KHAGE is a musical project that began in 2022, ending nearly 20 years of silence on my part.
This solo project is a continuation of my sound explorations within the Brakhage Kollektiv from the early 2000s.
I make music a bit like one writes in a diary.
I am at a point in my life where it is essential that this project be a solo project.
It’s the easiest way I found to create on a daily basis.
I work on my own, I don’t have to make plans nor concessions.
Thus, I free myself from all rhythmic constraints.
Nowadays, the art of music seeks amalgams of the strangest, the most dissonant and strident sounds.
We thus approach the sound-noise.
This evolution of music parallels the increasing multiplication of machines that participate in human work.
In the resounding atmosphere of the big cities as well as in the formerly silent countryside, the machine creates today such a great number of varied noises that the pure sound does not raise emotion any more.
« Que celui qui aime les exposés systematiques, les professions de foi de l’intempérance dogmatique s’arrète ici, il serait déçu, mais que celui qui cherche le témoignage d’une recherche, l’étonnement d’une curiosité, l’inquiétude d’un résultat, veuille bien poursuivre. »
Pierre Schaeffer
“Let the one who loves systematic presentation, professions of faith of dogmatic intemperance stop here ; he will be disappointed.
But thee who is looking for the testimony of a research, the astonishment of curiosity, the anxiety of a result, may continue.”
Pierre Schaeffer
Information theories, the concept of entropy, the patterns of chance and probability, are the only rules I play with to try to control the shape.
The emotions which seem to emerge from these circuits have a seducing but also monstrous character, reminiscent of space-time travel.
I often begin a composition without premeditation.
I can start with a simple sound or musical element to which I can add another, then try another, then cut if necessary and so on.
This empirical process of composition is the opposite of the processes usually adopted by traditional composers.
I work directly with the material of sound and there is no loss between the idea, its execution and the recording.
Each sound produced has its own existence, its own rendering, its own character.
Once these sounds cease to exist, they fade away and I am unable to reproduce them.
I can’t and don’t want to control anything.
I feel a form of innocence mixed with wonder.
Once the circuits are built and patched I sit down and watch – speechless – their birth.
I am in a particularly receptive state : awake like a child taking its first steps into the world, ears and eyes wide open.
Then, thanks to its impact in my unconsciousness, this soundtrack thus composed lays the foundations for many other imaginary films that correspond to the sound of my own dreams.
I probably find in these electronic bleeps and noises – like many other spectators of a movie – a form of universality.
It is always difficult, even clumsy, to try to give labels to a music, but… to simplify – and although essentially electronic – the direction taken with KHAGE ventures on the side of Empirical Generative Soundscape, Dark Ambient, Drone and Noise…
KHAGE’s first album, Wandafuru Raifu [ワンダフルライフ] was released on July 20, 2022, the birthday of my dear friend Didier “Didz” Severin, who tragically passed away a few weeks earlier.
Fearful Symmetry was released three months later.
A more homogeneous album which is in line with the darkness and the pain.
In the meantime, I was also able to experiment a form of sonic exquisite corpse, with my friend Adriano Perlini, for a two-track EP entitled 4th of July.
TASTE [Created by KHAGE on the Meng Qi Wing Pinger Electronic Music System] was released on December the 10th, 2022.
All tracks were composed on the Meng Qi Wing Pinger, a duophonic electronic instrument consisting of 2x 4-pole “pinged” resonant low pass filters.
They are the result of trials and happy accidents during my first days with the Wing Pinger.
A deliberately minimal approach which gives birth to empirical generative soundscapes and random noises.
My fourth album, Empirical Generative Soundscape came out on March the 3rd, 2023.
The conception of this album allowed me to venture towards new musical directions, between empirical noise experimentations and the search for more peaceful atmospheres than in the past.
In March 2023, a tribute concert to Didier “Didz” Séverin allowed me to share a sound adventure with Adriano Perlini.
The result is a two-track EP entitled Solastalgia which was released on April the 7th, 2023.
On April 18th, 2023, I made 45 minutes of soundscape for my 45th birthday.
Empty Spaces, Experimental Studies on Feedback & Reverberation, was released a month later, on May 18th, 2023.
It was entirely made with natural, digital, optic and/or spring reverb, without any other sound source (no-synth).
Released in Drøner is a minimalist drone music album made with only one or two devices.
It’s also tribute to Ross Fish’s Møffenzeef [Stargazer] & to Meng Qi’s Wingie2 [with the Blippoo alternative firmware inspired by Blippoo Box, a genius, organic, chaotic & unpredictable instrument created by Rob Hordijk (1958-2022)].
[///] : Evolving dissonant harmonies of drones & resonances.
Track #2 is the first piece I composed with my son Aksel-Blake, who was 4 and a half when we recorded it.
Early 2023, Adriano Perlini asked me and others to reinterpret one of his pieces for a concert that took place at Cave 12 on the 22nd of September .
…more to come, so stay tuned !