Kilmarth interview: the light inside Pierre Soulages’ black on ‘Au bord des Ténèbres…’

Belgian electronic solo project Kilmarth talks to Side-Line about his new album “Au bord des Ténèbres…”, built around the “Outrenoir” concept of French painter Pierre Soulages, who died in October 2022 at the age of 102. Composer, producer and French teacher Cédric Wattergniaux discusses the album’s link to the recent single “Avant de céder…”, the personal losses that shaped its final stretch, its shift toward French-language track titles, with a vinyl edition via elasticStage.

Wattergniaux founded Kilmarth in 2007, taking the project’s name from the Cornish house at the centre of Daphne du Maurier’s novel “The House on the Strand”. After years of writing on the side of his work as a French teacher, he debuted the project in 2018 with the CD mini-album “Catharsis”, a record he has described as growing out of a period of depression, and has since moved through minimal-electro, post-industrial ambient and IDM territory across a steady run of EPs, singles and albums.

Kilmarth interview

SL: “Au bord des Ténèbres…” is built on the idea of Pierre Soulages’s “Outrenoir”, black as a surface from which light returns. Soulages died in October 2022 at the age of 102. When did his black paintings first stop you in your tracks, and what happened in that encounter for it to become, years later, an album?

Cédric: I think my encounter with Pierre Soulages’s work is relatively recent, about ten years ago. Before that, monochrome did not attract me at all. I found it too simplistic, but that simplicity came mostly from my own relationship to that artistic movement, which I had never taken the time to understand. I looked at those works from afar, without really confronting them. Then I saw several documentaries about Soulages, and something opened. I began to perceive what he was doing, and especially what he was seeking.

Soulages is a rebel in the world of monochrome. He is a monochromist, but his approach is at the same time anti-monochrome. He transforms monochrome into a perceptual experience. In his work, black is never uniform. It is sculpted, striated, polished, matte, shiny, carved, smooth, rough. Light clings to it, settles on it, reflects off it, breaks against it. This interplay between material and light spoke to me immediately.

I think darkness appeared very early in my life, at the age of seven, with the death of my grandfather. I saw part of my family collapse under the weight of that loss. I remember going to see him at the morgue. It was a horrible sight for me. I still see it now. He had fallen from his truck – he was a driver – and his face was damaged, marked by the mask of death. It forged a kind of darkness in my thoughts, despite myself, I have to admit. That early experience probably prepared the ground for Soulages’s Outrenoir to resonate so strongly in me.

I like to place this idea within the concept of human life. Total darkness may not exist. There is always a light within the dark, and it becomes even more perceptible in those moments. It is not the color that creates it, but the relief, the texture, the way the surface welcomes or repels the light. This vision marked me deeply and nourished my way of composing.

Soulages is a unique case in the history of contemporary painting, and it is precisely that singularity that stopped me in my tracks and, years later, found an echo in my music.

SL: The album text describes darkness as “a living substance where light transforms, withdraws, fractures, and returns in new forms.” A painter can physically place light into the grooves of black paint. You had to do it with sound. How do you make “light in the dark” audible? Which sounds, textures, or production choices carried that role in the album?

Cédric: I think I tried to build a layer of background sound that would be dark, driven by a very present bass, sometimes even too present, but intentionally so. That bass is the dark mass, the foundation. On top of it, I added effects and sharper, almost abrasive sounds that scratch at the bass and create tension inside the sonic material.

Then come the luminous moments, the more melodic passages. They are the bright relief, the parts that attract the light. They emerge from the dark mass like sparks, openings, breaths. If you listen closely, you can hear it in tracks like “Ce qui vient…”, “Occultation”, or even “Outrenoir”. In each of these pieces, the light is never given; it appears because the texture calls it.

SL: The eight tracks follow the stages of an inner journey: emergence, struggle, essence, instability, withdrawal, and finally “Outrenoir” itself. Was this trajectory already there before the first note, or did the story reveal itself as you composed? And did you write the tracks in the order we hear them?

Cédric: I composed this album quite quickly, to be honest. At first, it was only meant to be an EP. I thought I would stop there, but I kept writing, and the album started taking shape almost in spite of me. Once all the tracks were finished, I looked for the structure. I listened to it an uncountable number of times to give it a coherent narrative, to understand how each piece could speak to the others.

I removed tracks, added some at the last minute, moved sections around, rebalanced atmospheres. I love that stage of creation. It is the moment when the album stops being a series of compositions and becomes a story, an inner path. That is when everything starts breathing together.

SL: The album carries a conviction that goes beyond an art history concept: “a life does not disappear when it ends” and “evoking the dead is letting them live again.” This feels lived, not studied. Is there a personal loss behind this album, and if so, what place does that person hold in these eight tracks? Share only what you want to share.

