Olivier Heim finds a home with ‘A Different Life’

Each place I’ve lived has changed the way I look at music in some way. I often think back to my previous lives, my different surroundings, different friends, a whole different perspective. I have this weird sensation whenever I revisit and realise how disconnected I am from those places now. When you move somewhere you’re a total stranger at first but over time you learn about the place and the people around you and it changes you. The same goes for how I develop as a musician, I like to get out of my comfort zone, try something different and let it change me until I find myself again.

I feel stronger about living somewhere than visiting. When I visit a new place I love to walk around all day, get lost and take in as much of the atmosphere as possible. That initial feeling when everything is new is really precious - it starts to fade immediately. Though the real value of a place only becomes apparent after living there for a few years. Recently I visited Japan for the first time. I always wanted to go and I felt a really strong attraction to the mood of the cities, the nature and Japanese aesthetics. I dream of moving there one day, learning Japanese and getting closer to the people. For the moment though Europe still really suits me. So many countries so close together and easily accessible - it’s a really rich place that continues to inspire me.

What frustrated me most about working in bands was that the final result often ended up as a compromised version of what I had imagined. Now as a solo artist I have full control over where I want the music to go. At the same time it is still really important for me to involve other musicians when I’m writing. Interacting with others takes me to places I don’t anticipate and I never know how impulses I send to other musicians will affect them. This unpredictability is actually what I find most exciting about music, it’s where the real magic happens.

When I wrote ‘A Different Life’, it was my intention to record all the material live so we could really catch the interaction between the instruments on the album. When I spoke to my producer Michał Kupicz he told me he had been playing with the thought of recording an album using exclusively dynamic microphones and that my material and live approach fitted this idea perfectly. Michał proposed Quality Studios, a kind of forgotten wood-fitted studio in Warsaw dating back to the 70s, as it would work really well for live recordings. The studio is located in a blind people’s institute and it’s rented out as a rehearsal room most of the time. It’s really great to have a completely unaltered studio from the 70s, the sound there is really natural and the room has its own characteristic aura which really inspired me during recording.

As a kid I listened to a lot of oldies. There was a local radiostation called Eldo Radio in Luxembourg where I grew up that used to play exclusively old pop hits and I was addicted to this station, I listened to it every day. I love old hits and have always been a bit reluctant to listen to new music. Just before I started working on ‘A Different Life’ I thought that perhaps I needed to make more of an effort and expand my horizons. This is when I was introduced to artists like Connan Mockasin, Cass McCombs, Kurt Vile, and really fell in love with them. I hear a lot of what draws me to pop from the past in their music but they manage to translate it into modern songwriting. I think my love for them pushed me to give a modern twist to ‘A Different Life’.

Lately I have been performing a lot by myself and really enjoy it. It’s very intimate to be alone on stage and there is something very peaceful about it. I have learnt a lot about how to be myself on stage. On the other hand I feel that performing alone is to some extent lifeless. The same energy I get from writing with other musicians I get during concerts as well. When I work with a new set of musicians I always give them the freedom to interpret the songs in their own way and give the music their own personal twist. This allows me to rediscover the material in a way by finding a new place where it connects. This translates to the stage in an exciting way, it shows the songs have a life of their own and are not only recorded snapshots on an album. Now I am rehearsing with a new squad and I’m really looking forward to taking it to the stage for my upcoming show in London.

Olivier Heim’s debut album ‘A Different Life’ is out December 11th on OH Recordings - he plays London’s Servant Jazz Quarters on December 9th.

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