C: One of your most beautiful orchestral compositions is for the film, Les Anarchistes. How did you get selected to compose for this film?

NM: Well, thanks first of all for the beautiful comment. I knew the director for a long time. We’re friends and have many friends in common. But that wasn't how I was selected for the score actually. Before we collaborated on the recording, it was difficult to convince him to hire me... original music was something that scared him a lot as a director. Although he was very interested in me as a composer.. I think, after many tries, I was selected when Elie Wajeman heard the main theme I composed for his caracters. 

C: You are quite proficient at composing electronic music as well. Which came first, composing for electronic or classical?

NM: The anarchist was my first classical composition, I started with electronic and had been a musician on stage and composing pop.

C: What was the inspiration behind the piece “Ils Sont Le Monde?"

NM: "Ils sont le monde" has many different inspiration. I composed it as a score to a film which is currently in post-production. This is based on the Cherry Orchard from Tchekov, the movie is an adaptation of it. We’ve been discussing with the director a lot about the caracters, and the way they represent us, the way they tell something about us, and about the world.. that gave me the title. I also was harmonically inspired by Charles Ives and George Delerue who were our references for this piece. They both compose in a way that, according to me, you feel affective emotion and truth at the same time… when collective and individual matter meets each other.

C: Are any in your family musicians as well, or are you the only one who took up this glorious journey?

NM: My brother is a musician as well.  

NM: Yes, this is absolutly related to the music I composed for the Gloria Jacobsen project/album. Memory and music are strongly related to each other. In Greek Mythology, the muses, who give the name to music, are Mnemosyne' daughters, as if memory gave birth to music. Husserl also put music in the center of his phenomenology- listening to music makes you use a certain short memory, a "fresh memory," the first logical moment of consciousness. This is some of the inspiration that I used when I composed this album. Afterwards, I put some of that understanding into the symbol.  

C: What is your favorite instrument in classical music, and why?

NM: I prefer strings, because we are like strings.  

C: Do you like experimenting with sound and layers? What do you consider to be your measure of success when creating a new sound?

NM: Yeah sure! I love any kind of experiment. As soon as I have an idea, I play around with it. I'm not sure I think about my experiments being successful, but I do measure if it was a successful experiment when I get a gold record- or when the movie I worked on is selected in the Festival de Cannes! Artistically, I measure that I've created something good when I spontaneously send it to someone- it's now on it's on- and it defends itself.  

C: How do you visualize the formation of a classical piece before it is written?

NM: I don’t visualize it, because it can be for a solo instrument, or a chamber, or a symphonic orchestra, a choir … doesn't matter. I composed for The Anarchist with a guitar and my voice … and then went to an orchesteral arrangement etc.. But the composition- the root of it- can be a flute, or a piano, anything.  

C: Who or what are your influences in both electronic and classical music?


NM: Classical mostly Debussy, Schonberg, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Delerue, Bernard Herrmann, John Carpenter also some contemporary composers like Evgueni and Sacha Galperine or Eric Neveux. For electronic music I like Oneothrix Point Never, Rustie, Salem, Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus, Bonnie Banane and many others  

C: If you were to compose for a film, which genre would you prefer, and why?

NM: Any kind! With a little reserve on the comedy genre obviously, I’m not really confortable with the « humour/music relation. {laughs}