Our songs are minimalist, unambitious, repeat themselves from one time to another, use outdated material that we've been over a thousand times; our themes are childish, those of retarded teenagers and provincial yokels romanticizing their plot of land; we make IDIOT music and we assume it entirely and we wouldn't want to do anything else – IDIOT music, that is to say, IDIOSYNCHRATIC: local, specific, atavistic.

It was illuminating to read an article about the first blues recordings, drowned in hiss, and the tendency, on the contrary, of the triumphant rock, to eliminate the sound imperfections and the very sound traces of the recording (such as hiss, therefore) in favor of an illusion of real presence of the musicians during the listening. If we place these two things on a line to make a paradigm of them, there is nowadays a phenomenon still external to this paradigm, and which is an additional devolution: it is the export.

We have moved, imperceptibly, from recorded music to exported music, for pieces that come directly out of VST and a DAW, to a WAV file, regardless of their musical genre.

This is not necessarily the best calculation from a technical point of view, but from a moral point of view one can support the idea that it is necessary to record what one has done, strictly speaking, instead of simply exporting it. Each technical choice carries its own "ethic".

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I think I'll use my Grundig tape recorder to record my next little pieces. It's so simple, so straightforward; it has the added advantage of being absolutely and authentically lo-fi from a sonic point of view, but that's not even the primary reason.

Even in digital on a multitrack, the mere fact of playing one's music from the PC or an instrument and recording it, in real time, on a medium, is something else than exporting – even if the difference is null from a technical point of view it is real psychologically. Recording = performance, export = simple calculation.

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It's funny that I bought back the exact same tape recorder I had as a child, after finding its brand and reference in an electronics store. And that Xavier buys back by chance exactly the 4-track I had (Yamaha Mt-400). I sometimes think that these are signs that we didn't complete our mission twenty years ago.

Hiss is there to make it clear that it is a recording; it is not a matter of creating the illusion of the presence of the musicians, on the contrary, I want it to be clear that it is a recording, made with such and such a type of material, and that this impacts the sound itself and the listening experience. A recording made on such and such a date, under such and such circumstances. It's like a diary page.

Sonic images of the world. A miniature world. Its copy at least – its ghost, locked on a CD, on a tape, etc.

A sound recording is much stranger, much more ghostly than a photograph or a film.

I finished last night the floppy disk containing MIDI files, photos and a Maelifell bio, which I wanted to do last year, for the 25th anniversary of the 96 demo. So the actual anniversary was missed, but as there's no doubt that nobody cares, I guess it's not too bad. It's a satisfaction, in any case, to have completed this object – I've duplicated about ten of them, which I'll give to Xavier, Eric and others, for the rest we'll see according to demand. In the same way, I've started duplicating tapes again; I transferred Bunker blues and Un dimanche d'exécutions to tape and made several copies, with my double turntable.

It's more for the object than anything else, given the sound quality of these transfers (it saturates nicely), and I like the tape object itself, the idea of duplication, of growing, in the real, material world, a body of finite objects in the space where my music is contained - in reality, you could define a USB stick or an Archive. Org in exactly the same way, but there is something more to the old media, perhaps due to their simplicity, the handmade, almost 'handmade' (this is obviously an illusion) aspect of their production / duplication, and even their relative reliability and fragility make them even more lovable.

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Talking about Maelifell, it suddenly occurred to me, while for years I've been wandering around with 150 projects under crazy names, mostly to remain anonymous and prevent even these unknown projects from being linked to each other, to take up the name Maelifell, to continue this musical path, without fear of anyone or any external consideration. As if it had taken me all these years and vain efforts to remain anonymous, to make me realize that nobody cares about Maelifell and me and my past and present projects, and that three enemies in the business are not going to spoil anything.

The relief was immediate. A feeling of returning to something fundamental that had been put aside, neglected, forgotten for no good reason. Perspectives that are reopened. Priorities become clearer, blockages disappear. Initially I didn't want to touch Maelifell's discography, I didn't want to "spoil" our old albums, our "masterpieces" with new albums that might have failed. And suddenly I said to myself, never mind, let's move on, let's assume we've had several periods - the early PSS, the medieval, the neo-classical, the neo-folk – and let's do what we want, none of it is sacred, none of it is so serious.

I've imagined a lot of different covers for future albums, which I'll probably never do, but whatever, this unblocking of the imagination means one thing: the project is not in formaldehyde, it's alive, it can mutate into anything, nothing is written in advance, and our past doesn't commit us to anything.

I decided this morning, while walking, very early, while it was dark, cold, rainy, in the street of Ruffec: to start writing down my dreams again. I need to know what I have in the back of my head, and to be able to remember this other half of my life – even if it means not retaining the dreams that I know teach me nothing, bring me nothing.

Another decision, not only personal: to take back the name of Maelifell. I don't know why, it just came to me, these days, first by renaming the Instagram account "Waldbruder" to "Maelifell", so that our eventual fans can see our current life and our creativity, even if it means not offering them anything more, musically... and then finally, I said to myself why not, and proposed to Xavier to do it again, and too bad for Felix and Serge and the people who don't like me and will ironize or make judgements about what they will see and hear in the future - in the hypothesis that our future works reach their eyes and ears. Too bad. And so much the worse for those who liked the demo, or The Summerlands, or whatever, and don't like the sequel, because we owe them nothing. Now that the decision is made I have to admit that it seems absolutely obvious, it's like finally going home.

I have a pretty clear idea, if not of the melodies, of the general atmosphere I would like to develop on a future Maelifell album, made of alternations, between types of sounds and instruments, musical genres, and types of recording quality: for example a piece with General MIDI sounds recorded on k7 with a lot of hiss, as in our beginnings, followed by a piece made with the Technics, which would have its own sound, then an entirely acoustic instrumental recorded with a tape recorder, then a more electronic piece, with the Volca for example, etc. .. This would give the whole thing a more lively, organic aspect than an album that gives the impression of having been entirely played, recorded and mixed on the same day, with the same equipment, in the same state of mind.