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 PAUL HASLINGER. FROM TANGERINE DREAM TO THE SONIC GEOGRAPHIES OF noion MUSIC (3)

 

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

You’ve mentioned that your intellectual life is a “memory palace” full of books. Besides “Mallarmé” and “Borges,” what other authors inhabit the "rooms" of your current musical thinking?


It would certainly surpass the framework of this interview to take you on a full tour. And if I worked in advertising, I would say you need to check out the next few projects to find out.
But in expanding on my original statement, I would say that this personal memory palace is not only filled with books, but also with a vast catalogue of things my mind has bookmarked for one reason or another.

I believe that memories often drive creation, especially when, as in my collaboration with Christian, someone else’s catalogue of thoughts comes into play.

The original ceremonial function of music was often to support the recitation of poetry or religious texts. So the connection between story and sound has been with us for a very long time.
The knowledge of a vast catalogue of ideas creates the potential for new readings. No story is the same, and every story is the same. I think Borges would agree.


You handled the mixing and mastering for both releases. What was the greatest challenge in balancing the unhurried pace of these works with the meticulous precision required for such deep listening?


I think of this process as the ultimate treat for any composer: you are conducting the orchestra, you can fine-tune any detail down to a microscopic level, and you can alter the space and the relationships within that space at will.

As such, engineering and mastering this type of project requires the same degree of concentration that a conducting performance would.
In my mastering approach, I try to alternate between deep technical adjustments and general listening sessions away from the studio. It is a curious fact that in order to evaluate the flow of music, you have to alter your field of experience.

Many engineers do this by listening at extremely low volume, but I feel it is mainly a question of mindset. The absence of analysis while you listen.

What you feel often defies analysis.


You were classically trained in Vienna before joining Tangerine Dream at age 23. How much of that academic discipline still survives in the way you "sculpt" Electronic sound today?


While I certainly studied and always appreciated classical music, my real love was always in the studio and with the bands I was playing in.  I also studied musicology, so in many ways I am simply a music geek, endlessly obsessing over this or that thing I have just discovered.

The question brings us back to something I mentioned earlier: it is now possible to create and realize a piece similar to Varèse on a laptop with a collection of software tools. So even if you don’t have the resources or the training, many of the things you heard and admired are suddenly within reach.

I do think of music as an act of sculpting. And the aesthetic frame you use for that process ultimately consists of all the music you have heard before—and the quality of that music.

When I listen to strings, the fact that I grew up in Austria within a certain symphonic tradition will always influence how I evaluate string sound. A great deal of this simply becomes part of your system. It becomes part of your musical personality. 

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 PAUL HASLINGER. FROM TANGERINE DREAM TO THE SONIC GEOGRAPHIES OF noion MUSIC (5)

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

 

After decades of scoring for film and games, how liberating is it to produce music that functions as a "field of experience" rather than a support for a visual narrative?


This is, of course, an important aspect. The freedom to create, shape, and explore is quite different from supporting picture.
 

The difference is not technical. I still enormously enjoy scoring films and television projects. It is more the openness of the playing field that is different. The fact that there is no script; rather, the script is written alongside the project. There is no film, but we may create a film in connection with the project. Those conditions create a fundamentally different framework for exploration. And once again, the old West Coast notion that “everything is possible” shines through.


Through “10 Phantom Rooms,” you develop virtual instruments. Do you see technology as a boundary to be pushed, or a tactile extension of the composer's hand? 


I think it is quite natural for musicians to continually tinker with their instruments. Mozart’s friend Anton Stadler developed a clarinet with an extended range, and it inspired Mozart to write new music that took advantage of those possibilities. New possibilities lead to new ideas. As such, I am simply trying to find ways to expand our virtual instrument palette, with the hope that these instruments, too, will become tools that enable new forms of creation.


It took eight years to find your solo voice for Exit Ghost. What advice would you give to the new generation of composers who feel pressured by the "speed and abundance" of today's music industry?


