After all a bunch of thrilling adventures in different projects more incredible than each other, I decide to step back to mature an old dream of a solo project. Personal and introspective in my writing but also in my approach, I start recording a first EP by playing all the instruments and recording independently.
We are in June 2019. Learn to play and tune a drum kit, learn how to choose and place the mics, use a recording program, prepare a mix cession. Lots of help and advice. They lend me equipment, I have never been surrounded as much as by doing a project alone! Lots of test phases, my pre-prod is on its way. Try dozens of guitars in dozens of amps, find a sound for this project. Then learn to write with myself.
It's under constraint that we are most creative, and it is in integrity that we really find ourselves: set simple rules.
- Integrity will always have the last word
- Seek the present moment and the life of the song, keep the faults, no editing
- Doing something current in the background as well as in form will never be appropriate
- Each song can be played guitar-voice without being limited to this formula
- Everything will be played with fingers
- Pieces will fit on the play and not on heaps of arrangements
- Take time, live things, work in pleasure
The project is taking shape, the drum naturally takes an important place. I'm going to need a live drummer! Someone i know very well, someone with whom I can share these precious and personal things without restraint. Someone emotional. Jay Vonlanthen, a longtime friend, is the first person I think of, he accepts.
And let's mix this EP together! Step filled with many emotional moments, Jay works at lightning speed following the same rules: do not distort things, favor identity over efficiency, just like for the final mastering where Grégoire Pasquier from the Studio de la Fonderie goes through analog to color and let the sound live.
I don't really know what comes out of it. Need steps backwards, too many emotions invested.
I told what I had to say in all humility and I will take out this EP with my head held high.
Intelligence, sound design, music business or what we are supposed to do today do not interest me. I'm just going to share this project with the people who will be there. And I'm very lucky to have so many people around me.
