B i o g r a p h y       

... and when Paul Haslinger meets Lightwave


Tycho Brahé
 In 1986, Serge Leroy founded a concert production company, Crystal Lake
Productions. His main project was organizing two Tangerine Dream concerts
in Paris, the first ones in Paris for several years. Christoph and Christian,
although not directly involved in the organization, supported Serge and
helped him during the preparation of the two Olympia concerts. Christoph
even created the artwork for the posters, with a free adaptation of the
Rubycon album's cover artwork.

The schedule, the many funny events during these two days (and nights)
spent with Monique, Edgar and Jerome Froese, Chris Franke and Paul
Haslinger,  now belong to history. As well as the two great concerts they
played at the Olympia Theater in central Paris.

A few months later, Paul came back to Paris for a short break and
holidays, and we met again for a dinner. We had a long talk and we played
him some extracts of "Modular Experiment" (link). Paul gave us advice and
encouragement. It was the starting point of a strong friendship between us,
but we were rather far away to imagine its developments. At the time,
Tangerine Dream had a very busy schedule with international tours and many
studio productions. We did not hear from Paul again until beginning of
1991. He gave a phone call to Christian with two major pieces of news: he
was no longer involved in TD, and he was planning to spend some time in
Paris.

We had several talks, and in a very natural way we met together in
Lightwave's studio. The instruments were plugged in and we started live
improvised sessions. Hours and hours of music were recorded during a full
week. Obviously, Christoph, Christian and Paul shared a certain concept of
electronic sound and music, and they played together without any
preconceived plans, just for fun. What was really funny was the empathic
connection between musicians who met for the first time in a studio, and
the fact they were able to play together and to improvise without any
preparation. Paul brought in several new ideas, about organization,
technical set up, use of computers, and thanks to him we got endorsements
from various French and German companies. A lot of crazy concepts and ideas
were developed, and most of them are still waiting to be realized...
A few months later, Lightwave was the headline of an Electronic Festival
new Music at the Telecom High School in Paris, and Paul came back to
Paris to do rehearsals with us. All the studio sessions were recorded, and
the concert was a popular success.

 During the fall 1992, Paul joined us again in Paris for the rehearsals of
the London concert (UK Electronica). Back to Paris after the show,
we again built the whole set up in the studio, and before Paul's departure
for the US, we decided to have a last studio session and to record the
basic tracks of a few pieces for our "Tycho Brahé" project. 

We decided on some minimalist principles, limiting ourselves to a few notes
and a few sounds. This session was recorded late in the night, as usual
with Lightwave. Several basic tracks of "Tycho" were recorded during this
session, among them "Mapping the Sky," where Paul played a very minimalist
piano part which created the mood for the whole piece. Later, Christoph and
Christian developed a sophisticated electronic background for the piece,
with many layers of sounds.

Christoph and Christian worked for several months on the "Tycho Brahe"
album. Serge Leroy joined them for the mixing sessions and as an artistic
producer. Serge also introduced Jacques Derégnaucourt (link), one of the
French artists he produced. Jacques, a classically trained violin player,
was also a very creative electro-acoustic composer. He became a unique
collaborator with Lightwave, as well as Renaud Pion (link) (flute,
clarinet, saxophones...), on stage and in studio. The two are very
important components of the Lightwave sound and have been deeply involved
in many projects since the mid-nineties.

Since the 1992 concerts and the "Tycho Brahe" founding studio sessions,
Paul Haslinger has been a member of the Lightwave family. He also followed
his own path and developed his own solo projects as well as other
collaborations. But there remains a strong connection between us.
 In 1994, Christoph, Christian and Jacques got deeply involved in the
"Mundus Subterraneus" project. Most of the tracks of the album
started as live multitrack digital recordings. In this way, the band kept
the spontaneity of live interaction and improvisation, and saved the
possibility of future editing and mixing steps.

 During the fall 1994, Christian was granted a nine-month scholarship at
the Getty Center for the History of Arts and the Humanities in Los Angeles.
He brought with him the digital tapes of the Paris sessions. Paul Haslinger
proposed to produce and to mix the album in his Blue Room Studio in West
Hollywood. Paul played many additional parts and added a new dimension to
the work. Most of his contributions were recorded in a typical Lightwave
manner. The track was played once for review. Paul then selected specific
sounds, synchronized the tape with his computer programs, and pushed the
record button. He then played his keyboard parts, adding sound effects,
rythmical punctuations, melodic lines. Most of the time, the first
spontaneous idea was the right one. The mixing, editing and treatments on
the whole album, however, were to last several weeks.

During the first days of January 1995, Christian was back in Paris for a
short period. By that time, a new project was launched: "Malibu". Paul was
at the origin of this minimalistic project, where Lightwave would use a
single and strange harmonic scale on the whole album, and where each player
would use, for each track, only one keyboard with a single sound.
Christoph and Christian recorded in one day all the basic tracks of this
project. The music — soft, strange, surreal and deep — has the purety of
a drawing sketch. The "Malibu" project remained in stand-by until 1997. 
New studio sessions in Paris enriched the atmosphere and the concept: 
Jacques Derégnaucourt composed a piece for a string quartet and another 
one for a hornpipe player. The pieces were recorded with classical musicians
in a professional studio in Paris. Renaud Pion recorded several tracks for
various wind instruments. Hopefully, "Malibu" will be released in the near
future.