Q & A. CURRENT EQUIPMENT?

What equipment do you currently play and why? 

As I mentioned earlier, my studio today consists exclusively of virtual instruments. Over time, I have invested significant amounts of money to assemble a set of highly complementary tools, selectively drawing from the catalogs of the major companies that dominate this market, such as Native Instruments, Arturia, Spitfire Audio, UVI, Orchestral Tools and a few others. To these essential instruments, I have added more specialized and experimental synthesizers, such as Vital, Loom, Synplant, Myth, Novum, and others. I have also selected granular processing instruments that allow me to radically transform audio files and some of my recorded tracks, and I have acquired the entire Metasynth environment for its sound design potential.  Finally, I acquired an MPE keyboard (Midi Polyphonic Expression), which opened up fascinating musical possibilities, less for emulating acoustic instruments (guitar, violin, etc.) than for the new expressiveness it allows with purely electronic sounds and the possibility of creating complex and evolving textures, where the tactile and gestural dimension plays an important role. For the most abstract and atmospheric passages of my music, I use a Roli Seaboard 2 keyboard in a very intuitive way, focusing on textures rather than the notes themselves. While a classic MIDI keyboard produces a musical typography, an MPE keyboard allows you to create a kind of sound calligraphy, full of curves, sinuosities, flourishes, and arabesques.

I follow the commercial offerings in terms of VSTs and plugins with attention and interest, while remaining very selective. I don't think I'm the target audience for many instruments, which are sometimes backed by somewhat tiresome marketing campaigns geared towards dance, techno, or cinematic music. I often pay attention to the creations of independent developpers who design experimental tools, particularly for sound processing. For some of the more complex synths I use, I also buy ad hoc sound banks created by musician-programmers whom I have come to know and respect... 

 

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. INTENTION OF PLAYING LIVE?

 Soundcheck. Concert at Bussum (2001)

 

 To date, have you played or do you have any intention of playing live and what, if any, problems would this present to you?

No, to date, I have not given any solo concerts. The last concert I played was with Christoph, a Lightwave concert at the B Wave festival in Belgium (2016). As for my solo work, the opportunity hasn't presented itself yet, but to be honest, I haven't sought it out either. I think of myself more as a studio musician, producing music that is meant to be listened to in optimal conditions, preferably with hi-fi equipment.  My music is contemplative and meditative, slowly evolving, without any real rhythmic or melodic reference points. It's immersive soundscapes. What's more, I can no longer play on the spectacular aspect of a pile of instruments and modular synths on stage, as I did with Lightwave in its heyday. In fact, my setup could be reduced to a MIDI keyboard and a laptop, or even one of those new boxes that allow you to mix and modify audio files or loops that have been loaded in advance. But visually, in itself, it's not very exciting. This austerity would have to be compensated for by a sophisticated light show or video projections.  I imagine other forms of performance instead. For example, sound installations and live mixes in an art gallery, a historic site (cloister? abbey, church???), a garden, a museum, or a natural site. Or music for contemporary ballet. Or a soundtrack for an experimental film.... 

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. ABOUT THE COMPOSITIONAL PROCESS

 

Do you have a particular compositional process that is a starting point for each album or do you approach each one differently? 

My compositional method is a form of controlled improvisation. At the start of a recording session, I choose one of my favorite instruments and browse through its sound bank, usually without any preconceived ideas. The starting point for the first track will therefore be the inspiration I get from a preset, the intuition of its creative potential here and now. I record a first track, choosing a particular key and a set of rules, for example in terms of rhythm, repetition, melodic pattern, or something else. On this first layer, I choose a new instrument or different sounds from the same instrument to start recording a second track. The complementarity of sounds and textures is essential here. Then I do the same again for a third track, a fourth, and so on. In this overdubbing process, I ultimately reproduce what we used to do in Lightwave in our studio sessions or concerts, where everyone played while listening to the others, trying to provide a counterpoint, a complement, a punctuation, and sometimes also introducing a climatic change to move the piece forward. Playing in a group taught me to think about the big picture rather than my personal contribution, so it was the opposite of filling in or ego-driven one-upmanship. In fact, very often, when listening back to a Lightwave recording, Christoph and I were, and sometimes still are, unable to tell who did what: the result was coherent, organic, and structured music, and not the juxtaposition of disparate tracks. So it's a bit the same principle that I apply to the multitrack recording process of my solo music. Each track must make sense, bring something to the previous ones: it must emphasize, complement, but not confuse or disrupt. It must have a purpose and meaning, and not be a gratuitous addition.

