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Laurent & Lewis's forthcoming album: the facts
As I was sending CDs here and there, Didier Lestrade (Act Up Paris co-founder and House Music connoisseur) told me that a good friend of his, Patrick Thévenin, had just started a brand new label with Nice-based DJ Lady B. Thévenin contacted me and told me he'd love to release something through Musique Moderne. To make a long story short, after nasty fights with the others, Thévenin left the label, and finally nothing was released and our first project disappeard. Anyway, as we were told our album would be released by Musique Moderne, we had to re-record the vocals. We ended up in Nico and Syb's studio. Syb van de Ploeg is a Dutch rockstar, ex-frontman of 'De Kast' (The Closet), a very popular group in the 1990 in Holland. He has now started his own band, with De Kast drummer Nico Outhuyse, singing now in English under the name 'Spanner'. Their studio in Leeuwarden (North of the Netherlands) is quite nice, although one our second studio day, on our way back to Amsterdam we almsot died in a storm on the Afsluitdijk, this huge dike between Holland (the province) and Vriesland (capital city... Leeuwarden!).

Since Lewis always needs to take his time to sing, we were adviced by Aaron-Carl to buy some material and work from home. We currently use a Behringer (looks very cool, I have to admit) microphone, a Behringer Ultragain Mic 100 and an Alesis Microcompressor. Very simple to use, just connected to the computer with a Roland Edirol USB Audio Interface UA-1X (I had so much trouble with a regular soundcard, the hard discs making so much noise!).

Apart from the guitars (some samples provided by Bab from Crude, and real guitar by Nico Outhyuse in the studio, especially on "Just Want To Be Loved" and "Si tu m'aimes encore"), everything is virtual. I started working with Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, and haven't managed to upgrade properly: Sonar seems too complicated for a small brain like mine. My all time favourite is of course the Rebirth (Rebirth 2 and a few patches, actually, thnx 2 Cécile Dee), such a great emulation of the 303, 808 and 909. Acid rules! I like SoundForge for the sound transformation, and I have to admit that Reason changed my life. Bass, orchestra and synthesizers are, for most of them, transformed in wave files from Reason, and then re-edited in Cakewalk, and eventually transformed in SoundForge.

Laurent: Influences
Who can say honnestly "I just made all this up on my own"? Not me for sure... As a kid I grew very impressed and fond of Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, A-ha, The Communard / Bronski Beat / Jimmy Sommerville (I was in love with 'Smalltown Boy', then with 'Can't Say Goodbye', so square, so efficient) and stuff like that. I really loved all the Trevor Horn productions: Grace Jones, Propaganda, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Yes, Seal... When I was 18 I went out to a discotheque for the first time of my life with my cousin Sylvie. It was a cheap provincial disco in Douarnenez (Bretagne). But what a shock! I loved it!

Then I discovered House Music! Man! That was something. In Strasbourg around 1992-93 with my friend Grololo we went out every thursday in 'Le Warning': Laurent Garnier, Chez Damier, Dave Clarke (scary!), Slo Moshun "Bells of N.Y." (aaah!), Cashemere, Deee-Lite (especially all the Towa Tei things), Inner City... and all the German techno. Not hardcore yet. A year later in Utrecht (Netherlands), I was taken in the Happy House movement, which I didn't like so much. It was far too germanic for me, and the beat was too fast. Fortunately, Towa Tei came with his first album "Future Listening". Suddenly bad Dutch techno seemed so unsignificant. And it allowed me to come back to Brazilian music (see further) and beautiful orchestral pieces.

Of course, I shouldn't forget 80s French Pop with Indochine, Etienne Daho, Serge Gainsbourg, Rita Mistouko, Niagara and the likes. But that's how far I got: I was never really interested in French music. Maybe because everyone around me was.

Later I got more into Deep House, classic Disco, but also Minimal Techno with stuff like Swayzak, Maurizio, Round 2 (aaah!), Pole, Plastikman... I cannot go though all of it, but here goes what comes through my mind: Naked Music (these Nude Dimension compliations!), Goldfrapp, the first Kandy compilations (BtdMbf in da house!), Tresor, Aaron-Carl, The Beloved, Björk, Gus Gus, Dave Clarke...  But also Photek, Manu Le Malin, Mirwais, Sven Love, Greg Gouthier, Armstrong SA, Kerri Chandler, François 'K' Kervokian, Circulation, Deep Dish, Larry Head, Louie Vega, Blaze, Lil' Louis, Aqua Bassino...

