, beyond words and language?

I imagine these questions have been debated a thousand times in the history of music...

But what can be communicated, shared and transmitted between two human beings through music? Ideas? Concepts? Feelings? Or something that escapes all determination, that can lend itself to multiple levels of reception and interpretation...?

I don't think a piece of music is devoid of meaning, intentionality or content.

I don't think that listening to music is just listening to a superficial, inconsequential flow of sound...

Music, authentic music, is always full of meaning...

MUSIC FOR SOUND INSTALLATION

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear friends,

"Music for Sound Installation” is a new stage in my musical journey, following on from "Music for Slow Motion Dance", where I try to go further into a certain minimalist purity.

This album paves the way for sound installation projects, with multi-channel diffusion systems where music could be mixed and recomposed in an ever evolving way...

I dream of an ambient music reduced to the essentials, where thoughts, memories, feelings and sensations could freely flow and meander.

I'm still trying to sublimate the influence of one of my musical masters, Brian Eno, whose creative radicalism is for me an infinite source of inspiration and emulation.

I hope you will enjoy listening to this music as much as I enjoyed creating it!

Thanks for your continuous support!

Christian Wittman