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.