I've downloaded a bunch of VSTs in the last few days, with a touch of early 2000s nostalgia, because of their sometimes grotesquely "science-fiction" interface, which already evokes I don't know what as-yet unseen retrofuturism, and because I spent a few years working exclusively with them (alongside my composing for Maelifell or FDS, which were entirely PC-free).

There's a certain purity in composing only with a PC, a sequencer, VSTs and possibly a master keyboard. I've always hated the tangle of cables, the thousand problems with connections, compatibility, MIDI settings, latency, etc.... From this point of view, working in the studio at Xavier's or my place can sometimes seem like torture.

VSTs have their own flaws and limitations, of course - they're cold and often sound far too similar, and after going through X dozen of them you're so saturated with identical and discouraging sounds that you'd almost consider, with relief, stopping all musical activity. But I still think I've found a few that I missed, in terms of "types of sound", moods... In particular, some excellent 90's ambient pads and half-tribal, half-metallic FM percussion.

The idea behind all this is to compose with sounds I rarely use (or have never used before) to renew myself musically and give birth to compositions I don't know yet, and don't want to know in advance, what they'll sound like, what "style" they'll be assimilated to, if indeed there is such a thing as assimilating to a style or scene. I'm looking for the sensation of moving forward totally blind, into the unknown, without any determinism, without any preconceived ideas, without any goal.

For a number of years now, I've noticed that my best albums, or at least the ones I prefer, are the ones that weren't premeditated, that sort of built themselves, as time went by and as samples or VSTs were discovered by chance; I'm deeply convinced that each synth, each bank of samples or presets, "contains" in germ its own musical genre and the tracks that correspond to it. All you have to do is change them from time to time and let yourself be carried along; the music creates itself. And it's good not to control everything, to be able to be surprised and changed by what you yourself have created or helped to create, like a simple channel for transmitting a message from God, or from your own unconscious, or from nowhere.