Name: Zaho de Sagazan
Nationality: French  
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Current release: Zaho de Sagazan's La symphonie des éclairs is out via Disparate. Order a physical copy directly from her webshop. Catch her live in 2023 and 2024 here:



If you enjoyed this Zaho de Sagazan interview and would like to keep up to date with her music, visit her on Instagram, and Facebook.  



How do I write, what’s my writing process –

It always starts from the piano. First piano and voice, and then I dress up the piano and voice with something else. To me, a song should start by piano and voice, this set up should be enough for a song before adding any electronics to it (but I like electronic elements as much as piano/voice!). So I start with piano, voice and then, I go to the studio with my friends to add electronics to my songs.

It takes time to write a beautiful song. It’s rare that I write a great song in one day, usually it takes years.

My creative process –

I start to create by being lonely. I don’t know how to write with people around me. So I’m alone, with my piano, closed door. The darker it is, the better it is: I close the shutters and I let in a small light, and I close my eyes. It always like this.

In my creation process, I have a repetition process. It means that I create loops – things that I found back in electronic music, I feel like I must hypnotise myself.

I always start with piano/voice then words and melody come at the same time usually. I find chords, I start to play and then I’m in a half-sleep, I almost fall asleep, I add words, repeat them a lot, like a loop. And then the melody comes with the lyrics.

My creation process is very long, I like it to be long. I can spend hours on one sentence, that’s no problem. I love to dig for a very long time. I love taking time to create.

Once the piano part is done, I use a musical software like Logic or GarageBand. I make a demo, to show the mood I would like to explore and then I go to the studio with my friends with it. Sometimes the demo is only the beginning of a song, it might have only the first verse and the chorus, but I go to the studio with it anyway.

And then, the collective work starts, after the lonely work. With Alexis and Pierre, my friends and live musicians. I become the orchestra’s conductor. My musicians are real electronic Gods, they play the machines and I’m the conductor who says ‘’put some organ, louder, I like that, I don’t like that,

Most of the time, we make 14 versions of one song. Because I have a lot of tenderness for my songs, they are my babies so it’s complicated for me to dress them with the electronic music. When I’m alone with my piano, I doubt, I dig, I take the time, I have this time. But when I’m in studio, I can’t spend 8 hours to find a sound on the piano: I’m not alone anymore, I’m with my musicians.

It’s a bit stressful for me as I have less time and I’m less free but I have the chance to work with my best friends. They are very patient, generous and take time with me.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

I’m a bit of a control freak. From the creation process to the piano, the mix, until the mastering and video, I’m very invested. I want to control everything because these are my songs, my babies, so it’s important that my opinion is respected.

It's the same for the mix, it’s very important so I’m very invested. I get several feedbacks, I’m obsessive with the mix.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

I think it’s important to go back to a song and evaluate it later on. When the song is good, it’s good. Sometimes I go back to the song and there is nothing to change but it’s rare.

I’m very demanding and I think the truth does not come at the beginning, we must really dig for it.

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?

I find the idea. We can spend 2 hours at the piano and no idea comes. And then, suddenly, because we looked for it for a very long time, we discovered the idea.

I always have the feeling that a truth exists. When I write a song, there is a truth. Frequently, I will look for the melody for a long time, telling myself ‘’it’s not it, it’s still not it’’ and suddenly ‘’Yes! I got it, I found it!’’So I discovered the idea, I did not created it. I looked for it enough time to discovered it.

It is the same for the lyrics, I look for it for a long time and suddenly a word comes to me and I’m like ‘’yes! This is the word I was looking for.’’

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 don’t know where I go when I start the piano. I don’t know what I’m going to tell. Frequently, my unconscious makes me understand that I want to tell something. I don’t know what the song will look like, a song surprised me a few times.

For instance, ‘’Tristesse’’ I wrote it in one day, which is rare.



I came to the piano with the idea of writing a song about controlling everything, that I didn’t care about my feelings and that I was a pupper master. I was strongly believing in that. I thought I was someone who didn’t care and hear my feelings and that I could control them. So for ‘’Tristesse’’, I wrote without stopping, everything came to me directly.

I went out for 5 minutes, and then listened to the song. And I realized that everything that I said and thought before was not true: I ended up saying in the song that ‘’Tristesse’’ (sadness) was there from the beginning, I was just ignoring it. It was like my unconscious was asking me to come down, that everything I was believing was not true.

It’s sometimes the magic of music: the unconscious speaks. A lot of time, I learnt and understood things while I was writing songs. I sometimes associate the writing process to therapy.

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?

Before going to the piano, I need to be inspired by something. Sometimes it’s just myself, my own inspiration, like my body (the song ‘’Mon corps’’).



Sometimes, my inspirations can be observations of someone else. Every song has a different inspiration, it comes from observations I make : my brain, other’s brain, nature, books …

‘’La symphonie des éclairs’’ came to me when I was looking at a window: I was looking at the window and realized that there is always sun above the clouds.

‘’Fontaine de sang’’ is inspired by the Baudelaire’s poem.



‘’Suffisamment’’ is inspired by a story someone told me. ‘’Tristesse’’ is about me.’’



What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

The first line is very easy to write. The harder if to finish a song, not to start it. When you start, there is a lot of stuff coming. ‘’La symphonie des éclairs’’ came to me very easily but it was hard to finish it, once I found the metaphor, it was harder to go further.

Also, to say to yourself it’s done, it’s hard. To let go a song, it’s complicated.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I don’t relate to this at all. When my album came out, it felt very good.

When you work alone on an album for years, with two friends, on 13 songs and it’s one of the most important things in your life, you start to doubt. You loved the songs but after years you can no longer support them. After 20 hours of mixing the songs, you can’t see their beauty anymore. You doubt.

But when I released the album, these doubts left and I started to love the songs again and I could understand again why I loved them. It felt so good. I was serene again, I could breath again.