STROMKULT: I saw that you have a background in dance, could you say a little bit about how that has shaped your journey into electronic music? 

GiGi FM: I’ve been dancing since I was very little. I started at age seven and trained professionally at places like the Paris Opera for many years. So I think technically, the first piece of electronic music I’ve ever listened to was probably Ravel’s “Bolero” — I mean, if you think about it, it is basically the same loop played over and over again by different instruments (laughs).

Through dance, I then went to the US on a scholarship, and that was also where I first encountered techno. I remember one of my teachers putting on Function’s “Disaffected” for a dance improvisation exercise, and I was just like, “What the fuck is this? This is amazing” (laughs). So that was really my first encounter with techno.

I then started listening to more electronic-adjacent things like Flying Lotus, as well as jungle and drum & bass. I was always into lots of different kinds of music though. I grew up with a lot of Latin music, including salsa, merengue, cumbia, and I’ve always loved reggaeton and hip hop. My parents are also punks, so there was always plenty of rock, post-punk and indie music around as well. One very important moment for me in terms of getting deeper into electronic music was discovering a Donato Dozzy recording from 2008. There was something about the hypnotic quality of it that completely drew me in and opened up a whole new way of thinking about electronic music.

Oh, I know that mix! It’s amazing.

Amazing! I remember listening to that and just being like fuck. Around that time in London, I was also listening to all of this UK techno stuff — artists like Boddika, Scuba and Perc — and going to James Ruskin’s Blueprint parties. Going to the Bloc festival for the first time was also really influential for me, it was this really crazy thing at a holiday resort in Wales where all the ravers were staying in a chalet. I saw Nina Kraviz for the first time there, which was really unbelievable at the time.

How did you then go from just listening to also making your own music and DJing?

DJing actually came later for me, and what really got me into production was this idea of being able to make music with my body, not just using your hands, but in this very literal way, making music through movement. It’s a dream I’ve had since I was twelve or so, maybe I watched too much Star Trek as a child (laughs). 

But it’s something I’ve always had in mind, and I then met someone in the smoking area after a party — and I was telling her about all of this, and she said you know, I work for Ableton, do you know what that is? And I said no, and she was like well, it’s a software you can make music with, kind of like GarageBand, but a bit more complex (laughs). And at that time they were interested in interacting with people that had never used the software before, so she invited me to their office to have a look.

That was really the starting point of making electronic music for me — although I had already been singing and playing piano since I was a child, I come from a very musical family. And of course, you also have to have a certain understanding of music and rhythm as a dancer. So when I started playing around with Ableton, that was a big “wow” moment for me, because there was suddenly the potential to realize all of these ideas I had. 

I then quite quickly began dipping my toes into Max/MSP and started collaborating with a friend who was experimenting with movement-tracking technologies. Around that time I also began working with the Myo armband, which could generate MIDI information both from movement and muscle contractions. I used these techniques on “Sensetronaut” from my Magnetite EP on Bambounou's Bambe label in 2022, allowing physical gestures and movement to directly shape elements of the music.

Over time, I then of course also learned the more conventional ways of making electronic music … You know, making music is just so dope (laughs)! For me, it’s like always having a blank page in my diary, and Ableton is my emotional puking bag (laughs) … I know that sounds weird, but it’s true! Because there’s always things happening in your life, and while words are beautiful in their own right, there’s something to music where you don’t really need to think about what you are doing and can just express.

Are you still using these movement techniques now?

Yes! It’s been a long journey, and it’s still an ongoing project that I’m working on and developing, using different motion-sensing technologies. Usually, I have one sensor on each leg and arm, so four in total. The sensors are connected via bluetooth to a custom Max/MSP patch and then that patch interacts with my Ableton so I can send data to different channels and things like that. It is still pretty unstable at this point and sometimes crashes and then it takes 15-20 minutes to reboot everything, so it’s not really suitable for live use as it stands. But ultimately, with more stable technology, I would really like to use this system live at some point.

Aside from using it as a modulation source, do you also use the movement data to generate MIDI?

Yes, absolutely. Generating MIDI from movement has always been a central part of the process for me. I usually generate material through movement and then edit, refine and extract the elements I want afterwards. For drum racks and basses, I like to use my legs, which feels very intuitive to me. For melodies and pads, I tend to prefer using my arms. The movement data can also be used to control different parameters, so depending on the setup, a gesture might generate MIDI information while also influencing things like filters or effects.

I find these kinds of associations really interesting, like how different parts of the body and ways of movement relate to different kinds of sounds.

As a dancer, it’s a really interesting thing, because your technique gets totally transformed when wearing these sensors. Because you are directly triggering and modulating sound, and you have to follow along and understand what movements trigger which sounds, which is not necessarily the kind of movement that would feel natural within the established techniques of dance. So in a way, it’s like re-learning how to move, creating a new body-language from scratch.

