By Keith Walsh
Being a musician means adapting to change. For Gilles Snowcat, that comes easily. After all, this Belgium-based polyglot feline caricature has embraced a wide variety of musical styles, from punk, to disco and funk, to electronica, cabaret and folk. Now it seems Gilles turns to music as a business move – music with a commercial purpose.
Gilles recently released a few tracks for massage, yoga, and hypnosis, motivated by his perception that there was a lack of adequate music for these purposes. He explains: “ I love massages and there’s often the same piano music that’s not bad — but I wanted something more in the mood of the massage, that would really collaborate with the hands of the masseuse, rather than simply play something in the background. As for the hypnosis inductors, it’s the same. There’s a lack of percussion-based music, it’s always that soft new age music, that works sometimes, but lacks drive and power. So I took the plunge and did it. First for myself, but if it works for me, it works for other people too.”
The tracks are as mellow as you’d expect, with washes of synthetic sounds and implied rhythm, working together to cultivate relaxation. Gilles reached into his virtual bag of marketing tricks to accomplish the promotion of these musical creations, finding it somewhat easier to reach his audience than promoting to rock fans.
“The target is more obvious,” he says. “For the rock thing, anyone can, one way or another, be hooked, whatever their life is. For the psycho-active music like massage music and hypnosis inductors, massage salon, massage freaks, hypnotherapists, people who practice self-hypnosis are who I want to reach.”
Marketing is an important part of getting a product name or concept out there, and Gilles wisely employs a modified aspect of his rock and roll persona to promote the massage and hypnosis music. “Since I’m involved in it, yeah I probably do, just like the old man who is the image of Kentucky Fried Chicken sells something that’s not related to old men. But remember that someone going to a massage doesn’t necessarily want to see my face, nor anyone who gets a hypnotherapy session. So I have to lower my ego here, compared to the rock thing.”
The creative process of hypnosis and massage music requires a different workflow, and Gilles actually has a different focus, as he explains. “In my rock stuff I don’t care much about doing anything acceptable or not, the essence of rock is being the bull in a china shop, so I’m the big lion in a china supermarket and I love it. But with massage and hypnosis, there’s an expected result. I can’t add an organ solo just because I find it cool, since it would probably destroy the mood. I sure can do that on the rock thing, not with more psycho-active music. So I have to go through lots of trial & error, test and corrections until I get the effect I want, and that people want. It’s a customer-oriented music, somehow.”
Like a true artist, Gilles uses whatever is available to get the effect he needs. “The instruments here don’t matter much,” he says. “It’s the mood they provide that counts. So I try anything that tends toward that goal, without caring if it’s a conga, a synthesizer, or a piano. It’s a completely different approach to composing, which is refreshing and mind-opener. There’s discipline needed here.”
Find out more at www.gilles-snowcat.com and http://gilles-snowcat.com/nekokawamassage.html
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