Cédric: During the final stages of the album, I lost the mother of my lifelong companion, Valérie. Marianne was an extraordinary woman, complex, cultured, intelligent. My relationship with her was not always smooth, but I had immense respect for her, for the way she lived her life despite the terrible obstacles she faced. Her passing left a huge void.

I also lost my father just before that. These two losses, so close together, deeply influenced the way I listened to and finalized the album. I try to find, in the memories I have of them, a way to keep them present in our lives. Their absence is the dark foundation, and the memories, often very joyful, are the light that remains, the light that recalls the happiness of having known them. Their lives continue to resonate, in me and among the people who knew them.

Every day, I try to draw inspiration from them. Their strength, their fragilities, their gestures, their values. These traces continue to live in me, and I believe they slipped into the music. The album speaks of a darkness that is never total, of a light that returns despite everything. And that light, for me, is them.

SL: In 2018 you told Side-Line that “Catharsis” was born from a depression, that you barely left your studio for six months, and that music had become a form of therapy. Eight years later, you make an album about what remains of a life after it ends. Between these two records, has the role music plays in your own life changed? And what did the people closest to you, the family and friends you thanked at the time, say when they heard this one for the first time?

Cédric: I think “Catharsis” really had to be that concept album reflecting my state of mind at the time. Unsurprisingly, I was diagnosed with hypersensitivity. It was the key to my entire existence. One day, in a very naive way, I asked my psychiatrist how long it would take before I was cured. She simply told me that it would never happen. It was unsettling, but also strangely obvious. I was going to have to live with that label, and beyond therapy, there was another path that would become permanent, a true catharsis: musical creation.

Music is not something I often share with the people close to me. With some friends, I never talk about it at all. I have a very small handful of friends who are my ears, the ones I let listen to what I compose. For the rest, even in my close family, it is a topic we rarely discuss.

I am grateful they are in my life, that they are part of my daily world, but I have to admit that I am not even sure they know they appear in the credits. I am not sure they listen to what I make either. It does not matter. I cannot reach everyone. It is not popular music, and I do not mean that in an elitist way. It is simply music that requires a certain inner disposition, and not everyone wants to or can enter that space.

SL: You are a teacher by profession, and the album states that lives continue “in memory, in transmitted gestures, in shared values.” Transmission is literally your job. How much of the teacher is present in this record? Do you think of your students, or of your own teachers, when you write music about what is passed on?

Cédric: The relationship between music and my job is quite similar. I never talk about what I compose with my students, and very rarely with my colleagues. Yet I put into practice many things I learned during my studies. I have always loved creating, writing poetry, stories, reviews, comics, children’s tales. I also made mixtapes, drew, painted, took photos, sculpted, worked with wood. Whenever I had the chance, I integrated these practices into my student work, and sometimes even into my classes.

When teaching drama, I wrote a few plays, adapted others, worked on staging, scenography, music, projections, integrated videos. It was a period when I was really having fun, when I could gather all my passions in one creative space. In French class, I love working through writing workshops, encouraging students to invent, to discover themselves, to surprise themselves. In history, I enjoy transmitting the values of brilliant figures who shaped our world.

Not just their actions, but what they left behind, their ideas, their struggles, their contradictions too. I try to show my students that these figures are not frozen statues, but human beings who tried, sometimes failed, sometimes succeeded, and left traces that still resonate today. It is a way of extending what others transmitted before us, of keeping those values alive in a classroom, in a discussion, in a moment when a student’s perspective opens.

I had a few teachers who will stay in a corner of my memory for life, for their talent and especially for the trust they had in my abilities at the time. There were also others who taught me never to do things the way they did. Both inheritances are precious. I love my job deeply, because I never get bored. And above all, I try to make use of all the values people have passed on to me, every hour of every class I teach. It is a way of extending what I received, of letting it live differently.

SL: Applying the album’s thesis to the person who created it: when Kilmarth’s music is one day all that remains of Cedric Wattergniaux, what do you hope it will transmit?

Cédric: I know I represent absolutely nothing on a human scale, and on a musical scale it is even more microscopic. I do not really know if my music reaches people. I sometimes receive very kind messages, congratulations, I love this, but I remain doubtful. Music mostly helps me express my fears, my turmoil, everything that constantly works inside me. At its core, it is a form of therapy, a selfish process.

