GATAM
GATAM invites us into a cinematic world of dreamy indie pop, nostalgic synths, summer romance and heartfelt storytelling, sharing the inspiration, emotions and creative journey behind “Comme au cinéma.”
1. “Comme au cinéma” tells the story of a summer romance on the French Riviera, capturing the feeling of driving along the Mediterranean with the windows down. What inspired you to turn this particular feeling and setting into a song?
I’ve always loved those scenes in films where everything seems to slow down — landscapes, faces and emotions passing by while music plays in the background. There’s something about those moments that makes you feel as if time has stopped and you’re simply living in the present.
For me, summer romances have that same feeling. They represent freedom and carelessness, like a little parenthesis in your life where you can dream of being whoever you want to be, without being trapped in the role you’ve built for yourself. That’s really the feeling I wanted to capture with “Comme au cinéma”.
2. The track combines dreamy synths, shimmering guitars, and subtle ’80s influences with a modern indie-pop approach. How did you shape the song’s sound to create that nostalgic, cinematic atmosphere?
I’m a dreamer at heart, and I think you can hear that in the music. Actually, the music came first and the story came afterwards. I created the atmosphere before I really knew what the song was going to be about, and it was that atmosphere that made me imagine a summer romance.
I’m originally a pianist, so I naturally love synthesizers and tend to use them a lot. Maybe that’s where the ’80s feeling comes from. It wasn’t really something I consciously decided to recreate — it just emerged naturally from the sounds I’m drawn to.
3. You perform “Comme au cinéma” as a duet with your wife, bringing a very personal chemistry to the song. How did working together influence the writing, recording, and emotional character of the track?
I usually write lyrics from images I have in my head, but also from things I’ve experienced. I really didn’t want the relationship in the song to feel fake, so having genuine emotion in the recording was very important to me.
The second verse, for example, was recorded with my wife and me together in a single take. It made editing more difficult afterwards, but it worked so much better because it sounded like a real conversation between two people.
Neither of us is a professional singer — although I really love her voice — so a big part of the song doesn’t come from vocal performance or technical perfection, but from emotion. We also had a lot of fun recording it. We tried deliberately cheesy versions, very serious ones, overly romantic ones… almost like acting out different versions of the scene in a theatre. In the end, finding the right emotion was much more important than finding the “perfect” take.
4. The song feels like a three-minute escape to the sea, sunshine, and a fleeting summer romance. What emotions or memories do you hope listeners experience when they hear it?
That feeling of a summer romance: freedom, carelessness, suspended time. A moment when everyday problems seem to disappear for a while.
I’d love the song to give people that slightly weightless feeling you sometimes get at sunset, when everything around you seems to slow down. You’re not really thinking about yesterday or tomorrow — you’re just there, living that moment.
5. You wrote, arranged, and produced “Comme au cinéma” independently. What have you learned from handling so many aspects of the creative process yourself, and how important is independence to your artistic identity?
This is only the second track I’ve released, and doing almost everything yourself is honestly a marathon! But at a time when everything moves so fast, there’s also something incredibly satisfying about spending so much time building something from the ground up.
There were probably a thousand moments when I wanted to give up, but also a thousand moments when the magic suddenly happened: a loop that unexpectedly sounds amazing, or a vocal take recorded between two fits of laughter that somehow ends up being the best one.
I’ve also learned a lot about what happens after a song is finished. Releasing it doesn’t mean the work is over — suddenly there’s promotion, communication, playlists, social media… It sometimes makes me question what matters most to me: making the music, communicating around it, or writing the lyrics.
Lyrics are actually something I care about enormously. I like them to feel raw and direct, so you immediately understand the emotion, while still leaving enough room for listeners to connect them to their own experiences. Once the song is out there, people naturally make it their own.
6. “Comme au cinéma” introduces listeners to your world of nostalgic indie pop and cinematic soundscapes. What can we expect from GATAM next, and are you planning to explore new sounds or themes in your upcoming music?
Music has been part of my life for a very long time — it certainly didn’t begin with my first release as GATAM.
I’m currently working on a new song about fatherhood, which has been a real upheaval in my life. It’s probably even more personal than “Comme au cinéma”, and it opens with the sound of my daughter’s heartbeat.
I don’t necessarily think about changing styles or exploring a new sound just for the sake of it. I’d rather let each song grow from what I’m feeling and from the story I want to tell. And with this next one, I think I’m going somewhere even more intimate.