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Name: Fabrice Franck Henri aka GUTS

Nationality: French
Occupation: Producer, DJ
Current Release: The new GUTS album Estrellas is out via Heavenly Sweetness.
Recommendations: Cazuza: "Luz Negra"; Milton Nascimento ft Wagner Tiso: "Acústico na Suiça"

If you enjoyed this interview with GUTS and would like to stay up to date with his work, visit him on Instagram, Soundcloud, and Facebook.

For more interviews with artists from the Heavenly Sweetness catalogue:

[Read our Laurent Bardainne interview]
[Read our Ballaké Sissoko interview]
[Read our Chilly Gonzales interview]
[Read our Ludivine Issambourg interview]



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I started playing music as a DJ in 1987 when I was able to acquire my personal DJ equipment. Then I got involved in music production in 1990 when I discovered drum machines, samplers and my first Atari 520 ST computer. My first passion was clearly the hip hop movement in its globality.

What attracted me to sound and creation is boredom … It is a very important parameter to develop your own own creative fiber. I claim boredom and I encourage all parents to let their children be bored without a phone.

For me, the discovery of hip hop has been a fertile ground to discover all kinds of music and to develop my creativity. Hip Hop has fascinated me, stimulated me and accomplished me.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

I totally agree because I also see colors, light and materials. I also see an aesthetic.

So, when I compose, I associate colours that will perfectly match, I put the right amount of light and I give it an aesthetic.

I often associate music with cooking. It's not very original, but as I am a fine gourmet and a good cook, the mixture of tastes and flavors is a perfect creative metaphor.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

Music gives meaning to my life, it is my engine and it is a divine mission for me. It has allowed me to realize myself, to build myself and to make me live.

Music helps me breathe better and that's what I'm trying to share. If I can make you forget your worries, your routine and your anxieties for an hour, I will have succeeded in my mission.

Music heals my soul and my wounds, it soothes me and connects me with the present.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

My identity is where I come from, it is my sensitivity, my wounds and my ability to bring people together.

I come from a popular and cosmopolitan neighborhood. So the music I listen to is the music of the street, the working class music, the hustling music. Hip hop is a perfect example of this.

And I have always had an attraction for Afro music in the broadest sense which explains my sensitivity for soul, funk, reggae, African, Brazilian, Latin and Caribbean music. It is precisely the Afro music which embellishes my DJ SET and which feeds my creativity.

The light and the love that I should give myself in my inner world, I put them in my music. Being a very melancholic person, it acts of course on what I listen and on what I create

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

If we consider that music is the language of the soul in its joy and pain, it must be performed with sincerity, with the heart, and if we consider that music allows us to feel alive, to heal ourselves and to mingle, then it must be accessible to all.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Perfection is a poison for creation. It is the mistakes, the daring, the accidents, the constraints that make the creation progress.

I like the idea of maintaining a tradition to keep it alive but at the same time to make it evolve towards the future. A tradition is not necessarily frozen because if we can revisit it or disturb it, it means that we will consider it and stimulate it. Traditions evolve over generations and eras.

But I also like timeless music, and that is something that I wanted to express with ESTRELLAS while wanting to also evolve the aesthetics, some nuances and some codes.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I am very attached to making music without looking at it so that all the senses are focused on listening and the emotions associated with it. Being frozen in front of a computer to create a musical and vibratory language makes me sad.

So the most important instruments for me were drum machines and samplers such as the SP1200, MPC 4000, ENSONIQ ASR10. These are classic machines from the 80s and 90s, well known in hip hop culture.They are machines with great quality components, with a lot of heat and dynamics. These are machines which give colour to the music and give it groove. So the ideal would be to mix these machines in order to have different colours and grooves in the same track.

Still today, I kept all these machines and I still use them and I hope I will do so for a long time.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

I always start the day by squeezing a fresh orange juice with the oranges from my island. Since I haven't had a phone for 15 years, I check my emails while waiting for my partner to wake up. Then I prepare the breakfast for me and my darling. Then we meditate on our terrace in front of the nature.

Then I will answer the most urgent mails before going to swim in the sea.
On the way back, I always make a little stop at the market to buy some fresh products.

I come back home to answer all my emails and finally, my favorite thing to do is to spend as much time as possible listening to the vinyl records I receive daily and to do some music research on the Internet.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

My creative process is always the same.

I have a folder on my computer desktop where I accumulate all my sample ideas and inspiration that I will discover daily when I receive the vinyl I buy. I always work on a sample basis, it's my process as a beatmaker specific to my hip hop culture.

When I start an album project, I will go into this famous folder of ideas and inspiration, I will dissect all the elements of the folder and select the most vibrant and inspiring ideas in order to either enter them into my machines that I mentioned earlier, or to have them played back by musicians

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

Indeed, I am always divided between solitary or collective activity depending on the project but I like both. Lately, I have favored collective activities, which require a lot of energy and human involvement. But now and in the future, I aspire more to solitary activity because it is less tiring and constraining. The creative result is necessarily very different.

In solitary activity, I it is a slower process, more minimalist, more introspective and especially in a mythology of the beatmaker with his machines. In collective activity, it is much faster, richer and more intense.

I am demanding of the musicians who surround me. I try to get the best out of them, to stimulate them to enter my world and to trust in the magic of the moment and the studio.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Music has a role of socialization, communication, well-being and repair. Music has virtues, it soothes, it entertains and it heals. It can be an enchanted window in a disillusioned routine.

Life is much more beautiful in music, to hear oneself live and to love oneself better ...

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Listening to Bob Marley, Nina Simone and Gil Scott Heron gave me a sense of the big issues in life. Their music is so deep and conscious.

I like introspective music, I like to read the credits on the covers, the "Liner Note" of the records, the biography of the artists.

Indeed, music can raise our consciousness if we scratch a little deeper ...

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

It is certain, as science has proven, that music is full of benefits and virtues. For starters, music is calming, it can reduce anxiety and lower the high heart rate due to stress and therefore reduce the levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Music is motivating and a source of pleasure, it can release dopamine in the brain.

Music acts on mood. For example, if you re-listen to the song you listened to with your lover on vacation, your brain will make the link with the state of well-being felt during your vacation so the type of music you listen to plays on your mood. Music reduces pain, improves memory, helps with sports, etc …

Vice versa, the continuous hype of music in the mass media would have harmful effects. The more you listen to music all day long like the MP3 generation, the less sensitive you become to it. It makes the listener apathetic. The level of accessibility and choice has led to a drift towards passive attitudes towards music in everyday life. Today, all musical styles and genres are available at the click of a button.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Composing a track or performing a track on stage will give me an ecstasy and a feeling of having accomplished a divine mission that I don't have when I'm making myself a tea.

In music, I express the language of my soul, the divine voice of my inner world.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

In music, there are very different levels of vibratory frequencies as in humans, it is called the blueprint. So depending on the vibratory frequencies of the music and of each person, the music can have a positive therapeutic effect as a message, but it can also have a totally opposite effect, such as depressing, frustrating, a feeling of anger or conflict.

The frequency of the earth is 432Hz while the frequency of the actual music is 440Hz because it is the frequency of the note "A". Thus, this is the frequency at which we find the tuning of musical instruments. Musical instruments must be made in such a way that it is possible to tune them to this frequency. The current frequency of 440Hz could create stress and tension.

So in reality, we should set the note "A" on the frequency of the earth to better harmonize because this frequency stimulates our cells to increase our spiritual awareness and harmonize our chakras.

The song "IMAGINE" by John Lennon for example was created at the frequency 432Hz.