I'm quite convinced that everything we listen to between 15 and 25 years old forges our musical culture forever, it's an important age where we shape our personality.
So obviously everything we hear afterwards, we hear it through the prism of what we have integrated at that age. And then we have the notion of "musical paralysis" that comes into play. To fight against it and not to become an old fart, you have to make efforts and never stop listening to new things, which is necessarily less complicated when you are a musician and a DJ.
I was never a musician, I was a music lover first and at a very young age I came across software to create music. At first it was a game and then it became more and more serious. Thanks to Myspace I was able to make my first live performances and then I became a DJ.
On my last album "Refuge" I went into the forest with my colleague and sound engineer Olivier Vasseur to send/project sounds (sample or synth) into the forest, re-record them and benefit from the natural reverberation. To go into the forest, to get away as much as possible from human sound pollution, to then listen to nature and mix artificial sounds, it was a very satisfying experience.
We shouldn't put pressure on ourselves, nobody invents anything. The music we make is just the sum of our influences and our experience. The mistake is to want to follow a fashion, what is fashionable ends up being outdated (even if we are necessarily influenced by the sound of our time). If we do personal things then they will be singular. You shouldn't make music to fit a particular genre or audience. You have to make music because it's a deep need.
Apart from the team that gravitates around me, I am rather a solitary producer. In the future I would like to integrate real musicians in my music. I would love to do some real drum and guitar work.
Two of the albums that forged my culture are "Homogenic" by Björk and "Kid A" by Radiohead. These are the albums that opened the first doors to labels like Warp and artists like LFO, Autechre, Squarepusher… During the creation of refuge I listened a lot to the album "Agor" of Koreless which had a great influence for me, especially in the use of the voices.
If we refer to John Cage then everything is music. But for me music is taking sounds and noises and taking them out of context, rearranging them to give them meaning. The way a musician will rearrange and shape the sounds (whether they come from an instrument or are concrete samples) will give them a different meaning. Context is important, listening to the sound of nature is nice but listening to a Bernie Krause record at home takes on a whole new meaning. On my album "Refuge", with my sound engineer Olivier Vasseur, we went into the forest and thanks to a bluetooth speaker, we sent synth sounds into the forest that we re-recorded. So the music I created melts into the one created by nature. So everything is music here.
Listening is the meaning that each person will give to the sounds he hears and it is there that the music is created. The artist will create his music with his references and his history, the listener will interpret it in his own way. In electronic and instrumental music, listening is important, the listener has the freedom to create his own universe from the musician's. Abstraction is important to make our brain work and create our own images.
My most important musical or artistic discovery was Picasso. Well ok it's not really an underground discovery. Like everyone else I saw the famous works without looking further: "ok he's a genius if you say so". But later I saw a documentary about Picasso. I first learned that he was at the beginning a classical painter with an impeccable technique, then I saw how he had spent his life deconstructing this technique to go to the essential (and then we discover his behavior with young women and we wonder why all these geniuses are assholes). I saw an exhibition with several of his work stages and it is fascinating. That's the key! Try to go to the essential, get rid of the superfluous to get an idea across. And it applies perfectly to music.
One day I was talking with Olivier, my sound engineer, who was telling me about this concert of a very famous bluesman whose name I forgot, who held the audience for several minutes with a single note repeated over and over.So obviously with me it's more complicated since I'm far from being a virtuoso originally. But understanding that has given me a guideline since Nord Noir, my first album. I compose things often loaded that I try to purify to go to the essential and it is very hard!
I have a hard time remembering my dreams and the more I think about it the more I realize that my music is always anchored in reality
I love places away from the world and cities where nature is inspiring. Again, this isn't very original, but I would love to go to Iceland.
My most cherished accomplishment?
This last album "Refuge" and in particular the work we did in the forest with Olivier. It was really an experimentation and we only knew what it would give. The result is completely up to our expectations, the sounds (samples and synths) sent in the forest gives a unique natural reverb, especially when associated with the original "dry" sounds. And then these are forest gives life to this album.
I'm already thinking about the next album, I'm in the middle of experimenting and collecting sounds. I would like to explore a new way, I would like to think about all the sounds that forge a personality and how the memory interprets in the present the sounds assimilated and integrated in the past. I try things, maybe it will work, maybe it won't...
Toh Imago is a paradoxical producer. On the one hand, his records are constructed from “concrete” samples of nature, a siderurgical site, oceans or childhood VHS tapes, the very placesthey are meant to emulate. On the other hand, he fashions an imaginary place into which his creator and his listeners can transport themselves - an imaginary club where one can dance the night away from the comfort of one's own home or from a train looking out the window.
All tracks written, composed, produced & performed by Thomas Hennebicque.
https://tohimago.bandcamp.com/
https://tohimago.bandcamp.com/album/refuge
https://igloomag.com/reviews/toh-imago-refuge-infine
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