When we recorded live, on Revox or DAT, this co-composition work had to be done in the moment. An untimely sound or phrase would ruin the entire recording: we had to start all over again, with no guarantee of recapturing the same feeling. Cités analogues and Nachtmusik were recorded under these conditions, which is why they are so magical. When we were able to equip ourselves with the wonderful Alesis ADAT multi-track digital recorders, we each had our own stereo tracks, sometimes for each keyboard, so it was possible to make corrections afterwards.

Today, a DAW offers this flexibility, both for a band and for a solo musician. This is why, after recording the basic tracks, the editing stage follows, which is in fact the composition stage itself, where the different parts come together to form a coherent whole. I listen to what I have recorded several times, I make a first mix, and I delete, aerate, and declutter the tracks, one after the other. This stage allows the music to “breathe,” weaving sounds into silence, giving them depth and space. It's a very intuitive process. I listen with an open mind and know that I need to delete this note or pattern at this moment. It's a split-second decision, and when I listen back, I almost never restore what I've deleted. There's another aspect to this editing work: its visual dimension. The arrangement window allows me to see the topography of the MIDI notes, instrument by instrument, on the layered tracks. It's like a map, but also a form of abstract art, where the spatial distribution of notes creates visual rhythms, geometric patterns, and labyrinthine intertwining. The final composition is the result of this micro-work of spatialized calligraphy in the DAW's arrangement window.

Next comes the fine tuning of levels, effects, spatialization, and sometimes modifying the tempo of the piece to slow it down and create completely different atmospheres, through time stretching, which completely reconfigures the composition and its harmonic landscapes.

When the mix seems stable, I export the audio file and let it rest for a while before listening to it again the next day. At this stage, I often go back to the multitrack recording to correct levels, rebalance the mix, calibrate differently effects, or, in some cases, further refine the instrumental tracks.

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. ALBUMS TYPICAL OF MY STYLE?

For anyone who may not know your music, bearing in mind how much you have released, what albums would you choose to say to someone that this is typical of your styles, and why?

It's always difficult, and undoubtedly presumptuous, to try to define one's musical style. In general, it's up to the listeners to do that, perhaps in the form of album reviews. If I had to venture an answer, I would say that there are a few common features throughout my work. First, I like fairly vast, reverberant sound spaces, with the sound moving across the stereo field and additional effects such as certain delays. Creating space and depth for my music is usually the first step in my composition process. Second, I like fairly contrasting sound palettes, with an experimental component, whether it's pure synthesis or sampled instrument libraries. Added to this is the primacy of climates and textures, which I prefer to more conventional compositional patterns, such as the sequence-polyphony-lead format. 

This primacy of moods and climates leads to a somewhat abstract and experimental dimension that can sometimes veer toward atonality or controlled dissonance, or, conversely, toward a refined and atmospheric minimalism. For the past two years, I have also been moving towards hybrid forms of music, combining purely electronic sounds with acoustic instrument sounds from sampled orchestral libraries. I am not trying to create the illusion of classical instrumentalists, nor am I moving in the direction of “classical” cinematic music based on orchestrations of strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussion.  Other composers do this very well, and I don't have the skills to go down that path. But I find it fascinating to be able to integrate certain acoustic instrument tracks into electronic environments and process them with different effects to create original textures and sound colors. As a lifelong lover of classical music, and contemporary music in particular, I find it fascinating to use these instrument banks in an experimental, non-realistic way.

On my blog, I have tried to offer my listeners some guidance to help them find their way around my music. There are four main categories: space music, post-Eno-style ambient, and abstract-experimental. These are not rigid categories, but musical directions that can overlap. For me, it's a way of gaining some perspective on my musical production over time. 

So if I had to choose a few representative albums, let's see... For Brian Eno-style ambient soundscapes: Ambient Mapping II, Music for Sound Installation I and II, Par vents et marées (album in collaboration with Andrew Heath). For atmospheric classical... Apeiron, Music for Slow Motion Dance... For space music: Cassiopeia, Orpheus, Close Encounter... 

 

For more abstract ambient: Sphaera Armillaris, Music for Art Gallery I, Sound Painting I and II. But I really think that each of my albums weaves these different threads together, in different proportions.

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. STARTING A SOLO CAREER

 

Once you decided on a solo career, what influenced the music on your first few albums, and was there a particular aspect of your music that you wanted to convey?

I turned to virtual synthesizers fairly early on, particularly Native Instruments' Reaktor, to develop new sound banks and build a library of textures and moods that could be reused in Lightwave's music. Then Logic Audio allowed me to create my first multitrack demos in my home studio environment, with a lightweight and flexible setup compared to the recording equipment we had at the Lightwave studio. This also gave me greater freedom for my musical work, since I could activate my setup at any time without having to travel to Christoph's place in Argenteuil. But I think the most important step was starting to record with Ableton Live. The philosophy of this DAW suited me perfectly. I could use it to launch and mix live the sound textures I had recorded over time, as well as use it more conventionally as a multitrack MIDI recorder to build new compositions. The modules developed for MAX also offered me a wide range of unconventional and experimental instruments and effects.