If I am being honest, there is very little advice I can give.
I am fully aware that my path has benefited from many moments of unplanned good fortune. And while you can give luck a chance—by studying, working, and playing with other musicians—it is never a guaranteed outcome.
 

I also believe that our strongest influences are often the people we look up to. As mentioned before, the examples set by Richard Horowitz and Jon Hassell continue to inspire me to this day.
There is also the fluidity of music itself. You can be absolutely certain about something today, and two years later it may look completely different.
 

In my view, it is extremely important to allow that process to happen. Allow yourself to be wrong, to rediscover. Stay open to change. Never carve your rules in stone.



Are there plans to bring the noion projects into a live setting—perhaps as acousmatic performances—or do you view these works as experiences destined strictly for the studio and home listening?

Some of our future projects could certainly have a live component (whether it’s a concert, sound installation, or part of a cross-disciplinary performance). For the moment, we have our hands full with the label, and we hope to start releasing physical editions, box sets, immersive formats, and eventually media expansions (books, films).

Paul Haslinger’s journey through noion is a testament to the enduring power of intellectual curiosity and the necessity of silence in an increasingly noisy world. By bridging the gap between scientific precision and evocative sound art, he and Christian Wittman have created a new compass for the contemporary experimental scene. As the label evolves into a platform for like-minded musicians, it promises to remain at the forefront of redefining artistic expression. “Mallarmé” and “Borges” will both be released on July 10, inviting listeners to embark on their own meditative journey through these meticulously crafted sonic labyrinths 

THE QUEST OF A MUSICAL PHILOSOPHER'S STONE?

 

I am currently testing GRM Tools (better late than never...). After the IRCAM plugins, I am exploring the infinite transformations and hybridizations of my own recordings in unexpected and exciting directions.

I like the idea of working with sound material in a chain of processing and remodeling, which sculpts its form, volume, motor skills, temporality, and space.

 

These tools can be used with an in-depth knowledge of sound physics. 

 

I prefer to approach them more intuitively, a bit like a painter working with colors or a sculptor working with raw stone or wood.

 

That's how I compose my music.

 

But once the tracks are recorded and mixed, they become the starting point for new sound experiments.

 

Years of practicing with hardware, analog, modular, and digital synthesizers, then virtual instruments, as well as years of listening to classical, contemporary, and electronic music, have trained a bit my ear.

 

By experimenting with today's new tools as a tinkerer rather than an engineer, I hope one day to hear the unheard and perhaps find the musical philosopher's stone that every musician dreams of!

THE ARTIST'S TASK...

 

 

"The artist's task is not limited to finding solutions to existing problems, but rather—as the works prove—to constantly inventing new problems."

Luciano Berio — Electronic Music (in: Ecrits sur la Musique, Philharmonie de Paris, 2025, p. 284)

 

 

Reading Luciano Berio's writings on music is a fascinating experience... They are so insightful, both in their reflection on his work and in their more general theoretical propositions.... 

This definition of the musician's task is so relevant, both in terms of his creative process and its effects on listeners.

Yes, all creation, whether musical, pictorial, literary, or intellectual, is measured by the problems it creates, not those it solves...

To create is to think, using the tools of the intellect, the senses, the body, and the imagination...

 

IRCAM LAB — TS 2

I'm starting to learn, play, experiment, and create soundscapes with IRCAM's TS software... The processing radically transforms my original audio track, creating a kind of very beautiful, immersive, minimalist drone that's very hypnotic and reminds me of Pauline Oliveiros, Stuart Dempster, Somei Satoh, and other composers... 

 It really is a window onto a new creative universe... It's probably not going to be a commercial hit, and it's unlikely to make it into the dance music or techno charts (but who knows? ), but it's definitely a direction I'd like to explore in the future... (I've acquired other IRCAM softwares, I'm at the beginning of the learning curve, it's exciting!).

MUSIC IN THE CELLAR

Is music like a fine wine that needs to be left to mature and age in a cellar before being consumed?

The “draft” section of my Bandcamp page is a bit like that cellar, where I organize my music by album projects, letting my compositions rest and withstand the test of multiple listens before crossing the threshold of publication...

