INTERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN WITTMAN. FROM LIGHTWAVE TO ATMOSPHERIC MINIMALISM (1)

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

 While Paul Haslinger provides the architectural and creative backbone of noion, Christian Wittman represents its poetic and sculptural soul. A founding member of the legendary French ensemble Lightwave, Wittman has spent over four decades exploring the "geography of the unconscious," moving from the modular Cosmic explorations of the 1980s to a refined form of "ambient chamber music."

Based in Paris, Wittman’s work at Nina Studio has long been at the crossroads of sound design and surrealist philosophy. With the launch of noion and the dual release of “Mallarmé” and “Borges,” he invites us into a realm where silence is as vital as the notes themselves. We spoke with Christian about the “automatic writing” of sound, his shared history with Haslinger, and why literature remains the ultimate compass for his electronic explorations.

Christian, you have been a key figure in the French electronic scene since the founding of Lightwave in 1984. How does the launch of noion feel different from your previous label experiences, such as with Hearts of Space or Signatures?
 

I don’t know if I was a key figure, but thank you…! Since Lightwave’s early days, we’ve weathered the massive shifts in the music industry. We were first signed to “traditional” record labels, like Erdenklang, which allowed us to release our first CD, “Nachtmusik,” in 1990. Then came Hearts of Space, with the “Fathom” sub-series, for slightly experimental ambient music, where we found ourselves alongside the big names of the California scene—Steve Roach, Robert Rich, and Michael Stearns. Then came “Signatures,” a label created by Radio France, which marked a new phase in our music, as we moved away from space music and dark ambient toward a more abstract and experimental form of chamber music, combining electronics and acoustic instruments. This took us up to the early 2000s…  Then came the crisis of independent labels and the rise of streaming platforms, the dominance of the mainstream, and a reluctance toward musical experimentation, which closed many doors… Like many others, I opted for self-production in the early 2020s, using Bandcamp and a DSP that gave me access to streaming and download sites. These changes made musicians independent, free to create, and gradually building their audience. The rules of the game, however, are ruthless, even rigged, in an ecosystem driven by opaque algorithms and dominated by Spotify. To understand what goes on behind the scenes, you must read Liz Pelly’s enlightening book, *Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist*  (2025). The diagnosis is terrifying… The tidal wave of AI-generated music today is introducing another major upheaval—a tsunami, in fact—that is hitting all players in the music industry with full force: labels, publishers, artists, instrumentalists, as well as the designers of virtual instruments and sample libraries...

As our collaboration project with Paul Haslinger began to gain momentum (in the spring of 2025), we approached a number of labels. But we finally opted for a different path: creating our own label, noion music, and taking full control of every aspect of our music’s production and distribution. Creative independence, control over our compositions at every stage, control over publishing, control over visuals and artistic identity…  With Paul, we fully embrace going against the tide of the major currents that, day by day, are upending the entire music ecosystem. Rather than going with the flow and losing our (artistic) soul, we’ve opted for a consistent approach and a long-term plan, without ignoring the difficulties that await us in the short term. There is something exhilarating about building a new label with strong artistic ambition and envisioning its gradual development over the years. We have a small team with us that helps us approach this project as rigorously and professionally as possible in terms of management and promotion...

noion is described as a platform for "atmospheric minimalism." From your perspective in Paris, how do you see this aesthetic fitting into the broader European tradition of "modern classical" and electro-acoustic music?

— Paul and I have followed parallel paths, even though Paul has had a much more prominent professional career and media exposure than I have. For his part, he started with the up-tempo, percussive electronic music of Tangerine Dream in the late ’80s, before successfully branching out into film and video game soundtracks in Hollywood—a world that offered creative freedom but also came with its share of constraints and stylistic clichés. At the same time, he developed a more personal and experimental solo project, gradually refining his music toward more intimate atmospheres. As for me, with Lightwave, we broke away from our early image—a French clone of late-70s Tangerine Dream, both in terms of instrumentation and music, quite Berlin School-esque, with sequences, etc. We shifted toward a more experimental sound, on the one hand by emphasizing abstraction and electro-acoustic atmospheres, and on the other by involving guest musicians on our albums and in our concerts, particularly Jacques Derégnaucourt (viola, voice), Renaud Pion (wind instruments), Pierre Chaze (electric guitar), and Jon Hassel (trumpet), as well as Paul himself for several projects, which led us toward a form of mixed and hybrid chamber music...