The idea of producing my music solo, under my own name, came naturally. It was a new way of working, different from the Lightwave experience. Unlike Lightwave, I was now on my own, in a completely virtual studio, since our hardware instruments remained at Christoph's place. No more cables, no more mixing desk, no more effects, everything was in the form of plugins, connected to a DAW. Another difference was the choice to make Bandcamp my distribution platform, which made me completely autonomous in the production of my music, in all its stages, including artwork, liner notes, sales, and promotion.

This led me to develop and evolve my musical personality, with both immense freedom and a restriction of possible choices, due to the style of music I like to listen to and create, but also to my technical and pianistic limitations. Every musician has the qualities of their flaws, as they say.  This solo adventure is still a space for me to learn, mature, and evolve. I never wanted to be confined to a particular style, even though it's probably easier to build a long term audience that way. It's been three years since I started releasing my music on Bandcamp, and I think I've progressed in different directions, deepening and broadening my musical personality, and going in directions that are quite new and at the same time logical if you look at my evolution since the 1980s.

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

PENALTY FOR SUSPICIOUS STREAMING ACTIVITY #UPDATE.

 Last August, Tunecore, my distributor on streaming platforms, accused me of streaming fraud and boosting the streams of one of my songs on Spotify with a bot-driven playlist.

The penalty was the removal of the entire album containing this song from ALL platforms and a fine of 10 euros.

I had spotted these abnormal streams last May on a clearly illegal and artificial playlist and had myself reported this anomaly to Tunecore.

I strongly protested against the penalty imposed by Tunecore, which I considered unfair and arbitrary.

My emails went unanswered for two months.

I considered removing all my music from the platforms, fearing that any track of mine would once again be included in automated playlists without my knowledge and that I would be fined.

I have no illusions about my financial earnings with Spotify, but to actually lose money!

Last night, I received a mail from Tunecore, acknowledging their mistake and my good faith, refunding the penalty imposed, and committing to put the entire deleted album back online.

So be it.

While I appreciate Tunecore's move, which took my complaints into account and reached a fair decision, I realize how vulnerable independent musicians are compared to multinationals such as Spotify, Tunecore, and others, where everything is now governed by algorithms and automated. We are also at the mercy of unscrupulous operators who lure us with promises of exponential growth in our streams and followers in exchange for payment, and who do not hesitate to include our tracks in playlists controlled by bot farms without our consent...

All things considered, it would have been more sensible for Tunecore to conduct a minimal investigation into the situation before punishing me brutally and without recourse...

I know that dozens (hundreds?) of musicians and bands have found themselves in my situation...

I conclude that one should never hesitate to protest vigorously and assert one's rights.

Q & A. THE END OF LIGHTWAVE?

 

                            Lightwave studio in Argenteuil

 

What led to the end of Lightwave and your decision to go solo ?

Lightwave isn't over! I would rather describe our status as a creative break and a step back. I am still in close contact with Christoph, and we are both committed to our musical adventure and its longevity. This break is partly due to Christoph's move, as he is now based far from Paris, which means we can no longer work together as we did in our studio in Argenteuil. Christoph has undertaken the enormous task of cataloguing, indexing, and digitizing our studio recordings and some live recordings from the band's early days. There are hours and hours of music related to some of our albums, but also a great deal of studio improvisations, either as a duo or with Jacques Derégnaucourt and Paul Haslinger, among others. There is some fascinating material, corresponding to different moments in our career, as well as different configurations of our equipment, from analog to MIDI synths, then to virtual instruments. We are listening back and indexing, identifying passages that could serve as the basis for new compositions, or sometimes be released as they are. Christoph is also very involved in developing new sound banks and textures that he shares with me, and we have also started creating new tracks for a future Lightwave project.

 

Lightwave in concert at B-Wave Festival (Heusden-Zolder, Belgium, 2016)

I would also say that our creative hiatus can be explained by the profound changes that the music world has undergone since the late 1980s. All the musicians of our generation have experienced these successive shocks and have coped with them to varying degrees. For an underground band like Lightwave, located in a musical niche, we had to face the disappearance of certain labels, our music publisher, Métisse Music, as well as the rise of digital platforms, streaming, and downloading. We had to rethink everything: music distribution, music publishing, promotion, and our presence on social media.  We consider our “golden age” to have been the period when we released albums on Hearts of Space/Fathom, then on Radio France's Signatures label, where we were supported by professional distribution and advertising networks. We have continued to exist quietly, under the radar, thanks to Horizon Musics' alternative distribution for three of our albums, our Bandcamp page, and more recently the release of Cités Analogues on Bureau B.

