Part 1

Name: Céline Gillain
Nationality: Belgian
Occupation: musician
Current release: Mind is Mud on Cortizona
Recommendations: On Freedom, book by Maggie Nelson / Tête-à-tête, album by Ruth Anderson & Annea Lockwood.

If you enjoyed this interview with Celine Gillain, keep up with her work on Instagram

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I’ve been questioning listening for a while. I’m particularly interested in questioning how my own tastes, desires and even parts of my intuition are socially constructed, how the education I've received and the conventions in which I evolve shape the way I listen and occupy sound space. I ask myself this question all the time: from where do I listen?

The way I listen has changed a lot these past few years. Last April I went to Oscillation Festival (experimental music and sound art festival in Brussels) and experimented for the first time long, minimal, repetitive live sound pieces. The theme of this year’s edition was time and perception of time in sound. At first, I couldn’t stop thinking about how tired and uncomfortably seated I was, getting distracted by the people around me making annoying noises, thinking about how I could possibly transform this moment into an Instagram post, etc. But on the second day, I started noticing changes in my body. It's as if the sound was somehow repairing parts of me that were cracked. I don’t come from a background where that form of art is known and appreciated, unentertaining forms of art are associated with boredom or elitism. And I mean, although I'm an artist, like everyone else my survival depends on my day-to-day efficiency, and my life is governed by a constant concern for productivity: time must be filled and made profitable.

Taking the time to go to an experimental music festival and sit for hours doing ‘nothing’ feels like privilege to me. But experiencing sound in this way somehow put me back into my body, made me feel like it belonged to me again. As a matter of fact, dancing in a club on music you love surrounded with a crowd of people who share that love has the same effect on me. Listening with the body is what I’m drawn to and interested in pursuing.


What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

I started making music when I was in my late thirties. Until then, I hadn't had the equipment or technical means to do so. I’d always kind of wanted to make music but somehow didn't believe I had the ability or the right to do it. I started on cracked programs on a dying computer but right away it felt like a whole dimension was opening up, lifting me out of a feeling I’d had for a while, of being trapped in a life shrinking around me. Making music on my computer, using my voice for the first time, showed me a secret door in the wall, a secret passage to a place I had no idea even existed. I started out purely intuitively, without any knowledge of what EQ was or a compressor, just following my ear as I went. Today, even if I know a lot more stuff, it's honestly still basically what I do. Numbers and theory don't help me much. But at the same time, having more control and mastery opens up a whole new level of possibilities. For example, at first I didn't even know I could spatialize sound, until I tried and it uncovered a whole new continent. Learning to use tools and perfecting oneself allows you to explore new territories and step outside yourself, which is such a liberating experience.


According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

I remember the first time I heard Massive Attack, it kind of felt like a massive attack in my brain. I must have been 12 - 13 years old. I had bought the 1991 Hit Connection tape and there was a track from Massive Attack on it, it was my favorite track of the tape, in equal position with Joyride from Roxette. I grew up in a small village in a remote part of Belgium with no TV and little access to pop culture. That track from Massive Attack, it was everything I wasn’t familiar with, it was everything my family wasn’t. And for that reason, I think it did something to me, it changed the way I was programmed. Between the ages of 13 and 16, you start to dissociate yourself from your parents' values, ideas and tastes. My father disapproved of my musical tastes when they differed from his. I remember once when I was listening to DJ Shadow's What Does Your Soul Look Like (I had discovered thanks to a public media library) at full volume, and he came into my room and shouted ‘You've changed, I'm disappointed, this isn't music, turn it off’. Nothing could have encouraged me more to listen to ‘that’ kind of music, which is basically what I did during my whole teens.


Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

My voice and computer are my most important tools. One reason being they’re accessible, portable and relatively cheap. They don’t require a complex set up or any technical background, and you can use them in survival mode. It’s important for me to travel light, to maintain a sense of urgency. The computer coupled with the voice is an extremely playful tool that has multiplied possibilities and opened so many doors.

When I first began making music, I had a huge inhibition with my voice and was hopeless with computers. Little by little I learned to acquaint myself with them and became a bit of a nerd with both. The whole process has taught me not only to listen to my own voice and accept how imperfect it was but also to pitch it, play with it, which allowed me to create multiple versions of myself, to build a whole army of me. I realize just now how often I think about Bjork’s song Army of Me, I was 16 when Post was released. And Gondry’s video is fantastic.


What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

I’m seeking to create a connection with the audience, to engage bodies as well as intellects. I want to explore the relationship between words and music and how they can create meaning together and separately. Music tells a different story to words but put together, the possibilities are endless. Even if it's been done a million times before, a whole new world can be invented each time. I’m interested in bringing storytelling to the dancefloor, and investigate the political value and power of music and club music in particular. The value of music is a big question today and artists' remuneration in particular, I think we should mobilize more and fight the systematic commodification and exploitation of artists by the music industry together. I want to be more active and involved in that fight. And I’m interested in navigating between scenes and genres, exploring the grey areas.

At first, I developed my practice in the in between because I didn’t fit in any of the boxes, but now this is something I claim and am proud of. I honestly have never really understood the notion of genres in music and in other art forms anyway. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the very idea of categorization is culturally built as a means of control and domination over ideas and bodies marked as others. Music - listening to it, dancing to it and making it - is and has always been a way for me to refuse determinism.


Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

For a starter, I just want to say that I don’t listen to my own records. After spending hundreds of hours on the composition, mixing process and then rehearsing and playing it live over and over, I’m kind of sick to my stomach if I have to listen to it any more. It happened once at a dinner party, a friend played my record and, although I was flattered and proud, it felt like my dinner was going to make the reverse trip. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my music comes from my stomach, or something like that. That said, when I'm in the mixing process, I sometimes try to extract myself to listen with a new ear, to get that first impression he's talking about. I often imagine the outside of a club, the clattering sounds of music coming at us from inside. I don't know why, but it helps me a lot. I always think that what this new ear hears should sound like an invitation.


Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

A few years ago, I noticed a very creative blackbird in my neighborhood. Around April-May, he would position himself at the top of a nearby roof or on the very last branch of a tree, to make sure everyone could hear him sing. It's amazing how inventive blackbirds are and how much sound power such small bodies sends out. It’s a humbling and inspiring experience to listen to birds. And I often have small revelations with everyday sounds.
Escalators in the metro have this grooving sound, especially when something’s wrong with them. We’re surrounded by machines making music by accident. Vacuum cleaners sing, printers too. My kettle makes this loud shrill noise 4 times in a row when the water is ready, which makes it sound irritated and reproachful. Each time I wonder: who decided on that sound? Did they have a meeting about it? And my fridge makes a sound too because it’s old, like it’s trying to communicate with me. I get frustrated not understanding its language. And often, sounds in public spaces make me laugh, people sneezing or motorcycles. I'm laughing out loud in the street. I’m very sensitive to the comedic power of sound.