For my solo music, in parallel with and following Lightwave, I believe I pursued two main directions. One was ambient in the vein of Brian Eno and Harold Budd, who remain my absolute references; their albums are the ones I would take with me to a desert island, and not a week goes by without me listening to their music… The second direction led me toward “atmospheric classical,” as Stephen Hill—our label manager during the Hearts of Space/Fathom era and still a radio show programmer on the American public radio network—called it.

I’ve always been passionate about new music—from the New Albion label in San Francisco, the ECM New Series, and more recently from Another Timbre and Kairos, not to mention the albums by Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Max Richter, and Jóhann Jóhannsson. It’s true that there’s something very European about the latter, which also connects to the ECM New Series productions, and I’m also very inspired by composers like Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov. On the American side, the minimalist musicians of New Albion have also influenced me a lot—Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Ingram Marshall…. That doesn’t stop me from really loving Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and John Adams, but I haven’t pursued those directions.

As a French musician, my musical sensibilities have also been shaped by listening to the works of the Groupe de recherche musicale (GRM) and Ircam, which take an exploratory and experimental approach… I’d particularly mention Michel Redolfi, Bernard Parmegiani, François Bayle, and Luc Ferrary, but I also listen a lot to Pierre Boulez and the concerts of the Ensemble Intercontemporain...

So yes, I think my contribution to noion leans toward “atmospheric minimalism”—it’s a philosophy Paul and I share… “Minimalism,” in the sense that we try to refine our music, strip away the superfluous, open up our compositions, and get to the essence. Too many musicians overload their compositions, adding track after track, saturating the listening space—I’m thinking of Jean-Michel Jarre’s latest concerts, which I find unlistenable sonically and unbearable visually. With Paul, we’re going against this trend, and our mixes lean toward simplicity and highlighting what’s truly essential to a track.  “Atmospheric,” too, because in our choice of sound palettes and processing, as well as in the mixing, we try to create music that breathes, that diffuses into the listening space like colors or a scent, like a dream or memories...

INTERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN WITTMAN. FROM LIGHTWAVE TO ATMOSPHERIC MINIMALISM (2)

 

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

 

The collaboration between you and Paul Haslinger dates back to 1993’s “Tycho Brahé.” After all these years, what is it about your creative “alchemy” that makes this new partnership so effective now?

Between Paul and us—Lightwave and me—there is above all a forty-year friendship, built on mutual esteem and respect, and shared trust. This friendship was unlikely between a member of Tangerine Dream with an international following and us, musicians from the French underground… But it has grown stronger over the years, during my stays in California and Paul’s visits to Europe. And between Los Angeles and Paris, the internet now allows us to forge multiple creative connections and create a kind of virtual studio, a shared musical workspace, despite the distance and the time difference. Yes, indeed… creative alchemy… building itself through the back-and-forth exchange of tracks, stems, mixes, and ideas across the Atlantic.

It’s a fascinating creative process, because it’s unpredictable, resulting from our interactions, our suggestions, our feedback, our edits, our approvals… We speak the same musical language and therefore have an intuitive understanding of one another. We also trust each other enough to approve or reject what the other is doing. Paul’s editing and mixes based on my basic tracks extend and deepen my initial ideas, while enriching them and sometimes radically reorienting them. The resulting music is truly a shared creation, and it’s often hard to tell who did what in the final composition. It’s a bit like mixing paint palettes to the point where the original colors are unrecognizable in the final phase…

Ultimately, it’s a privilege to develop such a creative collaboration, in such an atmosphere of trust and mutual understanding, and it extends the experience of Lightwave, where we also had the same kind of intuitive musical communication. The difference is that back in the Lightwave days, we worked in the same studio, in live and improvised sessions, whereas with Paul, we work remotely and on a staggered schedule.

Much of the new material was recorded at your Nina Studio in Paris. How does the atmosphere of a European city like Paris influence the “geography” of these recordings compared to the Los Angeles sessions?
 