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. ABOUT LIGHTWAVE "CONCEPT ALBUMS"

 

Several of Lightwave studio albums are inspired by particular subjects around which the tracks revolve—please tell us more about the compositional nature of these albums. 

Choosing a concept, album title, and song titles is an important moment in our creative path. This step usually came at a time when we already had a certain amount of material recorded: we had to make a selection, think about the sequence of tracks, in short, build an artistic project. The concept helped us in this editorial process. We followed different threads.  Tycho Brahe,  Mundus Subterraneus,  and  Lowell  are albums inspired by figures who were both important and somewhat marginal in the history of science, and they allowed us to escape certain clichés of space music or dark ambient. 

 

 In the same vein,  Bleue comme une orange  is a reference to the French poet Paul Eluard and led us to explore the world of colors, while  Caryotype was inspired by the completion of the human genome map and connected us to the most contemporary science.  Each of the titles of our albums (and our tracks) therefore plays an important role in building the atmosphere of our music and its identity, and the concept naturally inspires the artwork, which is the visual gateway to the album. This was the heyday of Lightwave, when we were lucky enough to see our music released on CD on Fathom/Hearts of Space, then on Radio France's Signatures label, with international distribution. We also had a publishing contract with Métisse Music, which gave us some visibility on radio and supported us in our most ambitious concert projects, in Oberhausen and in the Choranche caves in the Vercors massif.

An amusing detail: I discovered by chance that a track from Mundus Subterraneus, De Motu Pendulorum, had been sampled, or rather used in its entirety as a background layer, on the album Boniche Dub by Bill Laswell and Lili Boniche (1998) (link to the track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2QflrNImEk&ab_channel=SalmaDahab). Obviously, we weren't contacted and weren't asked for permission! And of course, we were not credited! We were flattered that Bill Laswell had spotted our music, but rather than asking him for damages, we would have liked him to give our career a little boost... We would have had to take legal action to assert our rights, but we were dissuaded from doing so because of the likely costs involved...

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. ABOUT "CITES ANALOGUES"

Please tell us about the background to "Cités analogues"  and what musical direction it represented 

Cités analogues (1988) was an important milestone for Lightwave. First, because it was our first album project after Serge's departure: it was a stage where Christoph and I had to rethink our working methods as well as the band's roadmap, and simply prove to ourselves that Lightwave could exist without Serge. Secondly, because  Cités analogues  was constructed as a “concept album”, in the form of two continuous suites that occupied both sides of an audio cassette. Each mood, each track was worked on independently, then integrated into a continuum with crossfades. The two sequenced tracks, “Le Parvis” and “Cités analogues,” are a good example of the new balance and creative complementarity between Christoph and me. Christoph was in charge of the rhythms and polyphonic pads, while I was in charge of the lead lines, played live with my RSF modular. “Cités analogues” was thus a kind of demo or showcase of the musical directions we thought we were heading in, a sonic calling card bringing together our expertise and interests, from fairly heavy rhythms or Tangerine Dream-style sounds to ethereal Brian Eno-style atmospheres, via more electroacoustic passages and magnetic tape manipulations.

Over the years,  Cités analogues has become a “cult album,” albeit a very underground one, of course. The audio cassettes, distributed through various alternative mail order networks (notably Ultima Thulé, if my memory serves me correctly), were followed by various unauthorized uploads to digital platforms such as YouTube.

We were surprised to be contacted in May 2023 by a large American agency specializing in samples clearance commissioned by a fairly well-known rap group, who wanted to use a loop from  Cités analogues on one of their tracks. We received this track, which we found quite sophisticated in its genre, and indeed the Lightwave loop created a rather special mood.  The discussions went quite far, to the point of a licensing agreement that granted us a cash payment of $2,500, 30% of the song's publishing rights, etc. The musicians had probably found our music on YouTube... Unfortunately, the deal didn't go through, apparently because of a clash between the rap duo and their label.

This interest in Cités analogues encouraged Christoph to remaster the original Revox tapes and produce a digital version with significantly improved sound quality. On Alan Freeman's advice, we contacted Bureau B to submit this new master, which we thought would fit well into their catalog of reissues of electronic music from the Berlin School in the broadest sense. And we were pleasantly surprised to see the project accepted: the album was released with new artwork in early 2025, in digital, CD, and vinyl formats!

We were surprised by the very positive reviews from various webzines and blogs: our musical approach was fully understood, and forty years after the cassette's release, Cités analogues was still hailed as “avant-garde” and characteristic of a certain French electronic touch!

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. MODULAR EXPERIMENTS

 

Your first album, Modular Experiment, was very adventurous and almost experimental, but then the trio became a duo, so what were the issues? 

