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.
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.
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