Henri de Saussure, who releases and performs under the name Lärmheim, is a composer and producer from Geneva. We both went to the same arts school in Bern but we studied at the Music and Media Arts department at different times, and I think we first met when I taught there in 2013. Lärmheim’s debut album, Cent Soleils, was released in October last year. I loved it and wanted to know more about the thoughts and processes behind the music, so I asked Henri to do an interview for this blog. What follows is an in depth conversation about a uniquely challenging and rewarding work. Listen to and purchase Cent Soleils here to hear what it’s about, and feel free to ask further questions in the comments or on Facebook. Enjoy! – Tobias
What are the origins of Cent Soleils?
Up until 2014, I had only released a few tracks and two EPs on Bandcamp, but they didn’t feel like proper releases to me. I had the desire to produce something whose content was, to me, sonically and aesthetically uniform, with the idea of a visual concept present from the very beginning of the project. I started to work on these tracks around September of 2014, and finished in February/March 2015, so everything was composed in a somewhat limited timeframe (I know, seven months can sound like a lot, but that includes the very first musical ideas and the final touches in the mixes, and I had a few other commitments). I knew I wanted it to exist in a physical form, and as I fortunately could afford it, the decision to release it both on CD and LP was made quite early on.
Just to get a general sense: How did the pieces on the album evolve? What were the starting points, and was the process similar for each piece or did it vary greatly?
Most pieces started with just a few key sounds or effects that I then expanded into compositions. In Deadeye for example, I only had the mellow piano part around 4 minutes in; it was lying around in a Cubase project for quite a long time, and I had no idea where I could use it. I felt it needed to be brought in by an intro, and then go somewhere else, to a totally different plateau, while keeping the same harmonic mood. I tried to process it through various plug-ins and effect chains, until I found that stomping, distorted sound. The synth melody then almost composed itself; I just let the track play and improvised until I found something I liked.
Video Game Soundtrack on the other hand began with just a few bars or arpeggiated synth over a broken drum loop, and I mainly used regular, tonal harmonic development to lead it forward. Everything else like variations in the drum pattern, layered synths and dance-music effects (filter sweeps etc.) were just ways of giving it a sense of constant development, that something slightly new but still familiar is happening, to avoid the “looped bar” feeling. The second part of the track (after the build-up) came in late in the process: it’s a kind of extended bridge section, which eventually resolves in a coda where the melody of the bridge and the first part are interweaved.
Basically, I couldn’t say I rigorously followed a single compositional approach – I tried to stay as open as possible, and find the most appropriate way to convey my idea of what the track should be like.
What role does improvisation play in your creative process?
A huge role, I should admit. For these pieces, I had a hard time composing “in my head”, with pre-determined structures. I spent a lot of time noodling around with plug-ins, effect boxes (I use a lot of guitar pedals) and hardware synthesizers. When I reached something interesting enough to make a piece out of, I would record it, and then see where it could go by varying the parameters, layering them etc. I also improvise with automation in the DAW, sometimes in precise, almost imperceptible degrees, things like panning, saturation, the amount of reverb… I like when sounds somehow float around in a given space, rather than leaving everything locked on the same parameter values for the whole track; I really try to avoid coldly looping stuff.
Tell me more about Deadeye. The sonic and dynamic palette on this piece ranges from pretty mellow to very harsh, and you’re mixing a lot of techniques as well. The same goes for many pieces on the album. How do you go about integrating such diverse sources and approaches?
I wanted to have some kind of epic piece with a distinctive dramatic development, almost like a mini electronic symphony. I know you’re familiar with what we call progressive rock, and I listened to a lot of Genesis, Pink Floyd and other related bands when I was a teenager: how they managed to combine a wide variety of moods and styles in an album and sometimes in a single piece has apparently deeply influenced me. What we could call the musical narrative plays a crucial role in Deadeye: When the track is over, I would like you to feel like you’ve been through a roller-coaster, a lucid dream or a kind of almost transcending experience.
As far as integrating diverse sources go, I just try and hear how it feels to me. With only a few exceptions, I don’t decide in advance what will or will not make its way into a track, it should be as open as possible, as long as I can keep it musically interesting and moving for me. Sometimes, I would struggle to determine where a track could go, how could I keep it captivating enough, and I would get stuck, writer’s block, chasing my own tail. When that happens, I usually try something which would feel at first musically inappropriate or unrelated, and more often than not, it helps me finish the track.
I’d like to add that a lot of what is produced in electronic music (especially by younger producers) suffers from what I’d call “fader paralysis”. A track stays at the same level the whole time, its elements sit there, grid-sequenced, like books on a shelf, and nothing really moves around or goes anywhere. Nothing happens between points A and B. This is something I really tried to stay away from: with automation, hardware peculiarities, non-quantized percussion, randomized midi parts etc.
Many of the pieces utilize sounds that are being detuned one way or another. Sometimes you’re detuning individual notes or sounds and sometimes whole tracks, is that correct? What interests you about that?