Another wave that took me was Brazilian music, especially the Tropicalism movement (that created Bossa Nova, but not only), and my gods are Caetano Veloso, João Gilberto (dad of... yes, Bebel Gilberto), Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, etc. My Mum had old vinyls from the sixties, and I cannot deny it had a huge influence on me. Besides Brazilian music, my Mum's record collection included what we call in France (it is NOT a racist term!) 'Negro Spirituals' (to be linked to the concept of Négritude, of course), i.e. Black american Gospel music. 'Oh Happy Day' is definitely my childhood's ultimate classic. 

As you may know, France has strong links with the Arabic world (through colonization, that's not something we are very proud of, but also as a culture we admire since the Classical Age). We were no exception and I was swamped in old recordings from Om Kalthum or Oum Kalsoum (ﻢﻮﺬﻠﻜ ﻢﻭ), Fairuz or Feirouz (ﺯﻮﺭﻴﻔ), especially with the Rahbani Brothers (they developped in the 1960s a new sound, a mix of classical Arabic thunes and modern, westernized sounds), and all the 1960s arabic-speaking stars. Needless to say that its revival in France, through rediscovery of the old classics, or through Raï, had its influence on me. Mainly (Cheb) Khaled at first, and then the brilliant Rachid Taha, especially his North-African cover album "Diwan". Cheb Mami, of course, but the compositions of his songs are sometimes not as good as his voice. Some kind of Arabic Allison Moyet, indeed. Lately, I cannot stop listening to Amr Diab (ﺏﺎﻳﺪ ﻭﺭﻤﻋ), a huge star in the Arabic world, and let's face it, his new album, ﻯﺭﺎﻬﻧ ﻰﻠﻴﻠ, is good! And my favourite ever is ﺓﺩﺣﺍﻮ ﻯﺴﻧﺘ. This orchestra, this rhythm, aaah, how can one resist?

Laurent: Evolution
As a kid, I got completely obsessed with my Philips cassette recorder. I played loads of children tapes for hours, and then I made lo-tech compilations for my Grand-Mother. I remember the cassettes were orange or yellow. I started making my own music when I was around 15 or 16 years old. My brother had given me his Amiga 500, and David, a friend, gave me Oktalizer, a 4 tracks stereo / 8 tracks mono program. Very simple, bad sound. But so much fun! I finished my first album around 1989, distributed in 5 copies. Then I did a remix album, still very cheap, but quite nice when i think of it. In 1996, a few weeks before graduation, I got a week to program 4 songs for a concert on an old Mac with 3 very old synthesizers. Liza Starflash accepted to sing for me. We had an evening in a bar in Strasbourg. At the end she forgot half of the lyrics and sung the melodies as much as she could remember. I was so disappointed, but the audience loved it. In 1996 I bought myself a proper PC and started making serious music. Finally! I haven't stopped yet. 

I started a first collaboration with life-long friend Cécile Dee. It turned out quite good and we finished an EP in French entitled "Nuages", including weird remixes of the main song called... "Nuages" of course (Clouds). It was a mix of pre-Björk saturated loops and abstract German techno. She moved to Grenoble and the second part, to be called "Misanthrope", is still to be recorded. At the same time, I started DJing with vinyls at the COC's friday night House parties in 1998, but it was already turning quite commercial. While I was trying to introduce beautyful American House or French filtered disco (it was just starting) to the Dutch audience, the direction (ooh, the evil dyke!) only wanted to hear Madonna remixes and crap like that. I mean, I adored the Calderon remix when it came out, but we couldn't live on that only! After a few conflicts I realized that proper DJing would imply a bigger investment, in time and cash, but also severe artistic compromises in Holland. That's when I decided DJing could wait and that I was going to focus on my own music.

Then I met Lewis. We drove for hours back from Paris (it was becoming the break-up weekend) when we got stuck in the traffic jam. We spent 12 hours singing along bad songs on the radio, and that's when we decided we should do it on our own. Lewis started singing some stuff I wrote, covering my own voice, and the we started writing things together. Some unreleased material (hopefully never to be released!), and then "Never Have It To End". Simple, beautiful, obvious. That's when we realized we had to continue this. It led to what you can listen in the Music page.

Lewis: Influences
Coming soon...