INTERVIEW OF PAUL HASLINGER. FROM TANGERINE DREAM TO THE SONIC GEOGRAPHIES OF noion MUSIC (4)

 

[Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ]  

 In Edgar Froese’s autobiography “Force Majeure,” he shares several stories about your time together. Looking back at the 1986-1990 era, what do you feel was your most significant contribution to the band’s evolution during those years?


I have not yet had a chance to read Force Majeure, but I think any story involving two people will inevitably be told differently from each side. I will always be extraordinarily grateful to Edgar and Chris for asking me to be part of the band and, ultimately, making possible the career I have had.

It is difficult for me to assess the significance of my own contributions in Tangerine Dream. If you asked me which album I feel has stood the test of time, I would single out Underwater Sunlight. If the question were directed toward soundtracks, I would mention Miracle Mile.

The most significant event during those five years, viewed from my current perspective, was the split between Edgar and Chris in late 1987. It fundamentally changed the fabric of the band, and from that point onward an important aspect of balance was missing.


You remain in occasional contact with Chris Franke in Los Angeles. Is a future collaboration between the two of you something that remains a possibility, or is that chapter purely part of the "memory palace" now?


 
Haha… my impression is that Chris has his hands full with all kinds of technical projects, and he is pretty happy and content where he is. When I worked with Peter on Neuland, we had some contact with Chris, but he was then as he is now keeping very busy with his various projects. Chris, like Edgar and Peter, has a very unique musical talent, and his guidance and production support were crucial in making Underwater Sunlight what it is. I remember driving with him one grey Berlin morning to Hansa Studios to record the piano parts for the album. And knowing that Chris was out there, making sure it would sound good, directly enabled that performance.


You recently collaborated with Peter Baumann for “Neuland.” What did that project teach you about your own musical roots that you’ve brought into the foundation of noion?


I originally met Peter when Tangerine Dream signed to his label, Private Music, in 1988. He was also instrumental in helping me begin a new phase of my career in Los Angeles during the 1990s.
So we’ve known each other for quite some time. And like with Edgar and Chris, we always had a lot of fun, whether we were simply spending time together or working on creative projects.

If you will, Neuland was a significant step in the direction of NOION. It was a first attempt to play by our own rules and build a label ecosystem around the work.

Unfortunately, not everything worked out as planned, and we were unable to realize the project in a live setting as originally envisioned. In retrospect, I think we should have focused more on the label aspect and built everything a bit more slowly.

But as is often the case in life, those learning experiences eventually led to NOION and to a different approach in launching and managing both the label and the projects it supports. 

INTERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN WITTMAN. FROM LIGHTWAVE TO ATMOSPHERIC MINIMALISM (3)

 

 [Interview by Jacopo Vigezzi, originally published in Prog Rock Journal, July 10; republished with permission.  Link ] 

 

In “Borges,” the music is described as unfolding like a “labyrinth.” As a composer, how do you build a sonic structure that feels “infinite” and “layered” without losing the listener in the complexity?

— That’s an interesting question… When we look at a painting or a piece of architecture, when we read a text, when we listen to music, do we focus on the details and the complexity of their interconnections, or do we have a more holistic perception? It depends on our modes of perception—whether analytical or synthetic. Borges’ compositions aim to reflect the dizzying dimension of his writings: we did indeed have labyrinths in mind, with contours, detours, corridors, and staircases that make one lose one’s sense of space and time. We also thought of mirror effects—reflexivity is important in his texts—causing sounds to bounce and deepening perspectives, creating sonic illusions. I thought of Escher’s architecture but also of Jurgis Baltrusaitis’s beautiful writings on mirrors, anamorphoses, and the fantastic.

Needless to say, we did not seek to illustrate Borges any more than Mallarmé, but rather to offer a form of free interpretation that approaches their specific poetic worlds. We used sound rather than words or images to attempt a form of immersion in the quintessence of their writings.

The concept of "tonal poetry" is central to these releases. Do you consider yourself a musician who uses machines, or a poet who uses sound as his primary alphabet?

— I do not consider myself a technician or an engineer, nor even a musician in the academic sense, but rather a tinkerer, in the sense that Claude Lévi-Strauss gave to the term: my approach is defined less by calculation and planning, or technical mastery of machines, than by intuition, the subversion of instruction manuals, unorthodox experimentation in programming and assembling sounds, and unforeseen and sometimes provoked accidents. So yes, I do like the image of the poet who writes with sounds: I do indeed conceive of my music as a form of writing—not narrative, but descriptive and introspective: it describes landscapes, possible worlds that may be internal and psychological, but also have shapes, colors, materials, smells, and soundscapes. I also conceive of this “tonal poetry” in the form of gestures and movements, that is, as painting and sculpture of sounds, where I work with forms, surfaces, volumes, lines and curves, and colors. In other words, machines and technology are not ends in themselves; I am not a synthesizer fetishist, but I consider that I have a palette of tools—brushes, sculptor’s chisels, basic materials—from which I can freely draw for a given recording session. The mix of tools, their occasional chaining, their feedback, and their incompatibility sometimes are the secrets of my sound and musical craft...

Lightwave was famous for recording in unique locations, from the Gasometer in Oberhausen to the Choranche caves. Do you feel that the band will eventually return to these “site-specific” recordings, or is the focus now purely on the “inner world” of the studio?

— Yes, we’ve put on some extraordinary concerts, providing the soundtrack for sound installations in exceptional venues, where we were assisted, in particular, by our friend Michel Geiss, who was a close collaborator of Jean-Michel Jarre during the early part of his career. In Oberhausen, we provided the sound for an art installation designed by Anne and Patrick Poirier. They had created a miniature city—an industrial site crisscrossed by railroad tracks—which spectators could view through telescopes set up around the perimeter. Every movement of a telescope triggered a track of our music, creating an interactive soundscape that constantly renewed itself from the hundreds of tracks we had recorded—tracks designed to be mixed in every possible combination (thanks, Brian Eno, for the concept lol!).  In Choranche, we provided sound for underground galleries with soundscapes that followed the audience’s progress from speaker to speaker—guided by speleologists—and blended with the roar of the waterfalls… And upon their return to the large chamber of the underground lake, we treated them to a live concert, with all our instruments set up among stalactites and stalagmites… A completely crazy project, if ever there was one… It was Michel Geiss again who oversaw the entire technical production. And after several days, torrential rains over the Vercors mountains caused the underground rivers to swell; the water level rose, threatening to submerge the cave’s only exit, so the audience had to be evacuated urgently, and all our equipment had to be raised in a panic to avoid getting soaked…!

Since Oberhausen and Choranche, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, so to speak… For noion, in 2026, technologies have obviously evolved, and so have concepts… Paul and I are thinking about possible performances based on our music. Traditional concerts, with laptops and screen projections, no longer make much sense to us. So we need to move toward installations or immersive productions, in collaboration with multimedia artists and architects, in venues other than traditional concert halls. We’ve made preliminary contacts with creative partners. Now we need to find festivals or institutions likely to take on our projects… We’re not short on ideas; we want to break away from the concert format in the traditional sense…