In the future, it would be nice to have more refined movement tracking that goes beyond just these four sensors and registers the body more holistically. But I think at least for now, I think four is also already kind of enough, it is already a lot to keep track of as is (laughs). So I’ve been mostly trying to stabilize and better learn the tech.

Usually, I use it in combination with existing sounds and banks I’ve made in Ableton. Sometimes, you do get really surprising results though, like I’ll be playing a granulator with my legs or something (laughs), and you can get these crazy moments and textures. 

And while the movement tech was a bit more in the background for a while — especially since I had a broken foot last year — I am now really excited to dive back into it again. I’m also working on another more intimate sound experiment at the moment, but I’d like to keep that one a little mysterious for now.

How do you usually use your voice in your music?

Often, when I open Ableton, I’m already singing a melody or an idea, and I then convert that into MIDI with the Dubler2 app. It’s really cool, you could even sing your bass or pads! I also use my actual voice recordings as audio, both as vocals and as textures and percussion.

Sometimes, I’ve also already got lyrics in my head to go along with those melodies. So for example, with the track “Here and Now” on the new Shelter Our Time EP, that initially started as an ambient track, but then I started humming a melody and writing lyrics and then quickly realized that it was actually going to be some kind of poppy jungle track (laughs).

Are there certain sounds that you find yourself typically gravitating towards? Listening to your tracks, I hear a lot of brighter, more melodic sounds, like pianos and things.

You know, I really just love jazz and salsa, so I’m always attracted to these kinds of piano sounds. When I’m starting a track, I usually already have my MIDI keyboard plugged in, so I often will just start playing and get some ideas that way. Oh, and I also really like electric and acoustic bass sounds, like an actual electric bass sound or contrabass — although I also like some 808 subs of course, I’m kind of basic in that way (laughs). But in the end, it’s all about the processing and how it fits with your track.

I remember — maybe it’s still going on — there was a long stretch in techno where playing melodies was almost this forbidden thing, and you would go to Berghain and not hear a single melody for ten hours (laughs).

(laughs) I have to admit, I’m definitely someone who loves melody. Sometimes I’ll hear very stripped-back music and find myself thinking, “just give me one little chord, one tiny melody!” You know, when I’m starting a track, I very rarely start with the drums. I almost always start with chords and melodies. Often, I’ll be humming something with my voice, and then I’ll see what key I’m in and what the mood is and then will layer additional melodies on top. And at that point there’s still no kick or bass at all (laughs). 

Only once I’m satisfied with the melodic arrangement, I’ll start thinking about the rhythmic elements that could go with that. And I then will spend a lot of the time on the drums obviously, because they are important for dance music, they carry the intensity of the track. And on the new Shelter Our Time EP where it’s more jungle things, I really spent a lot of time on the slicing and arranging so that the breaks feel nice and have energy.

Do you then sometimes end up having “too many” melodic layers and need to strip things back down?

Yeah, sometimes that happens (laughs). But often, I also just keep all those layers in. You know, it’s funny — I was with a friend yesterday who is very technical, and he was like “sometimes I listen to your tracks and I don’t know how you fit all those melodies in the mixdown” (laughs). I think for me, the secret to that is really just getting the balance of volume between the elements right.

What I usually do once I have a basic two or three minute loop down is that I’ll put it on in the background for an hour or so while I do something else. I will then just write down what comes to mind on a piece of paper — making notes about what I want to change and where – and quite often, what ends up on the page are poetry, fragments of lyrics, or reflections inspired by the music as well. I’ll then take away or add things according to what I think the track needs, which ultimately is all very subjective of course.

How many of these ideas and loops usually end up as actual finished tracks for you?

I do start a lot of music that I don’t finish. That said, I think that over time, I have been getting better at making those finishing stages more fun for me. So lately, I’ve actually been quite enjoying it sometimes, that feeling of “okay, let’s lock in and finish this” (laughs)!

As part of my process, I usually will save a new version of the project every time I work on it, so I have all these previous versions I can go back to. And so when I get to that point where I’m just working on these really small details like “this needs to go down two db” (laughs), I can go back and listen to prior versions. And then sometimes I’ll be like “yeah, actually, that’s the one” and will realize that the current version has lost some of the initial magic. So for me, that’s when I really know when something is done, when you are at the point where to keep working on it is no longer constructive, but destructive.

Does making music come as something intuitive to you, or do you sometimes struggle with that translation between emotions and sounds?