Modular Experiment is indeed representative of the music we were making at the time: largely improvised and experimental, heavily influenced by our German models. We were on a very cosmic trip, our music invited listeners on great interstellar journeys... The few concerts we gave were in the same style. The rather monstrous equipment we moved around on stage, the minimalist lighting, and sometimes the accompaniment of Popdreams' slow-motion dancers contributed to the hypnotic nature of our performances. In retrospect, it was quite an incredible challenge, between the weight of the flight cases to move, the time it took to set up and dismantle on stage, and above all the task of tuning the modular synthesizers... As the music was largely improvised, and the stage layout did not allow us to talk to each other directly, as we could in the studio, we rented headsets and intercom microphones for the occasion to communicate and, in a way, mix and evolve the music in real time.

Relations with Serge Leroy had become complicated, and it was he who took the initiative to leave Lightwave. It was a rather tense period. Relationships subsequently improved, and Serge supported us in various ways, lending us equipment, but also acting as an artistic advisor and informal manager. It was thanks to him that we came into contact with Hector Zazou, Jacques Derégnaucourt, and of course Paul Haslinger, as he had organized Tangerine Dream's two Paris concerts in March 1986.

 

Christoph Harbonnier (Concert Alpha Centauri, Bussum, 2001)

 

Jacques Derégnaucourt (Concert Alpha Centauri, Bussum, 2001)

 
The refocusing of the group around the core formed by Christoph and myself ushered in a peaceful and very productive period that has allowed us to continue our musical journey together to this day. Christoph brought his technical and practical skills to the running and maintenance of the studio and equipment, and he was also our sound engineer, in charge of recording and mixing. He always found the best solutions to the many technical problems we encountered. As a designer, he was also in charge of Lightwave's entire visual environment, most of our CD covers and booklets, the band's logo, and more recently, the Lightwave website and the videos and projections used in our concerts. For my part, I was in charge of management, public relations, project follow-up for concerts and record releases, writing press kits and interviews, and currently our presence on social media. The partnership with Christoph also helped us consolidate and develop our musical identity. We worked extensively in the studio and have dozens of hours of recordings. Most of the time, we would engage in free improvisation, which often resulted in highly elaborate and coherent compositions. These improvisations were based on attentive listening to each other, as well as the complementarity of our respective sound palettes, with each of us contributing successive touches to the overall soundscape.  Our duo was joined by occasional or regular collaborators, both for concerts and studio sessions: I am thinking of guitarists Kent Condon and Pierre Chaze, Jaques Derégnaucourt (viola, electronics, voice) and Renaud Pion (wind instruments, electronics), Bruno Heuzé (electronics), and of course Paul Haslinger (electronics, piano) and Jon Hassell (trumpet).

Lightwave in these different configurations functioned as a small chamber music or jazz ensemble, as these partners were all experienced musicians, capable of playing in live performances, either in the studio or on stage, where instrumental playing was inseparable from a process of collective composition and live mixing, with each member adjusting their levels and modulating their contributions according to the overall sound. 

Lightwave in concert with Jacques Derégnaucourt and Pierre Chaze (Alpha Centauri, Bussum, 2001)

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. THE BEGINNINGS OF LIGHTWAVE

 

How did the three members of Lightwave get together and what were your musical aims? 

Lightwave concert at the Auditorium des Halles (1987) with  PopDreams dancers.

The initial idea to form a band came from Serge Leroy. The very first Lightwave lineup included Serge, Laurent Bozec, and myself. Each of us experimented at home with our instruments, and playing together was naturally an exciting challenge. The reference to Tangerine Dream was also obvious. This first lineup was short-lived, but it distinguished itself in a largely improvised concert that quickly spiraled into a maelstrom of sound, even noise, with Laurent's VCS 3 spiraling out of control and turning the set into a cosmic-industrial experiment at very high volume. Our friends Yvan Coaquette and Anannkha Raghel, from Fondation, were in the audience and told us afterwards that they had really enjoyed this slightly crazy concert, which reminded them of some of Musica Elettronica Viva's wild performances. That was in 1985...  

 

Lightwave concert at the Auditorium des Halles (1987). Rehearsals.

While Laurent dropped out to focus on his studies, Christoph Harbonnier joined Serge and me in 1986 for a second concert. This was the second incarnation of Lightwave, very Berlin School-oriented, with another nod to Tangerine Dream. We had substantial equipment, mainly analog. We were able to set up our studio in a room in the house where Christoph lived in the distant suburbs of Paris. Our music was largely improvised and recorded live on Revox during our studio sessions. Each of us brought our own skills and personality to the table: Serge with his sophisticated sequences, Christoph with his rhythmic additions and polyphonic layers, and me with a palette of spatial sounds produced by the ARP 2600 and multiplied by delays and reverbs, as well as occasional lead parts. 

