Part 2

Could you take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work? Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other - do you separate them or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?

I have two lives in relation to music; my life before, where I lived alone, I composed whenever I wanted, sometimes I went two months without making music and suddenly I worked seventeen hours a day for one month. And then there is my life now, living with a baby and a partner.
I've chosen not to put my son in a nursery, I practice the continuum concept in relation to mothering, my son follows me almost everywhere. For me, mothering is a psychedelic experience (revealing the nature of the psyche) that I want to live thoroughly.
I'm a very creative person, even when I'm not composing, I research, I write, I develop projects, for the moment I have to do it all during nap time, or in the evening.
The first year, fatigue drove me almost crazy, now it's a little better. I would love to chat with other artist mothers, to know how they are doing. Money often solves the problem, hiring a nanny who accompanies you on a tour, a residency…mothering is not always obvious in our societies, we should go back to a more traditional model.



Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece or album that's particularly dear to you, please? Where did the ideas come from, how were they transformed in your mind, what did you start with and how do you refine these beginnings into the finished work of art?


On each of the albums and tracks I produce, I start with a story, a story that is invented progressively, or a story already defined. When I enter this process, there are magical moments, I am in a daze, and I often oscillate between joy and sadness. 
I am aware that in this process I am not the only one involved, it is not just about me. I often quote Tesla: “My brain is only a receiver, in the universe there is a heart from which one obtains knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this heart, but I know it exists.”


The Selkie album on Schematic explores the legend of the Selkies, a story which fascinates me.
The ‘siis’ album on Doumen is the story of my transformation, after encountering shamanism and the associated shamanic master plants. 
The new ‘83% invisible’ album on Les Anges Noirs de L'Utopie is the story of the ‘last tiger’.

On the night we shot the video for the album track ‘Tiger’ (from 83% invisible) we weren't sure which way we were going to go, we were there to experiment, and then a powerful storm arose and we went for it, it gave us the perfect footage and we said that the spirit of the tiger was with us.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?

The state of mind that I've just mentioned – ‘the daze’ - for me it is the key of activation: become aware of this capacity, and letting go.
Before reaching this state, in general, I expect nothing, I hope for nothing, I let go, and I am just in the joy of being with myself and the sounds that I produce. These moments are outside time. For me, there is no other valid strategy, other than letting go.
Inspiration is as simple as breathing, those who think otherwise must let go of their mind. It is a modified state of consciousness, much like watching a movie.
Every brain is capable of this and sound has a transcendental function and brings this sense of inner silence.
The ideal for me is to be in the countryside, especially in winter when I find nature very inspiring. I just have to look at the mist, and as long as there is no artificial light outside, then I can really ‘enter the shadow’, go looking for it. I don’t intend to musically release my neuroses and those of my contemporaries but to transcend; in this something gloomy but positive often emerges.

How is playing live and writing music in the studio connected? What do you achieve and draw from each experience personally? How do you see the relationship between improvisation and composition in this regard?

It's a complex question, which has been developed in musicology.
I think these two terms shouldn't always be put in opposition, they have common characteristics, have intermediate forms. Most of the time, there isn't an absolute improvisation or an absolute composition, musical reality is different but for sure, there is music of the moment and music in progress.
Absolute improvisation can be achieved by some musicians when they reach a state of non-thinking, it's pure intuition and trance and it's something that I would like to explore myself by introducing an acoustic instrument on stage.

For me both improvisation and composition require a sound research phase, to create good sounds. I always have to find a compromise that allows me to give sequences that I like some restitution and to let them evolve, so when I’m working on my live act, both approaches meet.

The live aspect is something that I still have to develop despite the fact that I've played in a lot of live projects with different configurations and compromises. When you're alone on stage, you obviously can't play all instruments at the same time, but one day you find a good configuration which allows greater improvisation…it depends a lot on the nature of the project too.

How do you see the relationship between the 'sound' aspects of music and the 'composition' aspects? How do you work with sound and timbre to meet certain production ideas and in which way can certain sounds already take on compositional qualities?

For me this relationship is essential, and acousmatic composition has helped me a lot in the search of beauty through sound. A beautiful sound unfolds, it creates an imaginative association and accommodates silence afterwards, while an ungrateful sound doesn't allow the same proportion of space, it is not harmonious, it doesn't have the same evocative power.
From the moment a sound is harmonious it becomes a compositional object because it ‘calls out’. Sometimes a beautiful recorded concrete sound is sufficient on its own, sometimes it must be enriched with an overlay, a slight reverb, distortion or delay to give it warmth and make it live more.

Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work? What happens to sound at its outermost borders?


This question forms part of my research work, and it is something that I bring up in conferences. We know that the body can perceive sound beyond hearing, which is called sono-somesthesia. The different structures of our body resonate with certain sounds according to their frequency.
The viscera, fluids, bones, organs, all have proprioceptive qualities, they receive nerve-related information which is then transmitted to the brain and this is how we become aware of our positions, our movements etc. One of the most incredible effects is the synaesthesia effect, the fact of seeing sound, we perceive it with colours, the notion of coloured hearing. This can happen in a modified state of consciousness. There are many reported testimonies of this synaesthetic effect under LSD.
It should be noted that, for instance, in the case of blind people, the sounds produce colours thanks to their finely developed hearing and by a phenomenon of multiple sensory encounters, based on an exchange of radiation on the skin, caused by the sound’s interaction with surrounding coloured surfaces.
There is also the opposite, in the sense of hearing the noise of a colour. There is much more to say about that...

Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?


We are all artists when we dare to break out of routine and conditioning. I find that a life filled with routines is death guaranteed ...just look to nature, animals who adhere to a lot of routines are those who have the least chance of surviving amidst the threat of predators.
Although we live in a world of predation, we absolutely must find the path of daring, by becoming more free & autonomous. I don't really like what we've become, infantilized beings with too much conditioning, including certain artists who, in my opinion, care too much about their image.
I believe people have to free themselves, first of all from the idolatrous cult of artists, genius, and even what we currently think of as ‘creativity’, because they have become expressions of the cult of the self, the golden calf of modernity, it's almost a caricature.
When we do this work on ourselves, we open up the field of possibilities at all levels, we participate in the transformation of a society.

It is remarkable, in a way, that we have arrived in the 21st century with the basic concept of music still intact. Do you have a vision of music, an idea of what music could be beyond its current form?


I find that we treat music quite badly, already in the way that we consume music; it is everywhere, it becomes commonplace, most of the time listening is no longer a privileged moment, but a way to fill the silence, which for some represents a void. I like silence and I don't perceive it as emptiness.

In the book ‘The Hatred of Music’ Pascal Quignard says:
‘When music was scarce, its summons was overwhelming as was its dizzying seduction. When the summons is incessant, the music pushes back. Silence has become modern vertigo. His ecstasy. I question the links that music maintains with sound suffering’

I find that outside concepts; the audio trip, spatialization, the acoustic and musical relation to the architectural space, the writing of space, the therapeutic approach and intuitive knowledge should be more developed. 
I also like the concept of sound hygiene, understanding the different energy and kinaesthetic archetypes, how sound acts on us and how to access the information that music carries, information from the collective unconscious.
I also think that we must use spatialization, especially 3D conceptions, for creations which justify this form, there must be meaning, otherwise it has no interest, it becomes a gadget.