Nina Studio is my home studio, set up in my living space, in the inner suburbs of Paris. Obviously, a studio’s location influences creativity: the climate, the light, the vegetation, the architecture, and also, of course, the entire social and cultural environment. But a home studio is also a very personal and intimate space, surrounded by memories and meaningful objects… I also think of it as a workshop I’m accustomed to; I have my work routines there, my tactics and strategies for composition and recording, my favorite tools and instruments…. My studio, moreover, is surrounded by my extensive library of literature and the humanities. I believe this environment contributes significantly to my musical creativity, enriching it with all my reading and my own writing...

For the “Mallarmé” project, you mention capturing the “random, abstract essence” of the text. How do you translate the visual spacing of words on a page into “recurring patterns” of sound?

 
Our album consists of three parts, each a journey through different sonic and harmonic landscapes, featuring interplay between echoes, transitions, contrasts, and symmetries that evoke the leaps and rebounds of successive dice rolls triggering different harmonic events.  We wanted to play with the effects of continuity and rupture, and with forms of sonic ricochets punctuating the listening space. And as if by a mirror effect, our music aims to break the predictability of listening, just as Mallarmé’s text subverted the process of reading: just as the reader of Mallarmé was meant to hear the music of his text (some sources report that he composed his poem by strumming piano chords for entire nights), so too should the listener of our music, ideally, visualize juxtapositions of forms, breaks in line, syntactic ellipses, etc.

You’ve cited “automatic writing” from the French Surrealist movement as a major influence on these albums. Can you explain how you apply this “relaxed state of consciousness” to the highly technical world of modular synthesis?
 

Unlike strictly programmed music, with synchronized rhythm tracks, etc., or music that is written in advance and performed from a score, Lightwave’s music—and my solo music—relies heavily on improvisation, that is, on unreflective and unconscious creative flows, driven by the internal logic of what we play and hear. Back in the Lightwave days, there were two, three, or four of us improvising in the studio, live. We’d start the tape recorder—first stereo DAT, then ADAT multitrack—and play live, building the composition in the moment, interacting with one another. The first side of *Nachmusik*, for example, was actually recorded live during a single nighttime session, with nothing planned in advance.

In my solo work, I record track by track, but I try to maintain the same spontaneity. At the start of a session, I choose an instrument and go through different sounds… At some point, I settle on one of them and start recording: that sound guides my playing on the keyboard. For the second track, I start with a different instrument, and I play over the first track, on the fly, reacting to what’s already been recorded. And so on. Next comes the real composition phase: I make a rough mix and edit each track on the fly, mainly by deleting isolated notes or entire patterns, creating silences, dialogues between sounds, a progression, and recurrences. This editing process is very intuitive; I essentially read the layered MIDI tracks, reshaping each one in relation to the others, and immediately listening back to each edited section. These are therefore chains of intuitive, uncalculated decisions, made with a kind of floating attention that actually resembles the writing practices of the French surrealist poets, in particular states of consciousness that let the flow of words—and, in my case, sounds—run free.

I think Paul works in a similar way when it comes to editing and mixing the tracks from our respective stems. It’s also with this same spirit that we experiment with different track sequences and settle on a final one we both agree on. 

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… 

INTERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN WITTMAN. FROM LIGHTWAVE TO ATMOSPHERIC MINIMALISM (5)

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

Does the "minimalist simplicity" you embraced for these albums also extend to your live setup, or do you prefer a more complex, "orchestral" array of electronics on stage?

— The last concert Lightwave gave had a relatively light setup, with MIDI keyboards and computers for both videos and virtual instruments. I haven’t given any solo concerts to date, because I haven’t been offered the opportunity, and to be honest, I’ve preferred to focus on composing and recording in the studio. As for possible live extensions of my work with Paul, we’re considering various options, including bringing in classical instrumentalists to perform with us and interacting with them using different stems and atmospheres that we could mix and spatialize in real time. The venues and setting of these performances would of course play an important role, as would the accompanying multimedia elements on stage...

Are there any "hidden rarities" or unreleased archives from the Lightwave era that might find a new home or a new interpretation through noion?

— We have dozens of hours of unreleased recordings: studio sessions, and sometimes live recordings. Christoph spent months transferring everything to a hard drive, indexing it, and sometimes restoring it. This allowed us to revisit all our musical work since the late ’80s, and we were sometimes surprised by the quality of these studio improvisations. Yes, clearly there is a lot of material that deserves to be released, and there is a first album project in the works, for a possible release this fall on noion music.

What advice would you give to young electronic musicians who are interested in "deep, mindful listening" but find themselves overwhelmed by the fast-paced, "tumultuous" nature of the modern industry?