 

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. INFLUENCES AND FIRST SYNTHESIZERS

What were your musical influences and what started you off on the path of playing synthesizers ?

My musical ear was first trained by classical music, which we listened to a lot in my family. Then I discovered progressive rock, with Pink Floyd, and that absolute revelation that was their Paris concert with Roland Petit's ballets in 1973: it was my first rock concert, and the discovery of a new multisensory and psychedelic universe, both in terms of sound volume, quadraphonic sound, and the light show, which was already very sophisticated for the time...

 
I don't remember how I discovered the first records by Schulze and Tangerine Dream: probably through one of the music magazines I was reading at the time. It was a second revelation, with the beginnings of the Berlin school, Irrlicht, Black Dance, Timewind, Atem, Zeit, Ash Ra Tempel. 

 

A new sound universe opened up to me, immersive, spatial, experimental, unfolding in long contemplative tracks. This new music, combining drones, lunar organs, and extraterrestrial sound effects, fascinated me from the outset, and since then I have followed the developments of this German music scene, between progressive rock and sound experimentation, with bands such as Can, Embryo, Eloy, Guru Guru, Amon Düül, and of course Kraftwerk. I naturally followed the labels associated with Klaus Schulze, Innovative Communication, and In Team. I was able to see these bands in concert several times, and these are unforgettable memories, particularly Tangerine Dream, Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel, and Can...

 

  

A few years later, I went from listening to music to playing it, thanks to meeting Serge Leroy, who had founded the Crystal Lake association, in which I became very involved. That was in the mid-1980s. Serge already had a modular synthesizer, a Roland System 700. One of his friends was selling an ARP 2600 at the time. I bought it and started experimenting with it, learning the basics of sound synthesis. So I would say that I got into music gradually. I am self-taught and have forged my musical personality through years of listening, then through empirical practice and systematic study... I feel that I am still on a learning curve and constantly progressing, both technically and musically...

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

Musical Dream

 

Is it the setting sun?

Or the rising sun?

A disc of fire suspended above the sea and the archipelago...

I draw my inspiration from this fleeting, frozen moment.

A dream of luminous, radiant music, nostalgia for a horizon where colors become sounds with mysterious resonances...

In these troubled times we are going through, forget for a moment the madness of men in contemplation of the essential...

Open the eyes of the soul.
Meditate.
Create.
Dream.

Deep listening.
Express ineffable feelings through music...

ACHERON!

 

 Dear friends,

I am pleased to announce the release of my new album, “Acheron,” on Bandcamp and all platforms !

I have worked hard on this album, which combines immersive ambient music with neo-classical sound palettes.

It is meditative and atmospheric music that invites you on a slow journey of the mind through a mysterious and forgotten world...

I hope you enjoy listening to this album as much as I enjoyed composing it!

Thank you for your continued support over the years!

Several musical projects are in the works for the coming months, including the first album in a series of collaborations with Paul Haslinger: “Mallarmé” !  More information coming soon!!! 

 

About my music...

(“Destroyed Notations” Milan Knížák - 1963-1977)

I have always considered my musical activity to be an existential quest, an experience beyond limits, and a sensory and intellectual adventure.

Sounds, sound textures, acoustic spaces, instrumental colors, including those of virtual instruments, open up a field of expression and exploration that goes far beyond the boundaries of language, the languages we speak, the texts we write...

This boundless, open, adventurous dimension is an integral part of the music I create and the music I love to listen to.

Maximum openness, audiophile curiosity spanning ancient and contemporary music, jazz, rock, ambient, world music...

Every record I listen to, every new artist I discover enriches and transforms me, broadens my horizons, makes me see the world in a different way, like a prism or a plugin enriching my sensitivity, my intelligence, my relationship to the world...

I am an adventurous listener who loves to take the road less traveled, toward non-commercial, demanding, provocative music that makes you think and dream...

I think that the music I make, the music I made with Christoph Harbonnier in Lightwave, the music I make as a solo artist, and the music I am currently creating in my collaboration with Paul Haslinger, follows the same logic...

For me, musical creation is a space of freedom, without borders, without commercial constraints, without marketing niches.

It is a space where boundaries blur and dissolve, where the words and categories of record marketing no longer make sense... All that matters is the deep logic that organizes sounds and silence according to the inspiration of the moment...

The music I am listening to right now, the music I am creating right now, undoubtedly reflects a moment in my life, in my evolution.

I am aware that my current music probably defies the usual categories... Too abstract to be popular, too experimental to be ambient, without sequences to be Berlin School, too intuitive and exploratory to be true contemporary classical music...

It doesn't matter... It's my music...

