Christelle Gualdi is known for beaming transmissions of hypnotic sound through her synths.  While communicating abstract notions to enthralled audiences with her solo project Stellar OM Source, Gualdi has not only been dropping gems of her unique electronic sounds on to wax and disc but also to the masses in bold performance based shows, replete with lights and sequences. Otherworldly and entrancing, Stellar OM Source clearly displays a gift of transcendence. After many months of admiration we were finally able to grab her for a talk which proved as revelatory as her music. Catch her live or make her records fixtures on your stereo because Stellar OM Source is clearly in the building with an agenda to go to new places.

Stellar OM Source has such a strong emphasis on performance, a rarity in the synth world. Can you talk about how you develop your performance and what you hope to communicate to the audience using visual means as well.

I want to give as much as I can. People come to see you performing your art, your music. This effort makes me want to deliver something special. I need to feel this communion. I don’t think it’s a rarity though. Most of mainstream electronic music are great shows, Daft Punk, Tiesto’s lasers shows!!! And they’ve got the chance to bring their studio on the road, just like Kraftwerk. I am therefore modestly inspired and try to follow in my own way. I’m already getting known for traveling with too much gear! I’m also extremely fascinated by the world of rave parties and everything around them: the visuals, the vocabulary, the social thing. I definitely would like to see the Stellar OM Source shows as moments when people can get enjoy themselves and above everything get uplifted and inspired. Any shows with lasers and fireworks blow my mind. There’s a sense of abandon to an extreme beauty, sound and sight. When I work on my live sets, I keep in mind the dynamic and the tension of a show to create. I record the live set and listen to it intensively. This is also the preparation in order to record the sequences of parameters and settings. I need to play though, I’ve got the nature of a musician and I’m not relying on many tricks.  Both my hands need to be occupied during the whole set. I like to display the technology I’m using and also do as much live as possible. I enjoy when people can relate in some way to what’s happening, hence the reason why I don’t use laptops. That’s why I’m after a Roland Axis.

When dealing with synthetics there’s always a tenuous balance between technology and evocative humanity. Where does the machine end and the composer begin?

Instruments are always and will always be mediums to express emotions and personal experiences. When this is perverted you don’t convey anything. There’s no difference between a painting and a Roland preset. The painter and the Japanese engineer share this need of expression. It’ll touch you according to your own sensibilities. There’s also a personal standard. I love to listen or read about production. Like listening to Derrick May or Vangelis talking about their thing. Somehow they don’t even talk about the technology. We’re just composers using the instruments of our times. Hell yeah!

How do you see the project continuing to develop and what influence has such extensive touring had on the project?

Touring turned my music into a process. Also my nomadic state makes me conceive music on the spot wherever I’m staying. New pieces of gear become available and I can record new sounds for a future release. But the time in the studio is becoming more and more about preparing new live sets. It definitely makes things develop faster and with more confidence, just because I don’t have time to doubt. I’ve been thinking lately about the end of the Stellar OM Source project to stay true to its nature. Another solo project is in development… Touring also makes me believe in a mission of bringing my own music or better the music I’m meant to play. I’m getting more and more free to express the sound which resonates the closest to my personality. Touring also made me reduce the influences to get closer to the core of the music. All that made it clear to me that music is my life and my love. All those concerts in all those different places made me feel something too: the shared senses of beauty, ecstasy, things I’m after. I’m aiming to settle somewhere soon by the ocean to record and to be able to continue touring.

What non-musical qualities does SOS aim to achieve? What responses have you gotten from audiences and do people react surprisingly?

At the end of a set there are always people coming up to say something. It makes me really happy. I feel that what I’m aiming for, this exchange. Yes, people react surprisingly, they clearly seem to expect something else, and get something much greater. I know I’m a different person when I perform, and hopefully I become only music. Often people are surprised that I can produce so many sounds. I get a lot of very encouraging comments, and that fills my heart with love. Like I said, I’m very inspired by the notion of trance, and that applied to 80′s and 90′s music scenes. At the same time, and from my background, I’m truly into craftsmanship and skills, technology. Say I’m into ripping and shredding, à la Prince, Herbie Hancock or an excellent Detroit DJ set. You take those 2 elements, you start from the music, you extract what you feel and think and that’s what I would like to achieve with my different musical projects.

~ a feeling from the heart~ (it’s the name of a UK rave party).

When all the elements come together what happens?

A laser show of the mind?! Honestly this is so deep, immense and abstract, that I won’t be able to find words! For sure I can say that it makes this life worthwhile, and to pursue every effort into musicianship and art. It’s hope for humanity, that if we can experience things like this, we’re not completely lost.

What psychological conditions are the most conducive to listening to and creating SOS?

I don’t really reflect on that. My condition is the action. Through flow of work, work and work. I love the creation process. I’m just really aware and try to have high focus when I work on SOS music.

As for the listener, people tell me they listen to my music in all kinds of conditions. From after-parties to soothing babies, from cures for bad trips to heightened yoga. Those are surely not conditions I am searching for deliberately but maybe the universality of this music?

What challenges do composers face in this modern era? Focus and attention seem to be valuable commodities. How does SOS exist in this realm?

I guess we can now be exposed to so much music, we’ve got access to every music we desire. We consume fast. Is then the challenge is to produce long-lasting music? I know that I like to create music which inspires people in their lives, bringing a heightened sense of self, some form of enlightenment through joy, etc.. Some music being produced today has that dimension, the question is how many people share that. That’s then the question of universality.

Today things are so open as well, you can produce things so easily. But there’s still the question of crafting work and genius ideas which decide for major material or just disposable.

Psych, drone, trance are all tools to move beyond the day to day world. SOS seems to move through them all, is genre a consideration or is it mood?

I definitely don’t have interest in the genre as I’m producing the sounds and music I’m meant to produce, the music for which I vibrate, which makes me work without limits, filled with desire. I cherish the idea as a great motivational tool that the greatest music we ever heard is still to be produced, that certain genres don’t exist yet.

by STEVE LOWENTHAL on 6/21/2010 in Interviews | Tags: Christelle Gualdi, Stellar OM Source