— That’s a difficult question, because who am I to give advice to today’s young electronic musicians? The current situation has immense advantages, but also immense challenges. Among the positives are the ability to set up a home studio at a low cost, the abundance of virtual instruments and sample libraries, and an ecosystem that makes it very easy to put your music online—directly on platforms like Bandcamp and Subvert, or through a digital distributor like Distrokid, Symphonic, or Tunecore—giving you access to all streaming and download platforms. This ecosystem makes life considerably easier for independent, self-produced musicians. The flip side, of course, is the exponential tidal wave of new tracks flooding platforms every day, amplified by AI that allows some to upload hundreds (thousands?) of new tracks daily. 

How do you stay afloat, how do you survive in this torrential flow? How do you catch the attention of streaming platform algorithms and get featured on influential playlists?   The first, easiest answer is to go with the flow, follow the trends of the moment, and create that “how-to” music that sends Spotify stats through the roof: music for napping, for sleeping, for doing math homework, for studying physics and chemistry, for brushing your cat, for cooking pasta, for eating a hamburger, for running in the countryside, for running in the city, and so on and so forth. This means molding yourself into a mold, giving up anything too personal, any rough edges, any dissonance, anything that steps outside the very narrow confines of the playlist. If you’re willing to make these concessions, then yes, the number of streams can skyrocket… but at what cost! You’re anonymized in playlists that endlessly stream a continuous flow of sound without anything to distinguish or recognize the musicians… You’re no longer a musician, but a product, repurposed by Spotify’s “Mood Machine.”

So what to do? It’s a matter of choice, goals, time horizon, and personal philosophy… My own answer has been to stay true to myself and not create impersonal, run-of-the-mill music. I aim to chart a coherent path by creating music that I love and that reflects who I am, music that aligns with stages of development, experimentation, and exploration. In short, I make music that interests me, that challenges me, that makes me think and imagine. You have to have the means to do it—not rely on music to make a living—and give yourself the time, but also prioritize a base of followers and listeners who are genuinely interested in the music, in short, listeners who actually listen and aren’t just consumers of background noise. I’d add that any independent musical endeavor must be accompanied by intense promotion on social media; it’s the only way to break out of anonymity… And the younger generation of musicians certainly has a better grasp than I do of the ins and outs of TikTok, Instagram Stories, and Facebook…! Being comfortable working with multimedia files, Reels, and other videos is definitely a major asset!

Finally, Christian, if “Mallarmé” is about “chance” and “Borges” is about “infinity,” what is the next literary or philosophical territory you’re eager to explore with Paul?

— I can already reveal that the next literary world Paul and I will be exploring is that of the Comte de Lautréamont, the enigmatic author of *Les Chants de Maldoror*, a dark and wild epic, laced with black humor and tinged with provocative nihilism...

We have two other major projects in the works, each of which will span several albums, but I’d rather keep you in suspense for now…!


Through his work with noion, Christian Wittman continues to prove that electronic music is not merely a technical exercise, but a profound "way of being in the world." By bridging the gap between 19th-century poetry and 21st-century sound design, he provides a necessary sanctuary of "clarity, silence, and space." Whether he is sculpting textures in his Parisian studio or exploring the mathematical precision of a modular sequence, Wittman remains a dedicated “sculptor of unknown worlds.” “Mallarmé” and “Borges” arrive on July 10, marking not just a release, but the start of a new, contemplative journey for anyone willing to listen deeply. 

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. 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. 

 

Cités Analogues. Review on Creatika Music Magazine.

 

 

Creatika Music. 

Electronic Neoclassical New AGe World Ambient 

Link

 

The French duo Lightwave, composed of Christoph Harbonnier and Christian Wittman, has left an indelible mark on electronic and ambient music since its formation in 1984. Their album Cités Analogues, originally released in 1988, has been reissued on January 10, 2025 by Bureau B. This album is a masterpiece of kosmische and concrète, combining elements of analog synthesizers and location recordings to create expansive, dreamlike soundscapes.

Lightwave has explored diverse musical styles throughout his career, from his early experiments in Modular Experiments (1987) to collaborations with artists such as Hector Zazou, Michel Redolfi, and Paul Haslinger. Their focus on concrete and ambient music has led them to create works that evoke poetic and sensual worlds. The album Cités Analogues is a sonic journey that invites listeners to immerse themselves in their complex and beautiful compositions.

