It is always hard to pick a few artists who inspired us. But to me, some composers especially embody inventiveness and daring. Trevor Horn is one of my first pop music shocks, and Video Killed The Radio Star from The Buggles remains my favorite song. Same with The Plastic Age, I am a camera ou On T. V. Trevor quickly extended his job as a composer by becoming a producer. As a young composer I listened carefully to records, hoping to understand their recipe in terms of sound (an early spectral approach to music perhaps). I took a first slap in the face with the album The Lexicon of love by the group ABC produced by Horn. And I turned the other cheek as Welcome to the Pleasure dome of Frankie Goes To Hollywood popped up. While taking slaps I also got a huge kick listening to the meta-group The Art Of Noise, creation of Trevor Horn and some of his friends.

Had Claude Debussy lived in an era when recording was possible, he certainly would have become a producer. I am pretty sure he would have done the mixing of Pelleas et Melisande, all by himself and he would have sought to bring the ultimate refinements for the listener’s perception. We were both born in Saint Germain-en-Laye and I have always taken it as a sign. And beyond his music, what I love about Debussy are his desire to look for something different, his disrespectfulness, his taste for the timbres of the Balinese gamelan, his will to break the codes of the Villa Medicis or the invention of the character of Monsieur Croche in order to be politically incorrect. Writing Clair de Lune gives you all the rights in the world.

Frank Zappa once said: “I started writing chamber music when I was fourteen, I didn’t write rock music until I was twenty”. The discovery of his complex and above all varied music makes him a model of madness, inventiveness and also rigour for me, emphasized by his mocking eye and cheeky moustache.
The iconoclastic aspect of his work links him to Debussy and the way he produced his recordings reminds me of  Trevor Horn. He was a real expert in technology and in the use of the NED Synclavier keyboard computer. The rock opera Joe’s garage is a masterpiece, with a cover that would be impossible to release nowadays. It took me years to understand that the TV show I used to watch when I was a kid, Studio Tan, was named after the experimental rock UFO and its Lemme take you to the beach.
Considered as a hero in Czechoslovakia, he might have become president of the USA in the 1990s if he had gone through with his candidacy. Frank Zappa, has a style of his own, though one can hear the influence of Stravinsky or Varèse, but also the mastery of Doo-wop. It should not be allowed not to have listened to the album Sheik Yerbouti: and the piece Yo Mama with its asymmetrical measures, which is a model of virtuosity and musical and instrumental jubilation of the highest order.

Does the playing of the guitar engender creativity? I’d be tempted to say so when I consider Zappa and Hans Zimmer. They definitely share a gene. A keen eye will have recognised Zimmer playing keyboards in the video of Video Killed The Radio Star from The Buggles from Trevor Horn. Always at the forefront of technological evolution, practicing the relentless chiseling of sounds, Hans Zimmer is my reference in film music. As a producer, he has a vision and knows how to create the means to work on the music of the Hollywood hits, in particular by creating the studio of creation Media Ventures. I regularly listen to the music of Gladiator. More recent compositions such as the soundtrack to Dunkerque are becoming models for aesthetic choices and the use of music that must be followed, the goal being to serve the film.

The ” Electronic Ladies “ are the pioneers of electronic music, research, experimentation and inventiveness. The national broadcasting companies of various countries have allowed the creation of laboratories, entities for musical and sound research. This has created a breeding ground for experimenters and, above all, experimenters.

Eliane Radigue

has experimented and pushed the composition of continuous sounds as far as possible: her playgrounds are drones and feedbacks. After being a master at recording and editing, she became an expert of the Arp2500 synthesizer.

She shared a studio with Laurie Spiegel in New York. She was into “West Coast” synthesis through her practice of the Buchla. Laurie Spiegel is a pioneer in the use of computers and algorithms for composition, her credo being to automate as many tasks as possible in order to concentrate on the interpretation of the music. Like Eliane Radigue, her work includes a large number of pieces for acoustic orchestras.

L’Oramics, invented by Daphné Oram, allowed a graphic approach to sound and music creation, as if one could draw the sound. She created the BBC Radiophonic Workshop which, in addition to experimentation and basic sound research, was an innovative and poetic creation space for BBC programs. She has been a considerable source of inspiration for English pop music ever since.

Delia Derbyshire, the deputy director of the workshop, is a visionary composer with a solid initial musicological training. Her contribution to both « musique concrète » and electronic music has made her a legend in Sweden and Japan. Her name appears on the credits of many albums by electronic music major artists.

The ” Electronic Ladies “ paved the way for acousmatic music.