"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."
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.
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.
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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”).
review by Paul Simpson on AllMusic.
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.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/cit%C3%A9s-analogues-mw0004412360
Re-issued from a 1988 limited-run cassette, this piquant slab of progressive Parisian electronics simultaneously looks back to 1970s kosmische and forward to the uncanny tones of the Ghost Box label.
Since its invention, the synthesizer has been a powerful tool that has allowed artists to harness feelings of utter loneliness and detachment in their music, often to match feelings of disenfranchisement and disassociation with a technologically transforming world. Alongside the rise of Kraftwerk, the emergence of Britain’s alienated synthesists in the 1970s’ tail end is one of electronic music’s most widely documented happenings and for good reason. As synthesizers became commercially accessible, a collective of rogues and eccentrics used them for a series of experiments and projects that had a profound impact on popular music. The analogue antics of Daniel Miller, Chris Carter, and Cabaret Voltaire have been deservedly mythologised, and generations have taken influence from those synth experiments of Sheffield basements and London warehouses past. As we hurtle closer and closer to a technology-driven extinction, this kind of music feels more prescient than ever.
The 1980s saw a period of refinement and fragmentation for synthesizer music. Its enthusiastic embrace at the hands of pop music, and its dominance of dancefloors and discotheques, probably live longest in the popular imagination. But on the fringes, the world over, the limitless possibilities of the instrument were being explored, its limits were still pushed by a cast of fearless experimentalists.
One such group was Lightwave. A Parisian progressive electronic ensemble formed around the core duo of kindred dabblers Christian Whitman and Christoph Harbonnier, Lightwave’s discreet and novel synthesizer pieces place them somewhere between the industrial alienation of the late 70s British pioneers and the meditative textural works of The Berlin School adventurers like Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching.
Freshly reissued for the first time this month, 1988’s Cités Analogue is the first album that Whitman and Harbonnier collaborated on, the project’s true inception. Largely recorded live, it’s a rich tapestry of disjointed melodies conjured up on an arsenal of synthesizers, of clunking percussion and disembodied vocal fragments. One vast liminal space.
The end result is an album that sounds, surprisingly, so thoroughly modern in its execution that it could easily slip under the radar as a new release.
The title track is the record’s centrepiece. A stirring composition that sees the duo slowly adding, and adding to an undulating synth texture that slowly evolves into a mechanical colossus over its fifteen-minute runtime. It’s a collage that sees the group wide-eyed, excitedly adding layer after layer with joyous aplomb; juddering arpeggios, soaring string-sounds, the track is punctuated by everything from percussive slams and scrambled vocal samples.
‘Airport’ and ‘News’ are two of the album’s more discreet tracks, but a duo that see Whitman and Harbonnier’s vision perhaps best realised. Skeletal, eerie textures meld with samples of airport chatter and a fading-in-and-out English language radio signal respectively, creating the cold, urban sound that Lightwave strive for in perfect microcosm. There’s something of the uncanny, of the Ghost Box, about the group’s presentation of different spaces here, a machinelike coldness that is only drawn into sharper focus by the addition of human chatter.
In contrast stands ‘Le Parvis’, which was put out as a single last year, a real stomper that leans heavily on a phantomic low-end bass groove, which, whilst not necessarily out of place, is way more pummelling, writhing, grooving than the rest of the album. It sees the group channel the same urban soundworld, but into something that sounds more optimistic, all fizzing and crackling, automaton joy.
First vinyl edition of a brilliant but overlooked 1988 kosmiche and concrète trip by french duo Lightwave, aptly brought to attention by kraut gatekeepers Bureau B, and especially tipped for Eno, Tangerine Dream, Jean-Claude Eloy or 0PN fiends
After flexing their wings with debut ‘Modular Experiments’ (1987), Christoph Harbonnier & Christian Wittman continued their arcing synth trajectory as Lightwave with the glorious, expansive hour of finely layered and dreamlike flights of the imagination found in 1988’s ‘Cités Analogue’. Crystallised in hyperprismic, refractive vignettes and sprawling out to a pair of stunning widescreen works that account for some half of the album, the albums sees Lightwave deploy a complex set-up of RSF, ARP, Roland, and Oberheim modular systems, mixed on A&H 12/2 and recorded to tape Revox B77 tape machine, at the service of painting grandly cinematic visions on the back of eyelids and open imaginations. It’s genuinely a bit perplexing as to how and why material of this kind of quality has remained out of sight for so long. But here it is, ready to wow and seduce a whole raft of new ears to their particular brand of analogue wonders.
Still evidently prizing the power and enigma of analogue synths at a time when prevailing trends had shifted to digital, Lightwave follow their instincts with rewarding results that should now get their time in the sun. The smooth take-off of from a frisson of fine meshed synths and locations recordings in ‘Airport’ hits at a certain poetic quality of Luc Ferrari’s concrète and establishes a narrative logic that flows thru the almost Radigue-likepartials to the synth passage of ‘Correspondence pour ailleurs’ to the rugged rhythmic sophistication on ‘Le Parvis’. From here in it’s all lift and scalp tingles, taking in two expansive stunners in an ‘Agora’ recalling Jean-Claude Eloy bits, and the proper TD-skooled impulses of ‘Cités Analogues’, via shearing, banking organisms ‘Polycentre’ and the heart-in-mouth soar of ‘Ophelia’.
A must check for all self-respecting cosmonauts!