Cités Analogues: Review by Paul Simpson

 

 

Review on ALL MUSIC

 

Cités Analogues Review by Paul Simpson

During the '90s, French electronic outfit Lightwave worked with Hector Zazou several times, and former Tangerine Dream member Paul Haslinger joined the group. 

 Cités Analogues, however, was one of Lightwave's early cassette releases, recorded soon after their core lineup of Christoph Harbonnier and Christian Wittman was established. Recorded and mixed live in the studio, then produced and edited soon afterward, the effort was made using modular synthesizers, Roland sequencers, and digital effects. 

Subsequent Lightwave efforts ventured into neo-classical territory, and with some of them appearing on Hearts of Space sublabel Fathom, they might've been found in the new age section at record stores.

 This recording is a bit too dark, cold, and collage-like to fit in such a category. The bustling sounds of a crowded airport are heard near the beginning of the album, segueing into radio airwave noises and trickling analog synths. "Le Parvis" establishes a sinister groove, with sneaking electronic drums and synth playing approximating wild flute trills. Another passage of sampled crowd noise segues into "Agora," an extended, ambient reflection that feels like an escape from society in order to seek a tranquil, meditative space. Following a few brief pieces consisting of uneasy, haunted textures and more found sounds, "Cités Analogues" makes greater use of the duo's sequencers and drum machines, recalling Tangerine Dream's rhythmic side while foreshadowing the type of cerebral ambient techno that would be much more common five years later, and adding a bit of analog crunch. 

Lightwave would go on to do bigger, more ambitious, and more accomplished things, but Cités Analogues is a set of promising early steps containing some innovative moments which sound slightly ahead of their time.

 

Lightwave Interview in Beyond the Horizon (Fall 1995)

 

A LIGHTWAVE INTERVIEW (1996)

I am currently exploring the archive of my musical activity through the years, and LIGHTWAVE, of course, is a major part of it.

 I will post in my blog a few documents belonging to this history....

 French or English language... Italian perhaps too...

 Music without frontiers!

    

 

 

 

 

A Dystopian Landscape? A new review of "Cités Analogues"

 

If you find white noise – or field music – relaxing, then this album, originally recorded and released way back in 1988 by the French duo Christoph Harbonnier and Christian Wittman, would definitely scratch that itch. However, I can’t promise you that your dreams will be sweet ones for its entire duration…

It’s something of a pioneering work, the gentle electronica of ‘Le Parvis‘ like an embracement of the soul, akin to a woozy, back seat of a taxi ride through the lights of the city at three in the morning. This comes after the ‘field music’ of ‘Intro‘, ‘Airport‘ and ‘Correspondance pour ailleurs‘ (effectively ‘Mail For Elsewhere‘), being, let’s not forget, a good six years before The Future Sound Of London’s seminal classic Lifeforms. Whether or not the latter act knew of, or took inspiration from, Lightwave, I am unsure, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

The otherworldly feel of much of this record is partly due to its sparsity, yet that somehow gives it an unexpected gravitas that is eerily beautiful – I guess in the same way that Vangelis‘s soundtrack to Blade Runner was – particularly on the thirteen and a half minute ‘Agora‘.

A night-time album if ever there was one, Cités Analogues sometimes has a creepier, ghostly feel about it, not least on the short ‘Cités de miroires‘ and the subsequent ‘Polycentre‘, which would absolutely work as incidental music in a psychological horror movie.

This is most definitely not an album for connoisseurs of ‘pop’ music or lovers of the contagious refrain. Instead, it requires the listener to use their imagination, or to lose themselves in the artists’ created world, though I would think fans of The Orb, at least, or of Brian Eno‘s ambient works, would be able to see the appeal in these recordings. The title track is arguably the only one that flirts with any kind of commercial bent, however – a 14-minute piece that feels like a carefree journey through stunning exotic landscapes. It’s odd how it often makes me feel like I’m a passenger, relaxing in one type of vehicle or another, but that, in itself, is strangely appealing.

After that, things become even more minimalistic, with the empty sky meanderings of ‘Ophelia‘ and the final void of nothingness that is ‘Lunar Parking‘.

