It’s Thursday again, and today we get to know the French born, but Canada based composer Wings for Louse!
What’s your real name?
My name is Charly Martin
How did you come up with your artist name?
I’m a big fan of the metal band Tool. They’ve got a song called « Wings for Marie » Wings for Louise is kind of a tribute to this song. I changed the name Marie for Louise to keep a French name, but also in reference to the French band « Louise attaque ». When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the fact that they named Louise but they’re only mens in the band. I found this dichotomy, very cool at an early age, even if at the age of 6 I didn’t know what was a dichotomy…
Where are you from? And where do you live?
I was born and raised in a small town in south of France near Spain, called Narbonne. It’s in the Languedoc region between Toulouse, Barcelona and Marseille.
8 years ago I moved to Montreal in Canada to study sound design. I really loved the city and the people here, even if I was a bit confused by the different North American culture at the beginning. I discovered the Québec culture who is a very rich and fascinating culture, so I decided to embrace this culture and became a permanent resident of Canada. Now I’ve got two home.
How long have you been playing the piano, and do you play other instruments as well?
I started playing the piano three years ago. I discovered a label from Montreal (Moderna Records) Who were releasing piano music and I remember being blown away by the intense emotions that I felt, listening to this music…
At this moment, I was releasing music with my previous Electronica project Echo 6, I was very inspired by artists like Sigur Ros, Jon Hopkins, Christian Löffler and I only used some simple piano chords or really simple short piano melodies in my music. After diving deeper in the Modern Classical music scene, I decided to learn the piano by myself. Two years ago I decided to start my own « Piano project » and here we are !
I also played drums in a Post-Core band in France, and used to be a Guitar teacher for 6 years. I also play a bit of accordion and I really want to learn Trumpet !
Tell us about how you started playing music.
I started to « play » music when I was 12, after I seeing a friend of mine take my father’s guitar and play a song by The Offspring. The next week we started a band and played shitty Metallica covers.
How long have you been making piano music?
I started to make my own piano compositions two years ago with this project Wings for Louise.
Tell us something about that moment you realized you could make songs yourself!
During my adolescence, I mainly listened to metal music, but some day I discovered the album Days to come by Bonobo and one song in particular, transmission 94 who literally blew my mind. The next day I started learning how to use a music program to create music like Bonobo. I released my very first EP « Make a Sound from silence » with my project Echo 6 in 2010.
What are your favorite artists in this “piano genre”?
I discovered the genre like many people with Erased Tapes artists, (Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds) I also knew Yann Tiersen’s music before and he’s still one of my favorite artists. but now that I dived deeper into this genre, I listen a lot of Dominique Charpentier, Jean-Michel Blais, I also like the Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau.
Is there one song which you play over and over again as soon as you sit down by a piano? Your own or someone else’s?
Actually yes, I like to play « Instantané » by Dominique Charpentier from his album The Cakemaker Soundtrack , this piece is very slow and emotional and there is a really nice arpeggio.
What rules (in making music) needs to be broken?
Every rules should be broken. In music, in life, except maybe in physics… It should be broken to go forward.
How do you record your music? Yourself? In a big studio? etc.
I have a home studio where I can record my piano. I like to layer real pianos sounds with sampled sounds.
Whats your take on sampled instruments?
I use them a lot in my process, I produced a lot of electronic music before this project and still doing it. Sampled instruments are very useful and can bring you unexpected ideas. Even if I’m convinced that certain emotions from a violinist for example can’t be reproduced by a sampler. The piano is a very easy to sample instrument so there is a lot of really good libraries.
Anything else you want to share?
Yes, thank you very much for your time and for your interest in my music. And thank you to people for reading your blog !
And as always, the question from my five year old son:
Where do all your songs come from?
All my songs come from the world, from life who surround us. I’m just a simple converter who transform air into notes.
Thank you for your participation Martin!
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