This is a reflection on listening, sound, and composition.
Listening comes first. It is through this disposition that music begins.
Even before composing, I learned to listen facing the piano, working on Bach, among others, to catch what lingers, what resists, what escapes. This relationship to sound has remained at the core of my approach.
Some tensions or sonic curves carry within them an ancient memory, a transformed kind of lyricism.
I work with sound to reach what eludes words: tension, texture, pressure, vibration.
Drawn to the exploration and invention of singular sonic materials, I imagine compositional setups that reveal the hidden dimensions of sound, its morphologies, internal rhythms, and memory.
My process involves recording sequences of playing, editing, looped listening, transformation, and stretched playback, not as effects, but as materials to live through, fully sonic materials to compose.
The studio is my main space of action: a site of slow friction, physical assembly, and sensitive decisions. Each sound must feel inhabited. I trust the ear more than the tool.
Hearing is the sense that connects me to the world with the greatest intensity, both physical and intellectual.
The act of listening alters the shape of time and makes us vulnerable to the invisible.
Deep listening makes us sensitive to what is not immediately sonic, but still contained within sound: memory, resonance, diffuse emotions, waves, traces, absent presences – what the body, the ear, and the mind can perceive without fully understanding it.
Even before composing, I learned to listen facing the piano, working on Bach, among others, to catch what lingers, what resists, what escapes. This relationship to sound has remained at the core of my approach.
Some tensions or sonic curves carry within them an ancient memory, a transformed kind of lyricism.
I work with sound to reach what eludes words: tension, texture, pressure, vibration.
Drawn to the exploration and invention of singular sonic materials, I imagine compositional setups that reveal the hidden dimensions of sound, its morphologies, internal rhythms, and memory.
My process involves recording sequences of playing, editing, looped listening, transformation, and stretched playback, not as effects, but as materials to live through, fully sonic materials to compose.
The studio is my main space of action: a site of slow friction, physical assembly, and sensitive decisions. Each sound must feel inhabited. I trust the ear more than the tool.
Hearing is the sense that connects me to the world with the greatest intensity, both physical and intellectual.
The act of listening alters the shape of time and makes us vulnerable to the invisible.
Deep listening makes us sensitive to what is not immediately sonic, but still contained within sound: memory, resonance, diffuse emotions, waves, traces, absent presences – what the body, the ear, and the mind can perceive without fully understanding it.
Ce texte est une réflexion sur l’écoute, le son, et la composition.
L’écoute précède tout. C’est par cette disposition que la musique commence.
Avant même de composer, j’ai appris à écouter face à mon piano, en travaillant Bach entre autres : à capter ce qui persiste, ce qui résiste, ce qui échappe. Ce rapport au son est resté le cœur de ma démarche.
Certaines tensions ou courbes sonores portent en elles une mémoire ancienne, un lyrisme transformé.
Je travaille le son pour atteindre ce qui échappe aux mots : tension, texture, pression, vibration.
Attaché à l’exploration et à l’invention de matériaux sonores singuliers, j’imagine des dispositifs de composition qui permettent de révéler les différentes facettes du son, ses morphologies, ses rythmes internes, sa mémoire.
Mon approche passe par l’enregistrement de séquences de jeu, le montage, l’écoute en boucle, la transformation, la lecture étirée – non comme des effets, mais comme des matières à vivre, pleinement sonores à composer.
Le studio est mon principal espace d’action : un lieu de friction lente, de montage physique et de décisions sensibles. Chaque son doit sembler habité. Je fais davantage confiance à l’oreille qu’à l’outil.
L’ouïe est pour moi le sens qui me relie au monde avec le plus de force, une intensité à la fois charnelle et intellectuelle. L’acte d’écouter change la forme du temps et nous rend vulnérables à l’invisible.
L’écoute profonde rend sensible à ce qui n’est pas immédiatement sonore, mais qui est pourtant contenu dans le son : la mémoire, la résonance, les affects diffus, les ondes, les traces, les présences absentes – ce que le corps, l’oreille et l’esprit perçoivent sans toujours le comprendre.
Alexandre Bazin, 2025