RS: Mentioning songwriting, are you working on any new
productions or original material?
Dimitri From Paris: Usually I don't do a lot of that because I'm not
too good at actually writing dance cuts, and when I do music I tend to
do it in a bit more leftfield and definitely left of the dance floor
for sure. The two albums of original music that I made were not dance
floor-oriented, and it's quite rare that I do original dance cuts.
Actually, I have just finished one which is going to be part of a
compilation project of the French label Mixture Stereophonic which is
Martin Solveig's and Claude Monnet's label. It's going to be called
Back to Fundamental and actually it has a track by pretty much every
French DJ from the past fifteen to twenty years. Bob Sinclar, Martin
Solveig, DJ Gregory, Laurent Garnier, and a lot of the French guys
wanted to be part of that because the short brief was to make a track
that sort of sums up what got you into what you are today, meaning
musically. Everybody went and did something, combining different
influences and the major influence that they had. I did a Eurodisco
track because that was the music that kind of got me started and it
was fun to do like a sound-alike track. It's going to be called
Electra 80 "Rock This Town." There are going to be singles coming
out, the first single is DJ Gregory's and it's coming out like in a
few weeks with vinyl limited releases until we get to actually release
a CD. So I'm really excited about that project and it's got great
artwork as well, so I can't wait to see it.
RS: I've recently spoken to Martin Solveig and Bob Sinclar
about how it seems like the French house scene has really sprung up.
Why do you think there's such a great house music scene coming from
France?
Dimitri From Paris: It's a hard question to answer really.
Everything is so globalized, so you get records from Sweden; America
and England are still there but you get records from places you
wouldn't expect house music to come out from and I think France is
also the case. It just happens that at the moment Bob Sinclar and
Martin Solveig are really huge in terms of sales and so they get a lot
of the media focusing on them. But their music is not specifically
French, it's very influenced by a lot of the origins of house which
come from America. I think for years we were just laughed at for our
music and non-international friendly music and ten years ago we wanted
to change that. Me, Bob, and a lot of other people managed to do
something good out of that and our music was house music which is
something that's not very language-defined. You don't have to sing on
house tracks and if you sing it's most of the time in English, so
pretty much everyone in any country can understand it. Whereas a lot
of French people do French music with French vocals and that tends to
stay within the French-speaking countries.
RS: What's your take on Justice? They're French and they're
blowing up big right now as like the next big thing?
Dimitri From Paris: It's something that's absolutely geared towards
the kids of day and they managed to come up with a sound, recycling
lots of different things that appeal to the kids. It reminds me of a
fresher, younger Chemical Brothers type of sound. My take on it is
that is if it works and touches the hearts and the ears of the
generation of today then it's good. I'm really happy that there's a
new yet newer wave of French producers and it keeps the interest on
the music coming out of our country and keeps some of their ears open
for what us older people can do. I've always been into retro sounds
even when I was a fresh artist like fifteen years ago, so I want to
keep going in to that and be more of a digger of older sounds rather
than some kind of a vanguard in experimentation. The world needs both
sides, it needs the vanguards who are going to create like crazy
absolutely new sounds and you also need to preserve the old ones - I
feel better preserving the old sounds.