I don't know how to define it... Deep down, words and categories don't matter...

It's my music, which carves out its own discreet path away from the cacophony of algorithmic playlists...

Musical freedom belongs to musicians, but also to listeners who choose to stray from (overly) well-tempered ambient music... 

ABOUT "TUNECORE": FEEDBACK ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE...

 

As you know, I use this blog as a kind of journal of my journey as an independent musician, a notebook containing my ideas, projects, and news.

I also try to offer more general reflections that may be useful to others musicians...

I would like to share my experience with Tunecore with you.

As you may know, independent musicians and most small labels have to go through aggregators to get their music online on streaming or download platforms (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Tidal, Deezer, Quobuz, YouTube, etc. — there are nearly 200 of them!), which, in exchange for an annual subscription or a percentage of sales, will distribute albums and EPs far and wide.

These new players act as intermediaries in an ecosystem where more and more musicians are self-producing their music in a wide variety of genres (rock, techno, rap, pop, ambient, etc.) without labels.

So I chose to entrust my music to Tunecore for distribution on every possible and imaginable platform, present and future, for an annual subscription fee of €39.99 excl. tax/year (semi-pro subscription).

I have entrusted Tunecore with 60 of my self-produced albums since August 2022. That's exactly three years ago. I also gave them the rights to my music and the SYNC option for possible TV, film, etc. adaptations.

So three years later, where are we?

I have to say that Tunecore has done the job of putting my music online everywhere.

There have been few hiccups (only one album with a recording of Gandhi in the public domain, which Tunecore refused).

Overall, Tunecore has done the job, and all my music is available on all platforms.

Let's be clear, this brings me practically nothing. Tunecore offers me global and international visibility. I have sometimes been able to recoup the cost of my annual subscription through publishing. So be it. But nothing in terms of sync, even though my music could lend itself to accompanying images.

It was in May 2025 that everything started to go haywire.

I am well aware that the streaming world has to deal with the challenges of AI, bots, fake song factories, and hundreds of tracks that offer nothing but white noise or the sound of rain drumming against windows.

But now I've experienced firsthand a robotic Spotify playlist that, in one day, earned me almost a thousand streams for one of my older tracks, “Magnificent Sky.”

I was the first to spot the anomaly in my streaming statistics: the playlist aggregated hundreds of tracks with no logical style or genre. And the playlister's identity linked to highly suspicious bitcoin sites.

I immediately notified Tunecore of my findings, certifying that I had in no way commissioned or paid for this playlist to include my track.

To my surprise, I received a response from a certain “Emily,” a “Fraud Prevention Specialist,” who informed me that Apple Music had detected fraudulent manipulation of streams for two of my albums

"Hello,
 
Thank you for writing in. TuneCore has been notified by Apple Music that the following content has been removed from their store due to abnormal store-end streaming behavior. As a result, this content was taken down from all stores.
 
UPC: 859766980916, 859768337374"

My statistics on Apple Music show no anomalies. And these two albums are still online as I write this post.

I asked Emily, Fraud Prevention Specialist, for details about the fraudulent manipulation of my two albums: when? How many streams? Etc.

I got the following response from Emily: 

“Unfortunately, we cannot share the details of investigations as we must protect the review policies and practices of TuneCore and our store partners. However, I can let you know that typically abnormal store-end activity is characterized by a large number of streams coming from a small number of unique listeners.
 
It has been determined that the funds in your account were derived from abnormal store-end activity.”

I replied:

“On Apple/iTunes, since July 2022, I've earned $46.20 with 2,685 streams over three years!
It's absolutely impossible for you to see on my account “a large number of streams coming from a small number of unique listeners.”
My Apple Music stats (see my upload last night) show no such anomaly!
Apple Music has not contacted me to report a problem!
I repeat my request for an explanation and verification (aren't you confusing me with another musician?).”

 
I received a response from Emily (Fraud Prevention Specialist... LOL!)

 
“Hello,

Unfortunately, if a store determines, in their sole judgment, that streams received on a release have been manipulated or artificially generated, they reserve the right to remove that release from their platform. Additionally, it is TuneCore's policy to remove any releases reported to us for abnormal store-end activity from all other stores. Releases that have been taken down for abnormal store-end activity will not be eligible for reinstatement.”

I'll skip the details: to date, both albums are still online on Apple Music. It was a false alarm that triggered the notifications from the Tunecore bot, aka Mrs. Emily (Fraud Prevention Specialist), from whom I never received a personalized and relevant response to my case, beyond these generic statements... I think she does not exist: she is a bot with automatic answers.

And so, yesterday, August 20, 2025, three years to the day after I signed up with Tunecore, I was notified of a $10 penalty for streaming fraud on Spotify (my song “Magnificent Sky,” which I immediately reported as having been misappropriated by a robotic playlist, without my consent).

