THE MUSIC OF FLIGHT AND LEVITATION

 In Denis Villeneuve's films, certain sequences and images are extraordinarily beautiful and powerful.  Take, for example, the brief sequence at the beginning of Dune Part Two, where Harkonnen soldiers levitate to the top of a rocky peak in the surreal light of an orange dawn.

(Villeneuve's predilection for the color orange is also evident in the magnificent Las Vegas episode in Blade Runner 2049).

The Harkonnens' weightless ascent is a dreamlike scene that defies the imagination.

I have no idea how it was done. The actors were probably suspended from cables against a green screen before being superimposed onto this desert landscape.

This image, like the entire scene, is related to my musical universe, to the music I like to listen to (I'm thinking of Brian Eno's Apollo) and that I try to create.

A dream of slowness and lightness, of flying in an almost aquatic atmosphere, of effortless floating ascension.

Watching this sequence, this image, makes me dream of the music that could accompany it.

Not just Hans Zimmer's synthetic, grainy layers.

But others, more fluid and airy, more minimal and subliminal...

But perhaps silence is the best soundtrack.

Silence, the music of dreams of flight and levitation... 

CHANCE

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

I’m looking to connect with filmmakers or visual and video artists creating experimental or conceptual short films — works that challenge form and perception. My aim is to create immersive audiovisual pieces where sound and image interact as equal elements, shaping mood and meaning together.

 

This is a creative and non-commercial initiative, focused on exploration, dialogue, and artistic process. 

 

If your visual practice moves through atmosphere, concept, abstraction, or emotional resonance, I’d love to hear from you. 

 

contact: DM or mail: wittman.christian [@] gmail.com

 

some links to my recent albums: 

 

https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com/album/acheron

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

https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com/album/akousmata

https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com/.../music-for-sound...

THE SOUND CHARTS OF JOHN CAGE

John Cage "Music of Changes" Manuscript Fragment 

Courtesy the John Cage Trust

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

John Cage 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

 Link

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

John Cage (1988)

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

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

Q & A. COLLABORATION WITH PAUL HASLINGER?

  

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

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

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

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

 

Draft cover of the forthcoming album (SOOND label)

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

                                  My Spotify dashboard

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

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

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

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

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

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. ANY NEW MUSICAL DIRECTION IN THE FUTURE?

 

John Adams. Nixon in China. Le couple Nixon, invité en Chine en 1972, ici mis en scène par Valentina Carrasco. Opéra National de Paris (2023)

Are there any musical directions that you can see yourself going in the future that may surprise your listeners? 

I don't think I'll ever do techno, metal, or even progressive rock... Bossa nova is also unlikely, although I enjoy very much this kind of music. However, since the days of our albums In Der Unterwelt, Cantus Umbrarum, and Lowell with Lightwave, I've been thinking about what an electronic opera might be like—I should point out that I'm a big fan of opera, and I've enjoyed certain operas by Peter Eötvös, Pascal Dusapin, and Helmut Lachenmann at the Paris Opera. This season, we are lucky enough to have Philip Glass's Satyagraha and John Adams's Nixon in China, which are more classically orchestrated. So yes, working towards an electronic opera, with sampled voices and real singers and reciters, would be wonderful... not to mention the possibility of a live performance...  

 

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

Q & A. MY VOYAGES INTO MUSICAL EXPLORATION

 

John Cage Score without Parts (40 Drawings by Thoreau)- Twelve Haiku, 1978 

 

A lot of your recent albums have had concepts and are very much voyages into musical exploration—please elaborate on what it is that you are trying to achieve.

As an independent musician in a narrow musical niche, that of atmospheric and experimental ambient music, and not being in a position where I have to make a living from my albums, I have total creative freedom. I release an album when I want to, with music that matches my personality and my artistic vision, without making compromises or concessions to meet the expectations of a supposed wider audience or the mainstream standards of the moment. This freedom is a privilege that allows me to pursue a path marked by experimentation, abstraction, and a form of ongoing quest. 

You may know that in my “real life,” I am a researcher in the humanities and social sciences, and I have had a successful academic career in France, between Classics, history, and anthropology, with a dozen or so books published. So I am quite an intellectual and conceptual person, lol, and my deep vocation for research has manifested itself in two forms, in my work as a university professor and in my musical activity. The languages, the means of expression, and the audiences are obviously different, but ultimately I think they are quite similar forms of creativity and mental functioning. So, it's true that I approach music in a fairly intellectualized way, as we've seen with Lightwave's concept albums, but this also applies to my solo music: there are constant references to cartography, geometry, contemporary painting and sculpture, but also to meditation and spirituality, particularly Buddhism. I am fascinated by sound and silence, by slowness, by immersive atmospheres, by successive thresholds of listening and consciousness, by forms of writing and poetry that do not use the language of words, but that of sounds, vibrations, and harmonics.

So this exploratory dimension is essential to me. It has manifested itself in some of my space music albums, traversing vast stellar expanses, as well as in my music designed for sound installations or art galleries, where sound would configure new relationships to space, to the position of the body in that space, and to forms of sensory disorientation.

I must admit that Brian Eno has been and still is a major influence on me since the release of his first ambient albums, Discreet Music, Music for Airports, Thursday Afternoon, etc. Research and experimentation are at the heart of Brian Eno's entire career, whether in music, visual arts, installations, or his work as a producer, for example for U2. I have a copy of his Oblique Strategies card game at home, which I sometimes use as a creativity trigger or to reorient a recording session in a different direction.

More recently, I have begun to deepen my knowledge of the compositional methods of a number of “minimalist” musicians such as John Cage and Morton Feldman, which has led me to think of my music as a set of visual devices or sculptures in motion, trying to translate variations in light, color, form, and space into sound. I am also fascinated by the interaction between chance and structure.

Morton Feldman. Score for "Projections" series

 
Paradoxically, despite this intellectualized dimension, I think I approach music more as a “tinkerer” (un bricoleur) than as an “engineer,” to borrow the distinction made by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. That is to say, I like to divert, experiment, and engage in montages and experiments that deviate from expected forms and models. In a largely intuitive and exploratory way, I also feel that I move freely within the possibilities of contemporary music, hybridizing influences, subverting genres and classifications, and perhaps appropriating with my own musical language what dodecaphonic, serial, atonal, concrete, electroacoustic, and minimalist music have explored since the beginning of the 20th century. Years of listening to music have allowed me to create my own synthesis of these different currents.

Originally published in AUDION MAGAZINE #83, August 2025.

Interview by Andy Garibaldi. 

 

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.