Cités Analogues certainly feels like an important work anyway, and while I’m unlikely to be taking this to accompany you on many car journeys, it undoubtedly has a unique appeal, particularly if you’re a devotee of Dystopian soundscapes.

Cités Analogues is out now on Bureau B.

 

Loz Etheridge, God is in the TV Zine.

Cités analogues — Review on Rough Trade

"Cités Analogues is a mesmerizing album by Lightwave, released by Bureau B / Indigo. This ambient electronic masterpiece takes listeners on a journey through ethereal soundscapes and hypnotic rhythms.

Each track on the album is carefully crafted to create a sense of otherworldly beauty, blending intricate layers of synthesizers, pulsating beats, and haunting melodies. The music ebbs and flows, creating a dreamlike atmosphere that invites the listener to lose themselves in its immersive sonic landscapes.

Lightwave's attention to detail is evident throughout Cités Analogues, with each composition unfolding like a sonic tapestry rich in texture and emotion. The seamless integration of organic sounds with electronic elements gives the music a unique depth and warmth that sets it apart from other ambient works.

From the opening notes to the final crescendo, Cités Analogues captivates the listener with its evocative soundscapes and innovative approach to electronic music. It is a must-have for fans of ambient music looking for a truly transcendent listening experience."

 Rough Trade

"Cités Analogues" — Review on Groove.nl

Link

 

In the story of electronic music – and especially that with a more experimental, ambient viewpoint – the name of Lightwave will not be known to many. Christoph Harbonnier and Christian Wittman released their first album, Modular Experiments, in 1987, after which they recorded Cités Analogues in April and May 1988. It was released as a casette.

Their relative neglect is a mystery, but the restoration of this album should ensure their profile is raised. Bureau B have done the duo proud with a reissue on LP, CD and download. Their press release lists an inventory of RSF, ARP, Roland and Oberheim modular systems, mixed on A&H 12/2 and recorded to tape on a Revox B77 tape machine – a complex set-up but one aimed at what they describe as ‘a concept album, comprising of a series of discrete compositions and atmospheres assembled into two continuous tracks. The tracks are split out a little by dividers, with field recordings and tape processing softening the join between sections.

This is a fascinating listen, and if you didn’t already know you might suspect that Cités Analogues had been recorded in the last year, such is its reach and originality. Whether they work in long or short form the duo make subtly shifting soundscapes that are unexpectedly intense in their realisation.

On occasion they hit some winsome grooves, as in the slow but elastic Le Purvis. Agora is lost in thought, musing over a slowly shifting bass, while the eerie Polycentre and activity of News are at once complementary. Cités Analogues itself is an effective long form piece, its quarter-hour duration packed full of ideas and fragments that are given an assured and compelling development. As the album evolves Lightwave create soundscapes with industrial roots but with added splashes of instrumental colour. These are especially evident on Ophelia, a dream sequence with feather-light textures, suspended in mid-air.

 

"Cités Analogues" — Review on babyblaue-seiten.de (German)

 

 

Review by Achim Breiling in Babyblaue-seiten.de

(English translation below) 

 

Lightwave aus Paris, 1985 entstanden, veröffentlichten 1987 mit "Modular Experiment" ihr Debütalbum, erschienen in kleiner Auflage auf Tonbandkassette. Da war das Projekt ein Trio, mit Serge Leroy neben dem Gründungsduo aus Christian Whitman und Christoph Harbonnier. Bei den Aufnahmen zum Nachfolgealbum "Cités Analogues" war man dann nur noch zu zweit. Dasselbe erschien 1988 wieder als Kassette, und gilt nach dem recht experimentellen Erstling als erstes Album mit dem typischen Lightwave-Sound.

Im Januar 2025 haben sich nun bureau b des Materials angenommen und "Cités Analogues" erstmals auf CD veröffentlicht. Das Album wurde dazu von Christoph Harbonnier höchstselbst neu abgemischt und gemastert. Vergleicht man die Spielzeit der CD mit im Weltweiten Netz zu findenden Angaben zur Kassettenversion, stellt man fest, dass Harbonnier das ursprünglich etwas über einstündige Werk offenbar um rund 7 Minuten gekürzt hat. Vor allem das ursprünglich fast 10-minütige "Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis" ist davon betroffen. Beim Hören stellt man keine sonderlichen Brüche fest, so dass ich einmal annehme (ich kenne die Kassettenversion nicht), dass das Werk von der leichten Straffung profitiert hat. Der Sound ist exzellent.