I make music for myself first, I write lyrics for myself, and I never try to make my tracks more accessible. If it touches some people, of course that would make me happy. Sometimes I feel that certain lyrics could help reflect on mental health issues, to take the time to look at concerns that remain taboo, even if I do not know whether people take the time to read them. I hope a few people might feel a little less alone when discovering them. That would already mean a lot, even if it will probably be fleeting. In a few years, people will probably no longer remember Kilmarth’s music, and that is perfectly fine.

SL: The album title and almost all track titles are in French, while previous Kilmarth releases moved between English (“Sociological Veranda”, “My Son of The Moon”), German (“Vergessen”), and French (“Derrière Le Miroir”). Was the choice of French for this album deliberate, and does composing under French titles change anything for you?

Cédric: I think the choice of French came naturally when I decided to follow in the footsteps of Pierre Soulages. The choice of a language for a title is never theoretical for me; it simply appears during the composition process. As the track reveals itself, certain words impose themselves, certain sounds become obvious, and this time, French presented itself as the most fitting language.

SL: “Sursomption” is the French rendering of Hegel’s Aufhebung, and “Ousia” is the ancient Greek term for essence. Are these philosophical concepts active elements in the album’s story, or markers for the listener? And what does an idea like sublation sound like?

Cédric: In this album, the notions of sursomption, which translates Hegel’s idea of Aufhebung, and ousia, which refers to essence in ancient Greek, are not there to tell a story. They are markers that help understand how the music evolves from within, both in the overall listening experience and in the sound of Kilmarth itself. For me, sublation in music feels like a slow transformation where tensions and fragments do not disappear, but are absorbed into a simpler, more essential form.

That is exactly what I wanted to do here by stripping Kilmarth’s sound down, refusing endless layers and multiplying ideas, and returning to something minimal where each element exists fully. Ousia then becomes a point of balance, not a theory to remember, but a sonic presence reduced to what remains when all the excess is removed.

SL: “Etude sombre et erratique en Cm” sounds like a page from the classical repertoire, key included. You once said you took theory classes at the local academy and tried classical guitar before buying your first synth, a Korg Triton. Is this étude a nod to that training? And what makes it an étude, what were you practicing?

Cédric: Sometimes, when I start a track, I pick a key and a style at random, then improvise. The title simply comes from that exercise. To be honest, this very pompous title is mostly a nod to the Dada movement, which I love precisely because it mocked academicism. That bittersweet training gives a solid foundation for understanding music, so you can later shake it up and break free from it.

I think it was Picasso who expressed that idea, even if several masters are sometimes associated with the quote. It perfectly sums up the fact that ignoring a rule out of ignorance has no value, while freeing yourself from it through real knowledge allows you to create with authenticity. That said, everything in the naming of this piece is technically accurate.

SL: On a lighter note: “Ce qui vient…”, “Avant de céder…”, “Au bord des Ténèbres…” the ellipses are everywhere in your titles. What do those three little dots do?

Cédric: This is fantastic, truly. It is the first time I get to talk about this incredible passion for that punctuation mark, so thank you Bernard! Since I was young, I have had a huge fascination for ellipses. My teachers often reproached me for overusing them, but I always felt they had something magical. They extend the reflection, they pass the torch to the reader, they create a suspended space where anything can still happen. They offer a moment to breathe, to leave suspense, to say that the ending is not here yet. For me, it is the most brilliant and enigmatic punctuation mark in the entire grammar.

SL: When reviewing the EP “Avant De Céder…”, our critic wrote about “carefully sculpted soundscapes” contrasted with “persistent layers of noise running through the tracks, giving the music a raw, almost archaic quality.” What was your actual working material on the album? Which instruments, sources, and treatments built these tracks? And the third track of that EP reworked an earlier Kilmarth piece: which one, and why did it belong to this project?

Cédric: In my previous albums and singles, I worked a lot through layering. I love tracks that reveal a new aspect with each listen. To name only three projects that inspire me humbly, I think of Massive Attack, Front Line Assembly, and Recoil, and more broadly Alan Wilder. I am not comparing myself to these giants, I am far from them, but their way of building sonic layers remains a source of inspiration.

This time, to answer your question, I deliberately used fewer instruments and fewer tracks. For drums, I relied on Battery 4 from Native Instruments and products from Audiomodern. For basses, leads, and atmospheres, I worked with Retrologue, the Arturia suite, Kontakt 7, the Korg Monologue, and a few effects. I used fewer samples, more instruments, and some random sources to keep an element of unpredictability.

I did not want to exceed twenty tracks in total or multiply layers in my DAW. I also wanted to vary the structure more throughout the piece. As for the new version of “The White Willow”, it is an older track that still means a lot to me, and I wanted to give it a new impulse.

SL: “Cherophobia” involved seven guest vocalists and came from your collaboration with Mad Mac. Did you create “Au bord des Ténèbres…” entirely alone, and if so, did the subject require that solitude?

