DJ Ron Slomowicz: So what's this I hear about you being a hip-hop artist?
Christophe Chantzis: Things go around fast, who did you hear that from?
RS: Just a rumour I heard..
Christophe: I'm still doing dance but I think you have to evolve and do all kind of stuff, so hip-hop and urban music is one of our things. Actually I grew up with urban music, my father was a DJ playing R&B and Motown records so I grew up with NWA, Ice-T, Ice-Cube, R Kelly and stuff like that.
RS: Will there be a new Ian Van Dahl album coming?
Christophe: The new Ian Van Dahl album was finished a couple of months ago so we're waiting for the release. With the second single coming soon, the album will be released right after so I think around the summer period, something like that.
RS: The first single was "I Can't Let You Go"
Christophe: Yes, it made top 20 in the UK, our 9th top 20 hit.
RS: In addition to Ian Van Dahl, you're also the producers behind Dee Dee.
Christophe: Dee Dee, Absolom, and Astroline. I am working on a couple of new projects and one of them is a pop/dance project, a cross between Kylie Minogue, Dannii Minogue, Holly Valance and Ian Van Dahl, between pop and dance. We are working an artist that could easily evolved to pure pop music. I'm working also in the studio with Yves Deruyter
RS: Wow. That seems like a completely different direction.
Christophe: In addition to Yves Deruyter, I'm working with DJ LV from Airwave and Mike from Push. I'm in talks with Bomfunk MCs as well as some other big producers so we are working on a lot of things.
RS: So in all your touring with Ian Van Dahl that has brought you all around the world, what's been the strangest place you've been to where you've heard your music?
Christophe: Well actually the strangest place that I heard my music was on holiday. I did a holiday tour from Jordania and I was walking around in the streets and I heard an Arabic guy in his car playing Dee Dee, so that was pretty cool.
RS: Your first song, Castles for the Sky, here in the US broke new ground and did very well here. Why do you think it was the song that opened up the US market to dance?
Christophe: We bring what the people want and our strategy is to take the sounds from the clubs and cross it over to the mainstream. That means that we did what the clubs were doing and put vocals on it to make it more commercial. So that's what we did with "Will I," for example, that was a club sound and we put vocals on it, made it commercial and mainstream and it worked. But the problem is that a lot of people just copy other peoples' work or they just do stuff and they seem to make music just for the sake of making music. We are thinking about a concept and we're thinking about hits. I'd rather release something until I think it's going to be big.
RS: What's your relationship to Lasgo?
Christophe: Lasgo was in the same company that I was, and I'm saying 'was' because a couple of months ago I started my own record company. The name is Alpha Omega Records.
RS: Do the greek letters Alpha Omega have a special meaning?
Christophe: Its the beginning and the end, because we make the projects from scratch.
RS: Is that going to be home to just your productions or will you sign other artists?
Christophe: Yes, we will start by doing our own productions. We work on several things, so that means that we have our own projects that we are doing, that is one of the things we do. Secondly we have the co-productions, like the music with Yves Deruyter and others. Then we also do work for other artists, sort of on demand. When people ask us OK, do we have a track for this artist and we give them a track for that artist.
