Part 2

Tell me a bit about how you approached the sound design for “Chorus,” from the synths and equipment to the shaping/sculpting in the studio.

Everything begins with intention.

For “Chorus,” the question was: what does Air represent for me? Then came the artistic direction, and its sonic translation.

Electro Symphonic felt the most coherent way to give body to that contrast. I work with layers of sound the way one builds the atmosphere of a film — mood, décor, colour. I create the sonic clothing of the piece.

The lifting, more suspended side was carried by the Sequential Prophet X and Oberhausen, with pads from the Oberheim OB-6. The more grounded current was built with the Moog Sub 37 and the Dave Smith Pro 2: bass, tension, texture. The Vermona gave the kick its body, and the Eventide H9 helped the sound travel through space. Saturation, with Thermal, was a way to add voltage without breaking the lightness.

I did not try to illustrate Air with one sound. I tried to make two qualities coexist in the same space: what floats, and what strikes.

The video to “Chorus” is dominated by intense colours. I am curious what, you would say, we are seeing in these images: Are these colours you are experiencing when listening to the music, are they colours you feel would complement the music, are they a totally different layer? Where do the colours come from?

The colours were chosen to accompany the music, to complement the emotion of each sequence.

Cooler tones when the piece becomes more contemplative, more suspended. Warmer, more intense ones when it starts to boil, to charge. The colour comes after the emotion, not before it. It is a way of giving that emotion a temperature.

There was also a real work of coherence across the whole film: how one sequence prepares the next, how colours answer each other rather than simply follow one another. And a return to the initial state, between the first and the last sequence, in a very neutral, almost transparent tonality.

John Luther Adams once said: “The density of tones and the tempo relationships between the different layers of the music give shape to the colors.” Is that something you can relate to?

Yes, I can relate to that. The way layers accumulate, the density of a texture, the relationship between a slow undercurrent and something that moves above it - all of that already shapes a kind of colour, even before any image appears.

In “Chorus,” those layers do not move at the same speed. One lifts and suspends; the other presses and advances. That difference of density and tempo creates a tension I already perceived as chromatic.

The images came afterwards. They were answering something that was already there in the sound.

Something which has always fascinated me is how painting, photography and video are, in a way, merely different approaches (or stages) of the same creative idea, and in your videos, they feel like they're coming together. What do you feel would these images represent if they were still and not moving?Do they retain their “musicality” in a way?

Painting, photography and video have always felt close to me. They are different stages of the same way of looking. If the images in my videos were still, they would become closer to paintings - or to photographs. Matter, texture, colour. Something you can inhabit with the eye. But I think much of their musicality lives in the movement.

My tracks are always in motion, and the images follow that current: they lift, thicken, break, return. A still frame would keep the emotion of a moment, perhaps even its tension. It would lose the phrase.

So yes, they would retain something - a presence, a density. But not quite the music.

I tend to believe that texture is the connecting link between visual art and sound, but it's not a term that gets mentioned a lot. Can you talk a bit about the role that texture holds in your compositions and how you shape it?

Texture is essential to me. It is often where the emotion lives, even more than in the melody.

I shape it by accumulation: electronic grains, organic frictions, breaths, resonances, layers of fx, thematic ambient sounds, the roundness or the roughness of a bass, the way a pad opens or closes. In “Chorus,” that is what allowed two very different forces to occupy the same space without cancelling each other.

The texture of the music also guides the texture of the images. A sound that is dry, liquid, dense or transparent already suggests a matter to look at. Before a colour, before a motif, there is already a surface. I believe that is one of the strongest links between sound and image.

When I watched the video to “A pattern in the universe”, I noticed that the music is not synchronised to the beats the way many other artists would synchronise them. They actually seem to move at the “speed” of the dark, deep strings underneath. How did you approach the editing phase for this?

To keep from scattering, I had to frame the visual work around a simple leitmotif: the images should serve the music.

For this title, I used editing the way I use mixing: to underline the melodic or rhythmic element I wanted the listener to follow. Exactly like lighting on a stage, or intonation for a storyteller.

Sometimes that happens classically on the kick. At other moments, it is a punctuation effect, a clave that rhythms the movement, or a melodic element that has just appeared. The images do not always follow the most obvious beat. They follow the thread I want to make audible.

A painting by someone like Rothko can seem to create a place, but it can also, as I've gathered quite often, make people hear music. Would you say that this “inner music” raised by a painting is similar to the “inner space” created by music – and if so, what does this say about the notion of what we tend to regard as “pure” spaces and sounds?

Rothko offers an almost silent presence. He opens a place more than he tells a story - through emptiness and suspension. A more abundant work can also open a space, but differently: through fullness or vertigo. It is not the same room, but it is still a space.

Yes, the inner music raised by a painting and the inner space created by music feel related to me. Regarding sound, Miles Davis expressed a very close idea: “The real music is the silence, and all the notes are just framing that silence.”

What we call a “pure” sound or a “pure” space is perhaps never empty. It is already inhabited: by memory, by emotion, by what we bring to it.