A Conversation with Simon Henner

In my journey as a sound engineer & a musician I have seen many talented people come and go. Such is the nature of our so called "industry". Simon Henner however, my dear readers is one of those human beings, whom I have been privileged enough to watch & grow into a musical tour-de-force over the past decade. His work not only inspires me and motivates me to keep pushing but also constantly challenging my own approach to music composition & expression. Although we both make totally different kinds of music, our fetish for everything electronic & electric made sure that we became life-long comrades when we first met many years back at Theremin Centre of Electroacoustic Music in Moscow. Two music nerds, two totally different journeys, but even after a decade we both share the same passion for electric underground art. Currently working out his amazing studio in France, Simon Henner with his project - French 79 - has published several celestial albums garnering millions of streams online, performs live all over the world, sharing his cool, breezy, ultra-melodious electric creations on a planet with rapidly rising temperatures.  A man who prefers that his music do the talking, I would like to thank Simon for indulging me and Dyumna for this brilliant conversation in the spirit of our friendship. Enjoy dear Readers!

Simon: (leaning close to the webcam) You hear me? No delay?

Sumit: All good here. Hi Simon - Thank you for making time!

Dyumna: Hello!

Simon: Hi both of you. Very happy to join. I made a coffee, I’m ready.

Sumit: I always find video calls so revealing. You get a slice of someone’s studio. Your spaceship. What’s behind you right now? Is that the old Yamaha? Never saw that before.

Simon: (turns the camera a bit) Yes.  My oldest friend. Sometimes my enemy. The one next to it is the Juno-106. It behaves like a cat - affectionate when it feels like it. 

Sumit: (laughs) The best machines always misbehave.

Simon: (laughs) Yes - if a synth never surprises you, it’s not alive.

Sumit:Your music always feels like motion - like running toward or away from something. Have you always composed through movement?

Simon: I think so. I used to skateboard everywhere in Marseille. When you move fast, you start creating rhythms in your head. The wheels on the pavement - that’s percussion. The wind - that’s reverb. So when I make a track, I want that forward momentum.

Dyumna: So your childhood was basically your first instrument.

Simon: (laughs) Yes - the street as Ableton.

Sumit: Let’s get into something I know you’ve thought a lot about - analog vs digital. People romanticize analog, but digital gives you precision. Where do you sit today?

Simon: I sit exactly between them. And I am not like you Sumit! I don't think about it a lot. Its simple. Analog is emotion — digital is discipline. Analog is the sun on your face; digital is the architecture of the city.

Sumit: That’s a lovely split. And thank god you are not like me!

Simon: (laughs) With analog, you never get the same sound twice. If you record the same note again next week, it’s slightly different — temperature, humidity, voltage… everything changes the tone. With digital? You get exactly the same note. Clean. Safe. Perfect.

Dyumna: Do you like “perfect”?

Simon: Not on its own. Perfection is only interesting when you put something wild next to it. It’s like… you need the chaos for the precision to mean something. The way spices need a base.

Sumit: Do listeners hear the difference?

Simon: Some do. But mostly… they feel it. Analog has movement in the body of the sound. Tiny fluctuations. Digital is like glass - beautiful but smooth. When I combine them, I feel I’m painting with two kinds of texture.

Sumit: Ahh speaking of paintings let’s talk about synesthesia. Do you experience sound as color?

Simon: Not fully - not like you who literally “sees” colors. But I have a strong emotional-color association. A major chord in a high register is yellow, almost pale gold. Deep bass notes - that’s midnight blue. Arpeggios, depending on the speed, become shades of orange or white for me.

Sumit: That’s close enough to synesthesia for me. Color is built into your vocabulary - I have observed in our conversations.

Simon: Yes. I don’t think about notes first, I think about palette. Sometimes I tell myself: “I want this track to feel teal.” And that decides the chords, the tempo, the reverb.

Dyumna: What color is Marseille in your internal map?

Simon: Ah... That’s turquoise. Always turquoise. The sea, the reflection, the heat… Even the shadows are warm there. When I compose in winter in Paris, it’s grey. When I go to Marseille, I immediately make turquoise music again.

Sumit: That’s beautiful. You told me once that synth has a “weight in the air.” I loved that line. Can you elaborate on that for our readers?

Simon: Oh! I meant something like... When you play a real analog synth through speakers, the sound pushes air differently. It’s not just volume; it’s presence. Digital is like a projection. Analog is like a sculpture in the room with you.

Dyumna: Does this matter when you’re composing alone?

Simon: Yes - because my body reacts differently. I lean in. I play slower. I choose notes with more care. Machines shape emotion.

Sumit: Do your emotional states map to frequencies as well? I’ll tell you what - knowing you for so long. You are one of the calmest, most breezy person I know. Most of your tracks are like that. You don't have a single.. Like... heavy song (laughs)!

