A talk with Lucien Guy Montandon about his music

Many people remember you as Octanone, a project that was purely instrumental and centered on live played drumloops.How was it to return to instrumental music?

Actually I don’t really distinct very clearly between instrumental and vocal music. To me, a pop song also contains a lot of instrumental music and I always keep this approach when I compose. The big difference for me hasn’t so much been the absence of vocals but rather creating music without a steady beat - working outside of the grid, so to speak. In recent years, especially when I focused on drum loops, I have always had this strict rhythmic structure which kind of forces you to work within certain arcs of tension. When this structure falls away,you suddenly have new possibilities to create these arcs.

You entered the live music scene many years ago with a band called altF4, where you played drums. I have noticed in my circle of musician friends that songwriters who are also drummers are often the people who write the most amazing songs, because of their holistic musical understanding. Do you still think of the drum kit when you write a song, or has this approach completely changed since you haven’t been playing live drums so much anymore?

I just call it the rhythmic element in the song. It could be a drum kit, but it could also for example be a synth arp going throughthe song that creates a rhythmic structure. It’s also about the question: what is a drum, and what is not a drum? In the end it’s about sounds that create rhythm, and these could be anything. I don’t necessarily think of the classic drum kit when I compose.

Have you had the image of the grid already during your time as a drummer or has this emerged through starting to work with DAWs?

It has a lot to do with the medium I use to create music. If I record with a tape machine, I don’t have the grid - unless I use a metronome, but to me that’s something else again. A DAW provides you with a visual grid and that can be very influencing. At the moment I kind of feel like liberating myself from it and

trying out other recording techniques.

What is your approach to ambient and electronic music?

It’s a world I haven’t explored a lot yet. The concerts I’ve been to at HEK and the people I know who work with this kind of setup gave me my first impressions of what it is. One of my initial associations was that it’s music that doesn’t take place on the grid, and has longer tension arcs than you might find in pop music.

Your work contains lots of nods towards the online world; you are currently composing music for a game and your new album with your other project Guy Mandon has the format of the GIF as its central theme.

I’m influenced by it mostly visually. I was looking for a visual element when I came up with the idea of GIF X. Also when I compose for a game, I already have this visual world within which I have to move with my sounds, and that’s what’s fun about it, to work within these given constraints. It doesn’t necessarily have to be online; I could also imagine working with someone who draws. I’m a very visual person and when I compose it’s always also a visual construction.

Can you tell us something about the production of LGM? What sounds did you use?

I work with Bitwig and I’ve been working a lot with randomized modulation. The first track centers on generative music which is something I’ve been wanting to try for a long time. It appeals to me because it’s relaxing but still always manages to remain interesting, because there are slight changes all the time, so our ears remain stimulated. It’s something I discovered in Kilchhofer’s music because it is rhythmically complex and yet to me it had something relaxing, which fascinated me. With the program I work with I had this new possibility to try it out myself.

You also combined your synths with audio samples.

Yes, in the first track there is my voice because it was important to me to add an organic element to the digital sounds. I wanted it to be a rather rapid, spontaneous process where the result is allowed to stay what it is. “False Memory” is an SH 101 with a randomized reverb. I added samples from a harp piece to add

some depth. “Möwenpitch” consists of pitched down bird calls I recorded under the bridge, and the initial idea was to find a way to sneak in an outside element into the sounds, so that the listener wouldn’t even notice how something that doesn’t belong to the birds has crept into the texture of the song. Like in the Blotter animations for example, where neon colors are incorporated into the images: small changes in the environment that come from another world but still blend into our reality. In my head it was the image of a portal for an alien element to enter or for something being warped into another dimension. I abandoned the idea after a while because it didn’t work out so well sonically, but it was the initial thought.

It also sounds like it might have been composed as a movie score. How do you work with harmonies, is it all intuitive? Do you write by ear?

That’s also something I tried to do with the track; to work more with chord progressions and melodies. I know some music theory but mostly it’s by ear. I agree it has something cinematic to it. I’m really enjoying this idea at the moment.

You once told me you sampled an underground train in Munich. Is the sound on the record?

I think it’s on the track Osthof, yes.

False Memory evokes the image of running through a maze where every now and then little worlds or rooms open up and disappear again as you pass them, like in a video game. When I listen to the following track, Osthof, I kind of take this visuality with me and it makes the aesthetic of the nature-sounds appear in a different, more virtually reproduced context.

I know what you mean, it could be a kind of virtual reality that one can go and explore, maybe like a 3D model of that landscape with those birds and the fountain. It makes sense to me that you say that but it wasn’t something I intentionally had

in mind when I made the track.

I like the idea of your music as a 3D landscape.

Yeah, again, because of the absence of the grid you have the possibility to create a sound that feels more like a room, because you can really spread out, fade in and out whenever you want, and thereby create this impression of proximity and distance.

What kind of world did you try to create with LGM?

It’s more like a series of different little worlds. The first track is something warm and relaxing, maybe even tropical. The second is more cinematic and might be music for a future space movie. “Osthof” should also be for relaxing, something that could go on for fifteen minutes and contribute to your wellbeing. I like the idea that we musicians can create our own relaxing music for ourselves, something we can listen to at home and feel good.

How did you come up with the names of the tracks?

“Osthof” was recorded at Ostfriedhof in München. The fountain and the birds you hear on the track are from that place. When I’m in other cities I like going to the cemetery to work, because it’s quiet there. Giving titles to music is always an interesting process which might come before or after composing. The first track is called “You’re Breathtaking” because of my voice and because of Keanu Reeves, because he’s just the coolest celebrity around right now.

Your album “Stream”, which in my opinion is a masterpiece, contains many intricate and poetic observations about our surroundings and has a layer emotional depth and maybe even sorrow that is easy to miss because of the overall cheerfulness and quirkiness of the songs. Is there a common ground that you are interested in and that you pursue every time you write, or does your approach change whenever you change the form?

Thanks! I don’t think I have that. The only thing that stays the same throughout is the constant attempt to try something new, to discover a new challenge, a new approach, something I haven’t done before.

LGM stands for your new moniker Lucien Guy Montandon, under which in the future you will be releasing different music. What can we expect from LGM?

I noticed while I was composing for games or also for this release that it was increasingly hard to unite all of these different kinds of music under the name Guy Mandon. I decided to keep Guy Mandon as the profile for releasing pop music, and use the name Lucien Guy Montandon for when I make music for games or movies or just experimental stuff.. so rather for me as a composer than as a pop figure. The rules change, but both is me.