This morning, the $10 was deducted from my Tunecore account (to be transparent, this is my earnings for the second quarter of 2025, including publishing rights).

And I am threatened with similar fines every time one of my songs is reported for fraudulent streams.

It doesn't matter that I'm not involved in the fraud; it's the musician who is punished, not the agencies that manage these automated playlists.

So as of today, August 21, I still haven't received a response to my strong complaint to Tunecore's support service. The numerous similar cases reported on social media lead me to believe that I will not win my case and that I will only receive generic responses.

At this point, I can only strongly advise against subscribing to Tunecore, given their approach to handling suspected streaming fraud, which is immediately attributed to the musicians.

In short, the 1,000 fraudulent streams of “Magnificent Sky” would have generated a maximum income of $3 (which I did not receive).

I was penalized $10.

Spot the mistake...

When will musicians who have been wronged by Tunecore file a class action lawsuit?

 
 




 

ACHERON — COMING SOON

 

  

Why and when release a new album?

How do I decide that a musical project deserves to be released from my personal archive to be shared, circulated, and risk being listened to multiple times, here and elsewhere?

Among my works in progress, I think Acheron is ready to venture into the vast digital ecosystem of ambient music....

The basic tracks were recorded between February and March 2025.

I listened to this draft album a thousand times...

I love this music, slow, ambient, immersive, with a random dimension... Music that lives and moves in stereo space, enveloping the listener in its harmonic wake...

I feel good in this music... It's the music I love to listen to, the music I love to create...

This music is a mirror of my soul, of my state of mind when I composed it...

Regardless of its possible technical imperfections (if there are any...), my music is deeply human and artisanal, no AI, it is human intelligence and skills (with their strength and  limitations) that drive the tools and instruments of my studio...

Tonight, I reworked the entire album,  Acheron.

I think I've overcome some of my doubts after listening to it dozens of times...

I decided to shorten the length of the tracks, make them denser and more concise, and tighten up the flow of the album.

I think it works better. More coherent... 

It is this “short” version that I will release (online on September 5, Bandcamp Day...).
 

Acheron is a new and coherent step in my journey... and I love  very much this album, ambient, abstract, post Brian Eno...

The sounds, the movement in the stereo space, the depth of the reverberations, the slowness, all of this reflects the music I dream of listening to, and so I create it in the hope that others will enjoy immersing themselves in it too...

OFFICIAL RELEASE: SEPTEMBER 5 BANDCAMP AND ALL DIGITAL PLATFORMS

Is any music possible at any time?

 

(“Colori” Giuseppe Chiari - 1974)

 

Is any music possible at any time?

Or does the era determine the type(s) of music that are possible?

Of course, there is the question of the instruments available at that time.

There is also the determination of the places and social circumstances where music is composed and performed.

But I also wonder whether the “spirit of the times,” the political context, the dominant intellectual paradigms, social conflicts, and new advances in science and cosmology may have had an influence on the music that was conceivable, listenable, in short, possible at a given time and place.

In other words, did Copernicus or Newton have an impact on the music of their time? Did Einstein's theory of relativity, the atom, cybernetics, and quantum physics influence musical creation?

And what about the humanities? Did the Encyclopedism of the Enlightenment, German altertumwissenschatf, Freudian psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, semiotics, and surrealism find their way into the history of music?

In other words, are we free of the parameters of our musical creation today, or are we unknowingly determined by the dominant paradigms of our time?

What is music?

 

I know I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to ask myself these questions...

 

What is music?

 

Is it a form of architecture?

 

Is it a form of painting?

 

Is it a form of sculpture?

 

Is it a form of writing?

 

Is it poetry?

 

Is it philosophy?

 

Is it cosmology?

 

Is it mathematics?

 

Is it geometry? 

 

The music I listen to, the music I create, solo or in collaboration, builds, organizes, maps possible worlds...

 

They largely escape analytical language, words, definitions...

 

These worlds are mirrors, but of what exactly?

 

Mirrors of a life, a thought, an unconscious?

 

The main power of the music I listen to, that I love, that I create, is its power of abstraction.

 

It pulls me away from where I am, from my space-time, and takes me to another place.

 

Music traces paths to other places...

 

Music exists at the crossroad of time and space. 

 

The musician is at the center of this universe.

 

The listener too. 

MUSIC TO LISTEN TO WITH EYES CLOSED (REVIEW)

 

Nice review in Audion 83....

 

And by the way, this album is "NAME YOUR PRICE" on my Bandcamp page!

 

Will you fall asleep while listening to it with closed eyes?

 

Please try and tell me! :-))

 

https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com/.../music-to-listen...