Dyumna: Your music is like a balm for emotions.

Simon: Oh, definitely. You know Sumit, Dyumna, we are musicians. Quite is our canvas. I like that.  Why should I share my sadness with anyone? I like calm people. I make music to calm myself (long smile).

Dyumna: Quite and calm! I have observed that. Sumit and his artsy friends can go without talking for days and weeks. That’s impossible for me! You guys have your creative outlets off course. 

Sumit: We have our spaceships. So what about your frequency spectrum?

Simon: (laughs) To each its own! Yes. For me frequencies are emotions. When I’m anxious, I gravitate toward tight mid-range synths, almost like a buzzing. When I’m peaceful, I open the filters, I let everything breathe. When I’m nostalgic, delay pedals suddenly sound perfect. It’s not about expressing what I am going through but to make it into something cool and light.

Dyumna: So your studio is basically a barometer of your mood. And your therapist.

Simon: Absolutely. Some days the machines feel heavy. Some days they feel like old friends. And some days - the best days - they feel like co-authors.

Dyumna: That’s very beautiful and poetic!

Sumit: Do you have any rituals before you start making music? 

Simon: I clean the room. Completely. If the space is messy, my tracks come out messy. Then I choose one machine to start with. It could be guitar, a synth, a drum machine… starting with too many choices kills creativity.

Dyumna: Do you ever start with silence?

Simon: Yes.  Silence is the most powerful tool. Quite and calm is my canvas as I said before.  Sometimes I sit there listening to nothing until I can feel the tempo of my mood.

Sumit:  Almost like meditation. I like to start out loud though. Slow but loud. It's the guitar amps! Launch the spaceship, escape the gravity, then enjoy the silence.

Simon: (laughs) I do that sometimes. I am privileged that I never get off my spaceship!

Sumit: (laughs) I know lucky you man! You mentioned earlier that the Juno-106 can be temperamental. Do you have a favorite story of it misbehaving in a good way? I love studio accidents. They give the best results always!

Simon: (laughs with nostalgia) Yes - my favorite accident ever. I came into the studio one morning, half-awake, didn’t even turn the lights on yet. I pressed one key on the Juno… and instead of a clean tone, the machine gave this weird warbled, detuned cry. Like the synth was clearing its throat.

Dyumna: (laughing) A cold morning cough.

Simon: Exactly! But here’s the thing - the pitch wobble was beautiful. I had no idea what patch it was. I hadn’t saved it. I turned the lights on and immediately recorded it for fifteen minutes straight. Just the wobble, changing filters a little bit. Those recordings ended up becoming the atmospheric bed in three different tracks, including an early version of Quartz.

Dyumna: I love that song! So the synth started the conversation that day.

Simon: (laughs) Yes.

Sumit: What about an accident that actually changed a song completely.

Simon: Oh - that’s the story of one of my favorite melodic lines ever. I was working late, maybe 1 a.m., and I had this melodic pattern running through a delay pedal. But the cable connecting the pedal was old, and every time I moved my chair, it crackled. I was annoyed at first. Then... At one particular crackle.. The delay caught the noise and turned it into a rhythmic glitch that repeated perfectly in time with the tempo. It sounded like a tiny digital heartbeat.

Dyumna: You didn’t delete it, did you?

Simon: No! I turned it up. I shaped it. It became the percussive click in the background of an entire track.

I love when mistakes become essential.

Sumit: Do you ever have days where nothing works? You know the non-musical days(laughs).

Simon: (Laughs, long) Oh yes. The worst one: I spent a full day - six hours - trying to record a single bassline. I tried three synths, four distortion pedals, the whole chain. Everything sounded flat, lifeless, boring. I got frustrated, went on a walk, came back… and realized the entire time my bass was routed through a mute channel on the mixer.

Dyumna: No!

Sumit: (laughs) Dude! Relatable! I almost fired my assistant once for something like that. Fuck!

Simon: (laughs) Yes. I was shaping silence for six hours. The perfect metaphor for overthinking.

Dyumna: (laughs) Crazy!

Sumit: Your live shows are very energetic, almost physical. Echoes of Earth concert was just interstellar. Do you intentionally break the stereotype of “electronic musician behind the machines”?

Simon: Yes, I want to show that I’m alive inside the loops. I’m sweating, I’m breathing, I’m pushing. Machines don’t make the music - the human heart does. The machines just give it form.

Dyumna: Lovely. Do you ever feel vulnerable on stage?

Simon: Every time. But that’s how you know you’re doing it right.

Sumit: I also love that you keep archives! Old project files, voice notes, sketches. Thanks for sharing those with me! Will get down to mixing them once I enter my audio engineer mode. 

Simon: Oh yes. I only shared some of them with you after we spoke. I have hundreds. Thousands probably. My hard drives are like archaeological sites of my brain. Sometimes I open a project from 2014, and I don’t even recognize myself. But there will be one sound... A kick, a chord - that immediately brings the memory back.

