First thing is that in my childhood I discovered Miles Davis secretly with the OST of "l'ascenseur pour l'échafaud". I saw "West side story" and loved songs like the sharks and almost all the soundtrack. It was the gold time of vynil and standing in front of the turn table froze the time for many afternoon listening "Pierre et le loup " and some others like "The beautifull sleeping" (La belle au bois dormant". Then some years after during the summer holidays came in France the mondial hit "Isn't she lovely" by Magic Stevie".
The first electronic popular "Popcorn" song was turning on the radio 24/7 . The movie "Saturday night fever" came out few times after and the OST turned in loop in my bedroom. Time after time music became my favorite escape from real world. My father noticed I wasn't doing my homework and so he decided to make music forbidden for me. This was a big mistake. What can be more attractive than forbidden things?
It's time after time and also because of some pretty sad events that my need of a way to escape from reality grows and that music took a main place in all my teenager life. I made the army and it was already years I was more or less in adult life when one day a friend of mine came to my place with a strange wooden box that looked like a coffin cuted in two. Inside was an old saxophone with a double octave key. At this time I was a big fan of the movie "Around midnight" from Bertrand Tavernier.
It's how music came to my life, late but deeply, suddenly, passionately. I never got a lesson, never learned nothing more than playing on my own and my best point was leaving my soul singing freely.
You're a multi-instrumentalist ! Do you have actually one you love to play more than the others ?
I use to play in a "street", hours and hours .Saxophone is a very physical instrument. Breath ,mouth muscles are hardly working. Few years after I started this monophonic instrument I felt some "frustration" not to have a way to build up harmony. At this time I got a keyboard from KORG. This changes my life definitively.
I started to explore my inside music, my vision of the beats and how songs could sound for me to play freely on my own. So it's not properly an instrument that I like to play more than another. I'd say that my greatest pleasure is to use tools as the piano to build up songs. I use also flutes and little accessories .. but the most enjoyable is adding time after time sounds after sounds and then feeling the sympathy of the blended frequencies. Giving a thin identity to a tinny detail at a very precise moment in a song is what I enjoy mostly.
How do you record your music? Do you have some particular rituals? Do you love some ambiences for that?
Several things push me to create a new athmosphere before it's properly a song. It happens many times that I'm outside and a sensation grows in me with words and abstract colors and images. I try to keep this deep feeling and I stick my reflection to a tempo as an introspective monologue soliloquely. I leave free my mind till I come home and turn on the machines to record ... I set the tempo and I listen what's remains of the previews feelings I got as a kind of inside meditative mantra.
I sing a little some simple melody and with a basic piano sound I leave my instinct flow around the tempo clic. Here are the roots of a song. The most disturbing ritual I have is my need of switching places furnitures and my Home studio set. It refreshes my motivation and gives me a sensation of being brend new. I can then really feel my imagination totally restaured and ideas come without a will Most of the time it's only after a bunch of works failed or succeeded that I chose or not to put saxophone or any other accessories. I am not searching to make a proper structure to welcome a chorus or anything. I search silences that give the spaces for the sounds. each void is for me more important in a song than all other sounds. A silence is a sound itself ... it's the most important note that fit in all harmony. When harmony doesn't show up on instrument I sing gently something and it's how I find out the missing things. That's it I guess.
I know you have worked very hard on your new release, "The Last Door", could you speak to us about it?
Sure I will...! lol It happens like that... After I produced Just words LP of 20 tracks and the minimal beat version of the song "No soul man "initially released in the LP Gorgeous sins more and more people asked me to sing songs. I was already planning something in my mind... another project. Deep in my love stories background I felt to say something about it. I seated down in a table and wrote few words. I picked up a free royalties drum beat on the web and started to play a piano on it. Actually the beat has never been used but it doen't matter I draw a bass line over it and started to sing the few words about the girl next door in a building that is the main line of the album... doors . Then came out details and gentle sounds to make it a little more fashion. The song was talking about those women you cross and you imagine only all that can be imaginable. I released it like a kind of joke .. three chords .. few words .. just a little glamour fantasy. People liked it very much... even too much. They asked what is it about .. album .. EP what is it?
Next day I took my pen and wrote something else .. I made a song on it and people asked the same.. What is it about .. is it an album...? And so I made an other and an other .. till I got 13 songs made the same way. Songs are done very very very simply... 1 minute to write the lyrics and a full day for the composition that must keep the same chords transposed are whatever. It's an easy way but... using a structure of 3 chords for all songs even transposed .. it's not that easy. So,I realized the songs one after the other till I got a proper album.
Something was wrong in it? very wrong.. a shame in fact. First I didn't know what But in a car I've seen it... The sound was low and weak. So so so weak. I decided to ask around .. Why my sound is that weak compared to some other stuff...? here start something very very bad ...I'll share all I can about this to help other not to be in this kind of situation . So "kez le zek" sent me something about mastering. Here are the tutorials. It's on Fl studio but it doen't mater it's all good for sounds understanding.
Here is a link of a Youtube chanel http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92F1F8DE5346D05F
I used part of the theory about mixing and mastering. Tools and skills teached in this are absolutely essential and even if I'm not working with FL studio I got no trouble to apply it on my own system. This knowledge needs a lot of practice and after it you can really get a better sound even with home made songs. The Physical CD is now ready and it's gone to be a very important step for me after months of work on it. As usual since 6 albums the art work is home made in collaboration with Annamundi.
If you could work with 3 famous artists (dead people accepted) who would it be?
Actually I wouldn't work with any famous musician but I'd prefere to observe them during a recording session. About this I'd chose Peter Gabriel, David Bowie and The dead can dance, Robert Frip and Bobby Mc ferrin for the instinctive universality of what they shares in them way to do things.
They have a long experience, they work with incredible skilled virtuoses and they are able to blend many things with an unlimited imagination for what I know of their work.
If you should describe your own sound, what would you say?
This is maybe the question I feel uneasy with. Maybe not the easiest music to listen even it's mostly simple structures. It's quiet oldschool but have no proper style that could put it in a guetto. It's often very soft and surely not the funiest music ever. It's also intimate and introspective I guess. I don't search to be fashion at all. I try to do some elegant sound with space inside that leave to the audience the time to feel and reach it .
It's not a music that rises and blows out as a bigband can do. There is not much virtuosity in it but it's mostly because the jazzy color I put inside are not there to make the show but to draw a rainbow of emotions. I used to make long long songs and it's a mistake in 2013. People switch very fast to the next page ... An intro of more that 5/7 seconds is a guaranty to loose 65 % of the listeners. If there is a tag for the sound I do it might be delicate or details. It's a blend of sincerity and research.
What are your projects for the rest of the future?
Being involved in visual project as it always been. Making visual on my own . Organizing better my release. And trying to stick to the concept of my next album. It's not that easy when isolated you must break the need to share what you are doing. I would like to come back with a full album that nobody heared about before. visuals nobody seen before .. I'd like to see if it's changing something. Make another side project to spread a different side of my creativity Staying motivated to save some money and buy more material as a tenor sax .
Last words are yours!
If you make one choice think about it everyday. make it your life. whatever is your passion live it fully. Don't waste your time on a wrong decision. And do your best. Don't smile to people if it's a lie. Be true!
Websites:
http://hucreix.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Hu.Creix
http://hucreix.x10.mx/