It's also a kind of personal journal, where I archive moments of life and creativity that can span several months.

But there's also another reason, inherent to the type of music I compose. It's not written in the traditional sense, meaning I can't archive sheet music. The archive is the recording itself, the stereo tracks resulting from the final mix. I also keep an archive of all the recording sessions on my DAW, the stems of the different tracks, with the presets of the instruments and processes used and the mixing settings. This allows me to revisit and correct a recording months after the original session.

On the other hand, in electronic, ambient, or electroacoustic music, there is the central element of timbres and processes for spatialization and sound transformation. While melodic and harmonic elements can be notated using traditional musical notation, they are not the most important aspects of the music I create: the very nature of the sounds, their morphology, their movement in space, and their hybridization in the mix are the basis of my compositions. 

There are undoubtedly notation and visualization systems that could capture the specificities of electronic music, but to what extent can the singularity of the sounds that make up the compositions be reproduced, and to what extent can a score of this type be played by other performers?

Some electronic music, predominantly melodic, can be written and performed by other musicians or even adapted for acoustic instrumentalists: Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis come to mind in particular. But I find it difficult to conclude that electronic works can become “repertoire works.” A special case is when the composer or group reinterprets their works in concert, with a greater or lesser degree of fidelity to the original work. Backing tapes and computer playback can preserve the essence of the original work. Kraftwerk and Jarre today, but also Tangerine Dream, rely on these devices, which can also take the form of control over pre-programmed loops and sequences triggered live.

But to return to my question, how can music based on drones, atonal layers, and movements in binaural space be visualized on a score?

 

NINA STUDIO

 

By popular request, here's why my music production studio is called “Nina Studio”...

 

I have a very zen artistic assistant with an incredible ear for music.

She's a bit like the muse of my studio. As long as she stays on my keyboard, I know that everything is fine and that she likes what I'm composing. 

 

If she stretches and goes to sit somewhere else, I know there's a problem and that I can do better...

 

In fact, Nina plays a very important role in my music... She sets the mood, the feeling, and the tempo of my recording sessions...

 

And when she purrs, it's a signal that I need to add sub-bass to the track I'm working on...

 

I can tell from the movements of her ears what catches her attention, what leaves her indifferent, what she doesn't like.

 

Every time I sit down at the keyboard, open my virtual instruments, or launch my DAW, Nina is there, front and center...

 

She is the first listener of my mixes, and she lets me know if I need to do a second mix or if I should just give up on the track I'm working on...

 

I think that one of these days, Nina will sit down at the keyboard and record her own solo album, ambient purring embellished here and there with a little harmonic meow...

 

The real artist in Christian Wittman's musical productions is not me, it's Nina.

 

I predict a great career for her as a producer, not only in ambient and contemporary music, but also in the meow meow scene.

 

If you want to evaluate her role as producer, sound engineer, artistic director, creative assistant, press officer (and so on), you will find a retrospective of her career on my Bandcamp site and, of course, on all streaming, download, cerebral plugin, and multivitamin psycho-audio pill platforms available on the market, legally (or not).

READINGS

I am discovering the superb publications of the Philharmonie de Paris, which offer French translations of theoretical and autobiographical texts by some of the greatest names in 20th-century music...

These reflective texts shed light on the creative process and its evolution over the course of a lifetime, while addressing fundamental questions: what is music? What is modernity? How can we innovate within the tradition of Western music? 

These three books open up a vast field of reflection, and reading them together will undoubtedly create multiple echoes and resonances, given how different Schönberg, Berio, and Reich are.

These composers, along with others from the contemporary scene, are among my favorites to listen to: their music appeals to the ear as much as to the mind, and broadens my own creative universe, at my modest level as a self-taught musician.

And their writings help me to put into words what I feel intuitively, but confusedly, about the mysterious power of sounds, silence, harmony and dissonance, rhythm, time and space, which contribute to creating what we call “music”...

 

TIME / DURATION

 

"In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it's not boring at all but very interesting"

 

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. 385.  

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. 

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.