Sumit: Like smelling something from childhood or your teens.

Simon:Exactly. Sound is smell in disguise.

Dyumna: That’s lovely.

Sumit: Very Borges! I want to ask you about Quartz. It’s one of those tracks that feels like acceleration — like the world is contracting and expanding at the same time. Also anticipation. Its one of my favourite tracks to go jogging or swimming. Or while sketching. Fills you with calm excitement & energy.  How did that piece begin?

Simon: (smiles knowingly) Ah, Quartz… that one came from a single arpeggio. Just one. I played it on the Juno, actually, the one behind me. The arpeggiator was slightly unstable that day, drifting a little bit — and that drift created the entire emotional core of the track.

Dyumna: So the imperfection made the mood?

Simon: Exactly. I wanted it to feel like a heartbeat that has started running too fast. Not in panic... More like excitement, anticipation as Sumit said. It was morning light in the studio - that pale orange that feels both soft and sharp. In my head, Quartz is that color - a translucent orange that keeps pulsing brighter.

Dyumna: It sounds like the inside of a crystal but also like a city at dawn.

Simon: That’s how I saw it, actually. A mineral world and a human world overlapping. Hence the name - Quartz. It’s both organic and geometric.

Sumit: Amazing Track! Was it composed digitally or analog? I can't tell man!

Simon: (laughs) Merci! A perfect mix! The arpeggio is analog - you can hear little breaths in it. But the beat is digital, very precise, almost architectural. That tension creates the motion you feel.

Sumit: Damn! Brilliant! Can we talk about 4807? There’s something very spacious, almost Himalayan about it - like standing at a summit.

Simon: (eyes light up) Yes! That’s Mont Blanc’s height - 4,807 meters! I wanted the track to feel like elevation, like altitude in sound form.

Sumit: (laughs) Fucking Insane! It does! The air feels thinner as the track builds. Its like trekking and dancing... Trekking and headbanging!

Simon: (laughs) I used a lot of filtered white noise - it’s subtle, but it mimics wind at high altitude. Every time the melody rises, the air gets “colder” in frequency. For me, 4807 is light blue, a very pale, almost frosted blue.

Dyumna: Was this synesthetic too? Did the color come before the melody?

Simon: Yes — that’s one of the few tracks where I started with color alone. The whole palette was icy blue and silver in my mind. Then I thought about ascent... The rhythm of climbing, which is not fast but persistent. So the beat is steady, like boots hitting snow, and the melody opens slowly, like the view widening.

Sumit:I fucking love it! It’s a very visual track. Almost like a drone shot that keeps rising.

Simon: Exactly. I wanted it to feel like your stomach drops gently as you see more of the sky. Digital synths were crucial there - they give that wide, clean, glacial space. But the small analog imperfections keep it human. Otherwise it becomes too cold.

Dyumna: So Quartz is sunrise, and 4807 is altitude.

Simon: Perfect descriptions. One is heat and motion, the other is breath and horizon.

Dyumna: Your next album  - Motion or horizon? 

Simon: (laughs) More of both! More analog in tone, more digital in structure. I want to record messy, then sculpt cleanly. I am letting the machines breathe, then discipline them. And I hope something new. Something different.

Sumit:Brilliant! And color-wise? What palette?

Simon: Soft orange. Warm, nostalgic, hopeful.

Sumit: Can’t wait! I am expecting the demos soon!

Simon: Definitely. I will send some over today. Do your mixing magic. 

Sumit: The pleasure will be all mine! I will be getting in my sound engineer mode soon.

Dyumna: We can’t wait to see you live! When are you coming to India next?

Simon: Next year definitely. More venues this time around if it all works out.

Dyumna: Simon - this was beautiful. Thank you for the generosity & time.

Sumit:I know you are a man of few words. This means a lot for us Simon. God bless you!

Simon: (laughs) Words. The musician’s anathema. 

Sumit: (laughs) This musician’s curse more like!

Dyumna: (winces) Chill out dude!

Simon: (laughs) Cool Curses! From a musician to a musician, it is always fun talking to you brother. And it was great talking to you Dyumna.

Dyumna: (folds hands) Merci Simon.

Sumit: (folds hands) Merci Mosseur Simon for your insights and your time. Our readers will love how much color and geography are inside your music.

Simon: Merci! It’s rare to talk at this depth about the music construction. Most interviews stay on the surface. You two really go inside the music.

Dyumna: We try. And we loved this! Truly.

Simon: Merci. Send me this. I want to keep the descriptions, especially your metaphors.

Dyumna: Of course! À bientôt, Simon.

Simon: À très bientôt.

That's it dear readers. We hope you enjoyed this and learned from it as much as we did. If you have'nt heard Simon's music yet - Do it fucking now! French 79! Peace ✌️!