It’s a complex question because for the longest time these two fields didn’t relate at all for me! They implied entering such different mind states that I tended to separate my work as a director and as a composer, even for film scores. While composing music there is some kind of visualisation happening but it’s more like a mental sculpture, abstract figures related to the spectrum of the sound, the frequencies, the pulse of the rhythm. It’s not figurative at all, so translating this into the world of moving images is actually quite difficult. It’s only recently, with my Spectre trilogy, that I’ve decided to connect my approaches as a filmmaker and a composer. To do that, I had to make the music a part of the storyline.

It’s a completely different approach. Since I rarely compose based on a script – I usually wait until there is a first cut, there is already some material. Images, sounds, faces, dialogue… I have to react to that, to infiltrate what’s already there. Also the work is very much linked to the director’s vision and this is quite liberating, to be freed from these first intentions. I never have “writer’s block” when it comes to composing for a film.

It all started when I wrote the film Sanity, Madness & The Family which was screened in October 2021. I started gathering ideas and material for it more than a decade ago. But at some point I decided to compose the music as I was shooting and writing it. It is a fiction with documentary elements, so the shooting took place over several years. The music and the editing ended up being organically interleaved. But I didn’t want Machines Of Loving Grace to be the OST [original soundtrack] of the film, or the live show to be a promotional tool. So I split those 3 bodies of work and decided that they would be a full album, a feature film and a scenography, so that each could be relevant in its own field, relating to the others but still independent.

The work on Spectre was pretty much over when the shutdown happened so I used this time to slow down my activities, especially travelling obviously. Being a touring musician for the past 15 years had exhausted me and I realised it when it all stopped. It actually inspired me to change my lifestyle and to decide that things should not be the same after that.

That’s the story of Family, Madness & The Family: I grew up in a big family and spent a lot of time in religious communities. So the influence of sacred or spiritual music was very important when I was a child, although I personally rejected religion. This contrast can be heard in this album, I think. It’s an atheist take on gospel, like sacred chants for an imaginary civilisation.

The general idea is always the same: trying to find an honest way to express what goes through me at a specific point in time. All of my albums are attempts at that. What has changed mostly is that I might slowly get rid of my anxieties when composing and focus on the path rather than the result!

They’re very linked to the plot of the film so in that sense, they’re a bit like code. I like cryptic titles that can orient the listener’s imagination without trapping it.

There’s supposed to be many emotions but the main direction is that you can see it as a form of therapy through music.

There’s many, too many to quote them all! It’s quite obvious that Japanese anime soundtracks infused this album, especially since I’ve recorded Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, a band who inspired Kenji Kawai to compose Ghost In The Shell, or Suar Agung which is an Indonesian Jegog band just like on the Akira soundtrack. At the same time there is an American inspiration through the work of minimalists like Steve Reich or Terry Riley, but in the context of loop-based beatless Detroit techno.

You can imitate and copy as much as you want in order to learn. But as soon as it feels uneasy, weird, like the reflection of yourself in the mirror, that’s when it becomes your music. So don’t trash that, keep working in that specific direction. It’s not the most comfortable path but it’s the only meaningful one.