Most of the time, it comes from the tools I use: hardware has its non-linearities, its unpredictable reactions, which add a detuned or modulated feel to sounds. For example, on Deadeye and Streichgraben, the synth parts were recorded with the Polivoks, a vintage monosynth from the Soviet Union designed in the early 80s. Its knobs are clunky and inaccurate, but its filter screams like no plug-in could do and its tuning differs from a digital synth. I also use plug-in synths which I slightly detune, and sometimes pitch-shift large fragments of audio (for the glissandi-type pads on Werkstatt Cysp). I’m fond of the eerie, unstable feeling a small amount of detuning can give – it also feels more like an acoustic instrument’s minuscule tuning variations overtime. I’m not saying all electronic music has to be humanized at all, it just feels better to me when each bar is not a carbon copy of the previous one, especially when I’m using synths.
Are you using any particular scales or tunings, on Werkstatt Fulx for example?
I should first say that this piece mainly revolves around a drone which was processed a number of times through a Moog Delay pedal and distortion boxes, and then simply layered over itself a number of times. The detuned sounds are actually artefacts of the delay pedal, whose analog delay is based on the “bucket-brigade” principle and briefly changes pitch when it is modulated, a bit like tape-delays. By randomly modulating the delay, untempered pitches appear for a second until the analog chips readjust themselves. It’s a good example of how I try to musically use the idiosyncrasies of a specific piece of gear.
How did some of the noisier pieces emerge, like Trommelgraben or One Second Before the Most Blinding Light of All?
The first element I had for Trommelgraben was the extremely glitchy sounds you hear right at the beginning. These are actually simple acoustic drums samples, processed with a powerful delay/glitch plug-in called Bow Echo. Many parameters inside the plug-in can be randomly modulated: it would never produce the same result twice. I then designed a very heavy, almost alien kick sound, and further processed everything through delays, chorus-effects and other plug-ins, to give the track a thicker, deeper background. In retrospect, I think I tried to do something which would at the same time feel strongly periodic and rhythmic and also very chaotic, where each listen can reveal new details.
One Second… came from a piece I did during my Bachelor’s degree. I had recorded music from TV ads, edited it into a single audio track and processed it dramatically with a performance-oriented sampler, the Octatrack. What it sounds like would take ages to reproduce with plug-ins in a DAW, but the Octatrack allows on-the-fly control of many parameters at once, crossfade between sets of values etc. its sound engine is truly powerful.
I do get the impression that the track order was chosen very carefully. What was your approach here? Rumori Danza is similar in length to Deadeye. It too has harsh and tonal parts that interchange and merge. And while one is close to the beginning of the album, this is the ending piece. Was that a conscious decision?
To tell the truth, it wasn’t. I knew I wanted some kind of heavy-hitting track to close the album, but for me the two tracks are unrelated. The track order was indeed carefully chosen, as I wanted to have a good balance of noise, percussive moments and ambient moments across the album. I also paid attention to the dramatic effect between the end of one track and the start of the next one: how does the next track feel when it comes in? I also had to be careful about it for the vinyl pressing, as each side of an LP can only contain between 18 and 22 minutes of music until the sound quality gets poorer and quieter. For example, I couldn’t really have two consecutive 15-minute tracks or three 8-minute tracks on one side, so I did my best to foresee how long each track would be and in what order I should arrange them.
Also, Rumori Danza is fun and a little ironic, whereas Deadeye and, I would say, all other pieces are quite serene – was it important to you to end the album on such an exuberant vibe?
It was, yes. I wanted it to feel like an explosion of light – I hope that doesn’t sound too hippie! -, a bold move at the end of an album which is, I must admit, quite dark. To be honest, the thick drums and the pulsating 6/8 feel were a kind of tribute to one of my favorite bands, Tool. And especially their track Triad. When I listen to it now, I find it a bit too “rock” sounding !
I was in fact reminded of Tool when listening to and thinking about Cent Soleils. There’s something about the way you build up and release tension, but also the sudden shifts in intensity are reminiscent of their music. The track sequence too reminded me of the one on Tool’s 10 000 Days where there are two long pieces of the exact same length that separate three sections of three pieces – hence the above question about the sequencing. Now, I know you’ve also been influenced by other metal bands. As someone who has so far mostly released electronic music, what is the appeal of metal music to you, and in what ways does it inform your music making?
Metal was the first genre I discovered and listened to on my own, when I was 12-13 years old; an age where you usually start to develop your own tastes in music. I used to play drums a lot, and I was blown away by the intensity and energy metal drummers could deliver. I think this energy is still very present all across the album, albeit in a different form.
And in a broader sense: What other things do you consider as important influences, whether it be art or something else?
I could mention a documentary about Jiro Ono, the most acclaimed sushi master in the world, where he poetically describes how crucial every aspect of his art is to him: from the ingredients, to the way he treats them, to how precisely he will craft and then serve a piece of food to a customer. The quality of the result, for him, depends on a relentless attention to every possible detail of the process. I found that very inspiring.