Cités Analogues was the first album released by Lightwave's core duo Christoph Harbonnier and Christian Wittman. Recorded between April and May 1988, and edited and produced in July 1988, Cités Analogues was then distributed through the alternative scene as a cassette. After the experiments and improvisations of their first tape, "Modular Experiments," recorded with Serge Leroy, Lightwave opted for a concept album, comprising of a series of discrete compositions and atmospheres assembled into two continuous tracks. The album was both recorded and mixed live, using a Revox B77 and an Allen & Heath 12/2 mixer. As such the different passages of this album captured the experience of Lightwave's performances, in which Harbonnier and Wittman played off each other with sympathetic improvisations. The instrumentation consists mainly of analog synthesizers, including several modular systems (RSF, ARP, Roland, Oberheim), while the sequences and rhythms are driven by two Roland sequencers. Digital effects help to create an expansive stereo field, in which recordings of urban environments and tape processing form rich experimental punctuations. Cités Analogues is thus a seminal album for the Harbonnier-Wittman duo, laying the foundations for a musical collaboration that continues thirty-five years on, thanks to their complementary skills and sonic universes. Long overdue, this remastered reissue of Cités Analogues, produced by Christoph Harbonnier, documents an important stage in Lightwave's trajectory and reflects the kaleidoscope of their influences at the end of the '80s, encompassing the Berlin School, Brian Eno's ambient work, and a particularly French-style of electro-acoustic experimentation. All tracks composed and performed by Christoph Harbonnier and Christian Wittman at Malibu Studio, Parmain, France (1988). Remix and mastering: Christoph Harbonnier.
Almost every day, I spend some time making music. Usually in the evening, at night...
When I plug in my instruments and activate my set-up, I have the feeling of crossing a threshold, of entering another dimension, where thought, imagination and bodily sensations are determined by listening.
A space of both freedom and creative constraints.
Some days, I go back to what I recorded the day before. I listen again, modifying the mix, track levels and effects, correcting and rewriting certain tracks, until I hear something that matches my vision, my musical idea.
Other days, I go in a new direction. I choose one or two instruments, and go through my sound banks until a particular sound stands out, which I can nuance and refine with personal adjustments. I choose one or more treatments - reverb, delay, multi-effect - and build up the sound color of the improvisation to come, just as a painter prepares the palette for his gouaches or watercolors.
Then I press the “record” button on my DAW, and lay down the first notes of an idea, letting myself be guided by the sound and its harmonic wake, and a rhythm, a feeling that gradually falls into place.
I resist the temptation to play too much, to fill the track. I lift my hands from the keyboard, and let silence sculpt the sounds.
Then it's time to record a second track. Often, I copy the first track and shift it, to create multiple sonic accidents. The choice of sound, complementary to the first track, is obviously decisive. Sometimes I go over it again, often several times. You have to find the right blend, like a chef with his ingredients... Premixing and coloring the different effects foreshadows the composition to come... Spatialization and movement in the stereo spectrum are decisive... I like my music to move, breathe, move, take flight, wind...
Do I need a third track? What complementary sound should I choose? I find my bearings visually on the notes of the first two tracks: should I slip in between what has already been recorded, in the gaps of silence? Or dare harmonic superimpositions, here and there?
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"Lila" (score). Walter Marchetti (1964)
Listen, listen again. Then comes the pruning phase. You have to create emptiness, silence, let the notes and sounds breathe and live their own lives...
We always play too much... We tend to fill up, to overload.
You have to clear the air, erase, following the intuition of critical listening.
Then comes the moment of mixing: fine-tuning of levels, dosing of effect returns, spatialization planes, movements across the stereo spectrum are all essential phases that transform the raw material of the recording. This is the moment when all the recorded material makes sense and blends into an organic whole.
It takes me a lot of listening and trial and error to reach this point of balance. Does it meet any objective criteria? In part, no doubt. But it is undoubtedly intuition that leads me to stabilize a final state beyond which any further modification would be to lose or deteriorate this fragile balance.
My Bandcamp page is like a roadmap of my musical journeys. Since the beginning of March 2022, my 65 albums are all milestones in an ongoing adventure.
Over the past two and a half years, my music has evolved, as have my instruments... While the first albums were based on unpublished material recorded in previous years, in the tradition of Lightwave music, in a very “cosmic” and space music style, I then moved towards more minimalist albums, reflecting my fascination with the ambient music of Brian Eno and Harold Budd in particular, and then towards albums open to a certain abstraction, on the borderline between electro-acoustic and contemporary chamber music, mixing electronic textures and acoustic instruments modified by various sound treatments.
These three coherent threads intersect and unfold over time:
- space music, following on from the experimental phase of the Berlin School and the first Lightwave albums
- ambient and minimalist music
- mixed chamber music, atmospheric classical...
My 65 albums were conceived and assembled from hours of recording, experimentation, improvisation and sound research.
Each album is built around a sound palette, a concept, artwork and the choice of certain instruments, limiting dispersion and favoring the deep exploration of a predetermined technical set-up.
I'm once again offering my entire Bandcamp discography at a 75% discount:
77 euros for 65 albums! That's just over one euro per album!
This is your chance to immerse yourself in my musical workshop and follow the threads of my creative labyrinth...
Almost three days and nights of non-stop ambient music!
And you'll also be supporting independent music creation, in a direct, personalized relationship between listeners and musicians, the antithesis of the algorithmic anonymity of streaming platforms.
