Part 1

Name: Emmanuel de la Paix
Occupation: Producer, singer, guitarist
Nationality: Swiss
Current release: Emmanuel de la Paix's new album The Physics of Clouds is out now via Straight to your Brain. Order it on beatport. Here is his artist statement about the project: “The album The Physics of Clouds is a concept album inspired by my visual research. My reworked images represent perfection beyond reality. In a certain sense I capture space-time portals: some places are particularly evocative and the beauty of those places cannot be captured by a human eye or a camera. With my work I wanted to capture the invisible, the hidden place that slips into this fleeting further dimension. My intent is to capture that dimension which consists in the unique sensation of being connected to the eternal, to the Universe. Since our human eye can easily perceive a sense of perfection in the use of symmetry (such as in the shape of a square or a circle), with mirrored images I represent the beauty of complexity in the use of a modern and popular paradigm. I try to express this also in my album when I oscillate between simple, rarefied sounds with few notes to more serious, condensed elements that develop in a more varied path. It is a researched sound path. My musical installations consist of a digital music visualizer, my custom soundtracks for an exhibition, and my limited prints.”
Recommendations:
I would recommend the photography project Faces of the North from Ragnar Axelsson. Ragnar Axelsson, Rax is an Icelandic photographer who has been photographing the people, animals and landscape of the most remote regions of the Arctic, including Iceland, Siberia and Greenland. Faces of the North is a documentary collection of images of farmers, hunters and fishermen in the Arctic and Atlantic landscape. He works only in black and white and it is a collection of rare testament of a world disappearing. The artwork in black and white is so cruel and powerful.

As a second piece of art I recommend the visual art by Guðmundur Óli Pálmason (Kuggur). With his practice he documents the decline of rural living in Iceland and poses the question why farmsteads have been abandoned en masse. The artworks are executed on polaroid films which are modified and manipulated manually. The result is suggestive. www.kuggur.com

If you enjoyed these thoughts by Emmanuel de la Paix and would like to know more about his work, we recommend his official homepage as a point of departure. You can also visit him on Instagram and Soundcloud.

For a deeper dive, read our earlier Emmanuel de la Paix interview.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Music is a way to elaborate personal experience and it is part of a communication process.

Publishing an album is already part of a dialogue with the music director or label manager. When the label is a good connector across different music artists and artists in general, it happens that the sources of inspiration are mixing across the art forms and genre. The artistic ideas behind the art form are the real engine pushing for new horizons.

During the last year, the big inspiration for me have been the ideas behind certain photography and art exhibitions that I have followed and I naturally embedded this dimension in my music work.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

I listen to music as if it were my life score. I always listen to music as background music. As soon as I wake up till I go to bed, my day goes through music in the background. This is magnificent for someone who loves cinematic music like me. In the background my mind is always visualising the music in a certain sense.

There is always a feeling connecting music and visualisation. The feeling is driving the music I create and automatically the visualisation. I imagine the music as I imagine the pictures or the visualisation. When a piece of music is finished, then I create a visual artwork. At that point, I feel complete and realised.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

Good planning is essential, time is precious. I usually have a free music session on a daily basis. It is just voice and guitar. It is pure joy and I do not record anything. It can take 30 minutes or 2 hours but usually 30 minutes - 45 minutes are sufficient. I do not take any notes either. I just play for the joy of playing. No rules, just fun.

If - in those daily sessions - something starts to be recurrent, something that I remember, then I take it to the next phase: A demo recording consisting of taking notes of the idea and the melody of voice or guitar only. This demo I'll listen to when I drive to work or I do other stuff during the day and if this is convincing to me because of the idea, then I put it on an electronic version and I start to write it properly and thinking to make it concrete with the instruments I imagined.

In this phase I start to work on sound research and if the sound research goes well, we have a pre-mix version. If the sound research is transforming or modifying the entire sense or feeling of the song, then I leave it as an incomplete work.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I usually execute the recording of pre-mix versions during the weekend. During this kind of weekend. There is a sort of mystical burning desire to have the things done for which I forget to eat and I am totally absorbed to have the music track done.

I usually drink a lot of cold sparkling water for 2-3 days and only a cheese toast during the night. It is a diet, instead of a recording session but I feel extremely energetic with an empty stomach and a mind full of ideas.


Emmanuel De La Paix Interview Image (c) the artist

What do you start with? And, to quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

Sound research is about discovery. Discovery is working best when you desperately research something to say. It is not exploring for fun. It is an urgent need to find the right colour to dress your speech.

The idea and the sound research are both equally important and they feed each other. But I believe music is something we should discover because discovering is part of our cultural evolution.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I believe the subconscious is taking the lead in the writing process and it is fascinating to be capable of recognizing our subconscious taking our hands and going further.

It is a sort of trance, it is an amazing experience and it is the reason why I prefer writing music more than performing. Because - with me - writing music is where the subconscious takes the lead.

I am a person who needs to have control but music is different.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

If an alternative road is opening up I try to figure out if it is changing the original feel or idea of the entire song. Maybe it is an idea I can focus on the next song, then I keep the idea for the next. If I enter a vision I prefer to have an idea for a song to work on and not too many ideas to follow at the same time.

If I make the error of following an alternative road that at the end is not fitting or supporting the song, usually the song is also compromised and the song is ending up there. This is because the feeling should always be straight and pure in its original perception.

From another angle, I do not use an idea twice if it is unsuccessful.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

It is all about spirituality, unconsciousness and an oniric state of mind. An artist is a person who sleeps standing up. There is a rational part working to pack everything professionally and record music, create visual arts and perform live: this is the artist everyone sees in picture and video.

But for all the rest, an artist is like everyone sleeping in their beds. Just artists have the right poker face to sell their dreams.