Zwei lange Suiten (nach "Agora" gibt es eine kurze Pause – davor und danach gehen die Nummern ineinander über) aus Elektronikspielereien, Tastensounds, Tonbandkollagen, Geräuscheinspielungen und Stimmfetzendurcheinander (in "Airport" z.B.) und nur selten elektronisch-perkussiven Mustern (vor allem im schon erwähnten "Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis" - vielleicht ganz gut, dass die Nummer gekürzt wurde - und im Titelstück) ist auf "Cités Analogues" zu finden, die sehr farbig instrumentiert dahin wogt, ohne direkt Bezug auf irgendwelche Vorbilder oder Inspirationsquellen zu nehmen. Eher frei schwebend arbeitet sich die Musik voran (von "Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis" abgesehen), voluminös hallend, klangvoll rumorend, getragen schreitend, mysteriös flüsternd oder experimenteller klangbastelnd. Berliner Sequenzermuster sind eigentlich nur sporadisch im langen Titelstück auszumachen. Ansonsten erzeugen die beiden Franzosen durchaus eigene, sehr kreative Tongebilde.

"Cités Analogues" ist ein interessantes Album mit progressiver französischer Untergrund-Elektronik, das erfreulich wenige typische 80er-Jahre-Verunreinigungen aufweist (bis auf das Bisschen E-Perkussion – glücklicherweise wird man von Plastikklatschen verschont), und es schafft, im Gegensatz zu den meisten damals noch aktiven Begründern des Stils, den progressiven Geist der 70er auch gegen Ende des darauffolgen Jahrzehnts am Leben zu halten. Die Scheibe hatte es durchaus verdient durch die Neuauflage vor dem Vergessenwerden bewahrt zu werden. Elektronikadepten können bedenkenlos zugreifen. Nun bleibt noch zu hoffen, dass bureau b auch den schon erwähnten, nicht weniger interessanten Lightwave-Erstling ("Modular Experiment") neu auflegt.

 --------

 Lightwave from Paris, formed in 1985, released their debut album “Modular Experiment” in 1987, published in a small edition on tape cassette. At the time, the project was a trio, with Serge Leroy alongside the founding duo of Christian Wittman and Christoph Harbonnier. For the recordings of the follow-up album “Cités Analogues”, it was just the two of them. The same album was released on cassette in 1988 and, after the rather experimental first album, is considered the first album with the typical Lightwave sound.

In January 2025, Bureau B took on the material and released “Cités Analogues” on CD for the first time. The album was remixed and mastered by Christoph Harbonnier himself. If you compare the playing time of the CD with the information on the cassette version found on the worldwide web, you will notice that Harbonnier has apparently shortened the original one-hour work by around 7 minutes. The originally almost 10-minute “Le Parvis” is particularly affected by this. Listening to it, you don't notice any particular breaks, so I assume (I don't know the cassette version) that the work has benefited from the slight streamlining. The sound is excellent.

 Two long suites (after “Agora” there is a short break - before and after that the numbers merge into one another) of electronic gimmicks, keyboard sounds, tape collages, noise recordings and vocal shredding (in ‘Airport’, for example) and only rarely electronic-percussive patterns (especially in the aforementioned “Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis” - perhaps it's a good thing that it was shortened - and in the title track). )  can be found on “Cités Analogues”, which undulates along with very colorful instrumentation without making direct reference to any role models or sources of inspiration. The music (apart from “Pour Ailleurs Le Parvis”) is rather free-floating, voluminously reverberating, sonorously rumbling, striding along, mysteriously whispering or experimentally tinkering with sound. Berlin sequencing patterns can only be detected sporadically in the long title track. Otherwise, the two Frenchmen produce their own, very creative soundscapes.

“Cités Analogues” is an interesting album with progressive French underground electronics, which has pleasingly few typical 80s impurities (apart from the little bit of electric percussion - fortunately you are spared plastic claps) and, unlike most of the founders of the style who were still active at the time, manages to keep the progressive spirit of the 70s alive towards the end of the following decade. The album certainly deserved to be saved from oblivion by the reissue. Electronic fans can pick it up without hesitation. Now it remains to be hoped that bureau b will also reissue the aforementioned, no less interesting Lightwave debut (“Modular Experiment”).