Making a Record Between Two Cities

A stack of files named final-final-v7. That is what «5 to 9» looked like from the inside. The record got made across two cities, Geneva and Stockholm, and almost none of it happened in the same room at the same time. I stopped fighting that a while ago. The distance became part of how the thing works.

The routine was slow and not very glamorous. I'd track guitars and rough out a shape in Geneva, live with it on the train for a couple of days, then send the files north. A mix would come back, I'd listen on my own headphones on some grey Lausanne evening, mark the one thing that bugged me, and send notes back. Round and round. A few songs went through six or seven passes before they sat right. One or two got there on the second try and I left them alone.

I kept insisting on real instruments, which drags the whole timeline out, and I don't care. Actual guitar, played by hands, small mistakes left in. I've been playing live for about ten years and that is the part of me I refuse to program away. Stockholm is very good at making things lock into the grid, and I love that, but I'd keep asking for a bit of air back. A breath before a chorus. A string buzz nobody but me would clock.

The awkward part was time zones and day jobs, mine and everyone else's. I work in finance, so my window for this was early mornings and the back end of evenings. A note I fired off at 11pm might get answered while I was in a meeting the next day, and I'd hear the new version on the walk home. Weeks moved in these little relays. It sounds inefficient because it was, but it also meant nothing got rushed. There was always a night to sleep on it.

You can hear this workflow warming up in the older releases if you line them up. «Danse» and «Lendemain» were looser, more written-in-one-place. «Don't Let Me Down» and «Et puis après?» with Skyler Wind are where the arrangements got tighter. «Broken Promise» and «I Need a Friend» land closest to «5 to 9», real instruments up front, still a bit raw on purpose. Roughly in order, you can watch the method come together.

So that is the making of it. Two cities, a lot of uploads, a folder full of versions I'm slightly embarrassed by, and one rule I kept coming back to: keep the hands in it. The album is out in 2026, first single «Wake Up» in September. Made in the gaps, mostly at odd hours, with a second pair of ears a couple of countries away.