Cédric: I really enjoy taking the opposite approach from the previous project. In “Cherophobia”, I gathered many collaborators – voices, artwork, label – explored very different styles, multiplied layers and instruments. For this album, I wanted to do exactly the opposite. I chose to be alone in the composition, aiming for great sobriety, an assumed simplicity, a raw and instrumental music where randomness also has its place. I wanted to handle everything, from artwork to concept, from release to marketing, to regain a form of total freedom.

SL: “Cherophobia” was released through Adventurous Music; “Au bord des Ténèbres…” comes out on your own Bandcamp, with a vinyl edition via elasticStage. Why this path, and is this the first time Kilmarth exists on vinyl? What comes next for the project, and is there any chance this material will be played live?

Cédric: These are more elements showing that opposite approach. I felt the time had come to create a physical work to humbly get closer to Soulages. I always wanted to release something tangible. I once made a CDR, but I was not really satisfied with it. I also produced cassettes for “Derrière le Miroir”, but when it was time to release them, more personal concerns took over and the tapes stayed in their box. I think they will stay there forever.

As for a concert, I do not think I will ever do one. I have a project in mind with videos, scenography, voices, guest instruments, but it would be far too expensive. I do not want to be the person who goes on stage with a laptop, launches their music, and projects a few images.

I have nothing against those who do it, if they enjoy it, good for them, but it is not what I want. People who make the effort to come see you must experience something different from what they have in their living room; you must give them something visually and sonically powerful. It has to be a strong moment where you give yourself entirely in creation and energy. I am not financially or materially able to offer something of that scale, so I prefer not to do it at all. Maybe I set the bar too high, maybe it is a mistake, but that is how I feel right now.

SL: In 2018 you called music “a legal drug with the immense power to make us escape.” After an album about death, memory, and what remains, does that definition still hold in 2026? And is it still an escape, or has it become something else?

Cédric: It is still a parallel world, a way to escape the one we live in. We must admit that the real world does not always offer the positivity human beings need to feel well. There are many ways to get away. I have friends who push themselves through sports, who take on incredible challenges, who devote themselves to sewing, reading, writing, farming, painting, photography, fishing, forest walks. The most important escape for me has always been music, and after all these years, it still is. So many artists have given me so much throughout my life, have made my life more beautiful. I am deeply grateful to them.

About Kilmarth

Kilmarth is a Belgian electronic solo project founded in 2007 by composer, producer and French teacher Cédric Wattergniaux, mixing IDM, experimental electronics, ambient, cinematic sound design and glitch. The project’s name references Kilmarth, the Cornish house at the centre of Daphne du Maurier’s novel “The House on the Strand”. Wattergniaux studied music theory and classical guitar at his local academy before buying his first synthesizer, a Korg Triton.

The project debuted in 2018 with the CD mini-album “Catharsis”, a record Wattergniaux has described as growing out of a depression during which he barely left his studio for six months. Side-Line spoke to him about it that year in the interview “Music Is A Legal Drug That Has The Immense Power To Make Us Escape”. Kilmarth followed with the EP “Derrière Le Miroir” in 2021, pushing into minimal-electro and cinematic territory, and the video-focused single “M-Fia41”. In 2022 came the two-track single “Baryum”, introducing a darker post-industrial ambient angle, followed by the 2023 mini-album “Better Days”, which brought a vocalist into the project for the first time.

January 2024 saw Kilmarth’s debut full-length IDM album, “Sociological Veranda”, followed the same year by the single “Vergessen” with its jazz-infused B-side “ToExposeTheTruth”, and the EP “My Son of The Moon”, which introduced Mad Mac as a guest. In early 2025, Kilmarth collaborated with D-Fried on the album “Micrometeoritic Flowerpot”.

January 2026 brought the nine-track concept album “Cherophobia” via the Leipzig-based label Adventurous Music, exploring the fear of happiness across seven guest vocal collaborations including Mad Mac, Deranged Psyche, Eeerisei, Silly Shadow, Heri B., Natasha Moreno and Clémence Legrand. In March 2026, Kilmarth released the three-track single “Avant de céder…” as a solo, self-released first glimpse of the next album, later reviewed by Side-Line.

That next album is “Au bord des Ténèbres…”, built around Pierre Soulages’ “Outrenoir” concept and shaped in its final stages by the deaths of Wattergniaux’s father and of Marianne, the mother of his partner Valérie. Unlike “Cherophobia”, the new album is written, performed and produced entirely alone, and is planned for release on Kilmarth’s own Bandcamp page with a vinyl edition through elasticStage; a release date has not yet been confirmed.