Let’s talk about your use of techniques and tropes from a variety of musical styles. Streichgraben sounds like a kind of Proto-Drum’n’Bass, then in the middle of Video Game Soundtrack there’s what you could call a blast beat, right after a section with huge filter sweeps. In other places, such as the second half of Deadeye and on Faurmanter, you’re using side chain compression as a dominant tool. You clearly enjoy using those tropes, but you’re always only flirting with the cliché. Can you talk about that?
Exactly. I consciously use these effects in an almost exaggerated manner, but try to keep them to a point where they still serve the music; they shouldn’t sit there and be the wallpaper of your track, so to speak. Streichgraben actually consists of a drum kit in Kontakt triggered by a randomized arpeggiator; there is a constant flow of 16th notes, but never a repeating pattern. It has a huge amount of modulating effects all over the place, it has some Autechre feel in it, but I noticed this only quite a while after the track was finished to be honest!
Video Game Soundtrack is a track where I wanted to throw in many electronic dance-music clichés and push them to the point where it gets almost comical: filter sweeps, arpeggiated synths, epic drums, dramatic drops and cuts in the arrangement, and a grand finale where melodies and frantic drums collide. There’s a fine line between using a cliché as a way to highlight its omnipresence and using it because everyone is used to it. As you say, I enjoy doing that, but we should always ask ourselves: “am I doing this because it’s what the track really needs to shine, or because everyone does it and almost expects it?”.
Side-chain compression is to our decade what gated reverb was to the 80s – and when something constantly comes up like some kind of muscle reflex, regardless of the feel and intention of a track, maybe it’s time to ask why we really use it and settle down. On the other hand, when used lightly, it can be really helpful to keep a mix clean and bouncing, as elements dynamically interact with each other. I enjoyed using it in an extreme fashion to create drama, but I probably won’t use it as much in my next productions. Too much of a good thing, as they say…!
Related to the previous question: With the piano ending of the album I can’t help but be reminded of Apex Twin’s – the final pieces on Syro, and other pieces as well. The kind of harmonic vamp you utilize on Fourmanter made me think of Amon Tobin, and the extreme side-chaining of people like Ben Frost who also push that technique off the dancefloor and into more abstract territory. Yet you’re blending that into a unique, more bruitist overall sound. Am I over-interpreting there or are those conscious hommages to some of your influences?
You are right on point. Many, many elements on this album are my personal interpretations of specific aspects of electronic music production. I tried to combine them and make them work inside unconventional music, somehow. The idea, most of the time, was to avoid sounding too blatantly like something I knew, while retaining enough similarities and references to known artists in order for people who are into this kind of stuff to find it likeable. It’s always difficult to be one’s own judge, but I think I reached my goal. It was also, when I think about it, probably a way to get these tropes (as you named them earlier) or influences “out of my system”; like writing down some thoughts can liberate you from them.
I know you are composing in a variety of styles. Is the direction you’ve taken with Cent Soleils one that you’re going to be exploring further?
I will probably continue to use improvisation and hardware effects a lot, but I’m already vaguely thinking about my next solo effort and I would like to really compose tracks in advance this time. Cent Soleils contains various flavors of distortion, and I’d like to distance myself from that for a while, or at least only have in the background, far behind – the next release will likely be mellower, slower, a lot less aggressive. But it should still feel huge and awe-inspiring, like meditating inside a cathedral floating in space. I also wish to work with real acoustic environments, like playing synths through speakers in big rooms, recording the sound and process the result, a bit similar to echo chambers you can hear on albums of the 50s and 60s.
As this album has many chaotic, purely noisy moments, I’d like to use a more conventional approach and allow myself more moments of regular, tonal harmony for the next. At the same time, I’m beginning to experiment with everyday objects and foley, like recording the crackling sound of a paper bag and slowing it down 1000% with Cubase’s “tape” time-stretch: it sounds like icebergs collapsing. This is the kind of stuff I will most likely work with in the future.
What are things you’ve learned in the making of this album? In what ways has it made you progress?
I’d say it showed me that creativity is, as far as I’m concerned, absolutely not linear. There were moments where I’d be extremely productive for three days, and then do almost nothing new for two weeks, which would get me frustrated. I would also work 15-20 hours on a track, then decide it’s not good enough for the album, and put it aside (but I never erase or destroy what I do – it can always come in handy later on), ending up feeling like I wasted my time. Although it doesn’t happen that often, I accept this as part of the creative process for now. But I know that the more I do, the more confident I’ll feel, and the more I’ll be able to feel in advance where a specific work should go.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share these insights. Are there any aspects of the album that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to discuss?
I would just take this opportunity to mention and thank Pierre-Emmanuel Fehr, the photographer I worked with for the cover art. We quickly found a common artistic ground and the result is exactly what I was looking for. Also, thank you for the interview!
Links:
- Lärmheim – Cents Soleils on Bandcamp
- Lärmheim website
- Lärmheim on Facebook
- Henri de Saussure on Facebook
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