After discovering Valentin Hansen for the first time, we completely fell in love with his music and his vision of art. Intrigued by the way he is managing multiple projects, we wanted to have a chat with him!
Tell us a little about where you live and how you ended up being a multidisciplinary artist.
I’m living in Berlin since around five years because for working as a multidisciplinary creative Berlin is a very good city. A lot of things are happening here and you can find your own place and style. Working in different ''jobs'' was more arise from a need because I grew up in a small village with around 300 inhabitants and got nothing to do there. So I’ve started writing music and doing visuals for it.
Where do you get your inspirations for your songs, apart from visual art?
Sometimes the inspiration comes when I’m listening to other songs, sometimes a feeling inside guides the way to sit at the piano and let some random ideas come into my mind. There’s not only one way of inspiration, it’s more going with the flow and this works out well in the last years.
You use vocoder on most of your songs, how does this tool reflect in yourself?
The autotune effect is a perfect mix of digital and analog. I’m listening a lot to hip-hop music but also these alternative indie guitar piano melancholic stuff, so the vocoder + the dirty old piano sound I’m working a lot with, is the combination out of both worlds.
If you'd have to do only one collaboration with any artist in the world, who would it be?
I don’t have this ONE artist, who is my hero for years, so the answer is always changing from year to year but right now, I would say it’s 070 Shake.
Have you ever been to Canada? How do you imagine it?
Oh no, I want to go to Canada since years. I wanna see all these cities, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto.
But before, I want to hike in the mountains and make pauses at these big blue, calm seas haha.
Your website shows a LGBTQ+ flag icon, how this community important to you?
I think the time it’s over to be unpolitical. It’s really important to spread an opinion into the world because in the last years and decades the anti-democratic voices getting louder and louder and for we need to fight against this to have a safe world for the marginalized ones. This is a reason for the flag on my website.
You also direct music videos, which one did you really enjoy working on?
Directing music videos I always a lot of fun! I really enjoyed shooing the last video for MAVI PHOENIX because the process was very closed and we spoke a lot about the deeper meaning and agree with a lot of points.
Are you currently working on new music or an album?
Yes, I’m always working on new stuff, only with some gaps of working on other things but I hope I’ll release some new stuff soon.
When will we see you in Montreal?
Soon! I promise!!