I really don’t struggle with that at all, I think (laughs)! You know, I saw this interview with David Lynch many years ago where he was saying that the creative process is kind of like fishing; that ideas are not something that you actively create, but are more like fish that come to you, and then it’s up to you to catch them. I think I am intuitive in that way, I just catch the ideas that are coming to me, and try to follow them as far as I can without overthinking it.

But can that also get overwhelming, like having too many ideas (laughs)?

It can! Sometimes, I’ll be in a project, working on a loop, being like “this is nice”, and then I’ll get this new melody, and so I mute everything else and add things to that melody — and then suddenly, I’ll have three different sketches for tracks within a single project (laughs). But then I’ll just turn that into three different projects. I think I’ve learned how to channel that energy in a way that feels constructive to me. I’m fine with having started and made a lot of tracks, I’ve only released a fraction of what is on my hard drive, and I think it is like that for a lot of other artists.

Can you say something about your studio setup?

Most of my music is actually made at home. I live in a small studio flat, so my setup is very simple: a Nord Lead 2, a MIDI keyboard, a TC Helicon voice processor and my computer. That’s pretty much it in terms of hardware. I do a lot of things in the box. We’re really lucky to live in an era where you don’t need loads of gear, and there are so many great plugins that allow you to achieve almost anything you can imagine. I also share a studio with Efdemin (Phillip Sollmann), who is one of my heroes. He has all this amazing gear, so whenever I go there I feel a little bit like a kid in a candy store (laughs). It’s always very inspiring to spend time in that environment.

Do you have a favorite plugin?

That’s so hard to answer (laughs)! I do think my favorite plugin is actually my voice, whether I’m using it to generate MIDI with the Dubler 2 app, or as actual audio recordings. There’s actually so many things you can do with just the sound of your voice with the right processing, especially with spectral plugins and things like that … you can even make it sound like a saxophone (laughs).

But yeah, when it comes to plugins I’m currently really enjoying Rift from Minimal Audio, it’s really cool. There’s also a cool Buchla Music Easel emulation plugin by Arturia I’ve been liking a lot recently. I also recently discovered this really cool plugin for mixing, the Soundtoys Microshift. That said, in general, I try to keep things pretty basic, so I do use the default Ableton effects and instruments a lot.

And you never get the urge to just go out and buy a bunch of hardware (laughs)? 

Many of my friends have a lot of gear, and it does seem really fun — maybe one day (laughs). Once I get a bigger space at home, I might start adding some things.

Obviously, it can also end up being a kind of trap, where there’s always that one more piece of gear you don’t have that will suddenly fix everything (laughs).

Yeah! I think I’ve learned over time that “minimal is maximum”, there’s so much you can do with very few tools. I mean, even if you just had Ableton with no third-party plugins, you would probably never run out of things to do. Sometimes, I’ll just set an hour aside and make a little thing with just Ableton and will try to do something different — like starting with the drums first — and sometimes, that then does end up being a nice idea for a track.

Are you someone that tries to make music every day or do you have longer breaks where you don’t make anything for a while?

You know, during the winter where I had my broken foot and was stuck at home, I was really obsessed with making music every day, ten hours every day, as a kind of escapist mechanism (laughs) for two months. And that was an interesting experience, but I do think it’s good to not necessarily make music every single day. 

So I’ll sometimes go a few weeks where I’m traveling or doing other things like poetry, collecting ideas – I actually think that just going out and living your life is really a form of  “brain food” that feeds your music making; I think it can be very productive to get back to it when you’re almost “craving” it. I find living life, travelling and having experiences just as important to the creative process as actively sitting in the studio making music. So I don’t want it to be this robotic fixed schedule thing where I’m sitting down at the same time every day; I try to follow these natural phases and motions of my life.

(image credit: George Nebieridze)

I think that’s a great attitude to have! As a final question, I’m also curious about how you approach DJing creatively, especially compared to production — are they like two sides of the same coin for you?

They’re definitely creatively related to me. Maybe because they’re both about telling a story. You know, I often write these little synopses before my DJ sets where I try to put into words what I want to convey in that set; what the message of the journey is. For me, DJing is about telling a story, and every track is kind of like a person, so it’s about making a story out of all of these different personalities, which is of course also very dependent on the environment you are playing in. I really like to start my sets with a poem, vocal, or field recording that sets the tone for the journey, and then throughout the set, there’ll be references to that. 

So to me, DJing is really about expressing yourself in a way you wouldn’t when you’re talking to someone. And everyone has their own approach to that and is trying to tell a different story. There’s no wrong or right way to tell a story, I think. Different people resonate with different things, and sometimes, something really clicks. You know, when you leave a party or a festival and just have that feeling of being very inspired and happy, I always think that’s very beautiful … It is a rare, but very beautiful thing.

You can find out more about GiGi's music and other projects here.