Alien Garden

 

"Alien Forest"... I love to explore possible worlds through my music... This little clip is perhaps the starting point of a new album, who knows....

Learning Seaboard: Immersion in new sonic oceans...

 

 

Last night, a dizzying immersion in a new multidimensional musical universe...

 

First experiments with my new Seaboard Rise keyboard from ROLI : sculpting soundscapes in five dimensions and rediscovering the infinite possibilities of the hand and finger on a tactile surface...

 

A new approach to gestures on a musical keyboard: caress, percussion, climb, cross, sink, fly...

 

The keyboard becomes a harp, a ondes martenot, a futuristic orchestra, a modular synthesizer facade with a thousand possible settings, unfolding new worlds of sound...

 

I begin my learning curve in this new MIDI environment with a totally psychedelic immersion.

 

https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com/

https://open.spotify.com/.../artist/4q4V7ci4nsWYEoPSb09voh

 

 

THOUGHTS AND AFTERTHOUGHTS: ABOUT ABSTRACTION

 

I love abstraction in music. In the music I listen to, and in the music I create myself.

This is undoubtedly due to the formatting of my musical ear over the years, to the fine tuning of my listening.

Among a few landmarks of my musical education, certain experimental parts of Pink Floyd, and then of course the beginnings of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, then the discovery of electro-acoustic and contemporary music, a certain form of free jazz or improvised music.

Abstraction is first and foremost an experience of uprooting oneself from familiar landmarks and immediate, illustrative and figurative references. Musical abstraction leads to a different listening experience, as it is not preformatted by predictable compositional patterns. If it can generate a certain discomfort, it also reconfigures listening by giving an active role to the listener, who must invent his or her own reference points, his or her own grids of apprehension.

I think it's also a way of apprehending music in its very essence, without projecting a pre-established narrative or descriptive filter, freeing oneself from the expectations of a familiar musical form, be it classical music (concerto, symphony, etc.) or certain rock standards (verses, choruses, etc.).

As a musician, abstraction for me is associated with the idea of creative freedom, of exploring and experimenting with sound worlds of different architecture, comfortable or not, intellectually and sensorially challenging.

Above all, abstract music is a form of experience requiring active involvement on the part of the listener to enter a parallel universe with its own rules, in terms of geometry, volume, color and movement.

In this respect, abstract music is comparable to an abstract painting or sculpture: escaping the most immediate interpretative grids, it opens up a multisensory reception space in which the listener plays an active role, projecting onto the sounds his or her own auditory memory, imagination, reference points and visualizations.

"PAR VENTS ET MAREES": A COLLABORATION ALBUM WITH ANDREW HEATH!

 Dear all,

I am very happy and proud to share with you my collaboration with my friend and fellow ambient musician Andrew Heath, released by the Dutch label Slow Tone Collage (a subdivision of Shimmering Moods).

I hope you will enjoy this album as much as we do! 

 

This immersive collaboration between the UK based musician, Andrew Heath and French musician, Christian Wittman charts a musical voyage that explores themes of great tides that rise and fall and of air currents that flow between lands and seas.

Dense clouds and currents of electronic sound are permeated with sharp, pin-pricks of percussion and modular noises with drifting piano, both electric and acoustic along with guitar notes that float above the maelstrom. All bound with field recordings that resonate sympathetically alongside the drifting tones.

Sometimes light, sometimes dark - evoking the contrast between the apparent calm of the sea, and the dynamics and flows that unfold, both in depth and in the air, creating organic and immersive soundscapes, aerial and underwater at the same time.


As well as many solo releases under his own name, Andrew has collaborated with artists including legendary German musician, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, experimental electronic and classical composer, Christopher Chaplin, Dutch ambient guitarist, Anne Chris Bakker, Argentinian composer Mi Cosa de Resistance and UK artists, Toby Marks (Banco de Gaia), James Osland and Simon McCorry. Andrew has also been commissioned to produce works for film, installations and various arts festivals.

Christian is a founding member of Lightwave, a French group which has been tracing a unique creative path in the field of electronic and ambient musics  (Erdenklang, Hearts of Space, Signatures/Radio France...). They have collaborated with Paul Haslinger (ex-Tangerine Dream), Jon Hassell, Hector Zazou among others, and created spectacular sound installations in places such as the Choranche caves in Vercors mountains or the Oberhausen Gasometer in Germany. The many solo releases of Christian chart musical territories at the crossroads of ambient, atmospheric classical and minimalism.

[REVIEW] Ambient Chamber Music

 

 

CHRISTIAN WITTMAN – Ambient Chamber Music

https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-chamber-music

"Not only a perfect title but a set of tracks, from just over 5 to nearly 12 minutes in length, that perfect encapsulate what the musician is wanting to create and that is cosmic electronic music in an almost Classical setting without actually sounding Classical or Orchestral. From the opening 10 minutes of “Hybrid Dreamscape” onwards, this is synths and electronic music that is at the hinterland between space and strings, with a feel, flow and form that is utterly engaging, and continues in this vein right to the end, but in the process, explores some magnificent and magical soundscapes, along the way. 

 In many ways and many areas along the journey, the sound is similar to what you hear on the first and last tracks on Tangerine Dream's epic “Zeit” album, with that heady mix of synths and strings, exploring a darkness that is completely outer space, yet retaining a light to which you are inexorably drawn. In fact, there are times where you are most certainly hurled back into the early seventies adventures of the drummer-less Tangerine Dream, as the music moves through time and space with a cosmic purpose on a seemingly unending journey that you have to take. 

It's not all cosmic icing though, in fact very little of this is what the American synth fraternity would describe as “blissful”, and a lot of it is quite dark while not being dense, unafraid at times to voyage into more avant-garde realms, but then quickly emerging to trace a whole new path through the cosmos. Easily one of his best albums for a while, this transfixes and maintains its quality throughout, always moving, sometimes subtly, and always taking you along for the ride."

Andy Garibaldi, review published in Audion #79,  p. 40.

 

 

"EBB and FLOW" : IMMERSIVE AND SLOW AMBIENT MUSIC

    

 

The guiding idea behind my new musical project, “Ebb and Flow”, is the hypnotic and slow back-and-forth of ocean waves on the mainland shore. The tides roll in and out, a slow movement of advances and retreats, where an edge of white foam traces the ephemeral boundary between water and land, between salt and sand, depositing infinitesimal harmonics and sound events on the edge of listening...

You could say that “Ebb and Flow” is an album of cosmic music, exploring not celestial immensities, but the slow and organic rhythms of the sea, which blend different clocks in an incessant movement that shifts lines and colors surfaces.

Minimalist music, based on recurrence, loops that come and go, the slow fade out of harmonic waves, lending itself to a contemplative gaze and listening that extracts itself from the tumult of the world to approach its silent truth and beauty...