Teki Latex
Julien Pradeyrol, AKA Teki Latex, is a progressive presence in the French electronic music scene, both on the mic and behind the decks. He got his start as a founding MC in Parisian hip-hop act TTC, along with collaborators including DJ Orgasmic and Para One. He then co-founded the influential Institubes label, releasing maximalist collisions of electronic music and hip-hop. Teki then continued pushing his genreless vision via Sound Pellegrino, another label co-founded with Orgasmic, which operates as a clearing house for club music that bridge both scenes and borders. He’s also stepped away from the mic and took place behind the decks, touring and as the selector for the Paris arm of vogue legends House of Ninja.
In his lecture at the 2015 Red Bull Music Academy, Teki Latex shared his vision for the future of club music and retraced the evolution of his musical tastes and work via a playlist of formative French music that runs the gamut from TV theme tunes to French rap, Jean-Michel Jarre to Daft Punk.
Hosted by Vivian Host You’ve been listening to a little sample of some songs from the man sitting next to me right now. This is Teki Latex. If you’re not familiar, he’s a rapper with the group TTC who are on Big Dada. They had some fabulous albums on there and then started a label called Institubes which was huge in Paris in 2006/7/8/9 and then went on to found Sound Pellegrino which is currently putting out some extremely forward-thinking club music. Teki is sort of the unofficial mayor of Paris. If you walk around with him you realize that he knows everybody and also very good at the restaurant recommendations, in case anybody needs any. Join me in welcoming Teki Latex. Teki Latex Thank you for this introduction. Vivian Host You’re welcome. Today we thought we would come and play some of Teki’s favorite songs and talk about Parisian club music and… Teki Latex Some of my favorite French songs. Vivian Host Some of your favorite French songs, and talk a bit about French music and where he comes from, and then we’ll lead into more about the history of TTC and Sound Pellegrino and Institubes and all those great things. Why don’t you start? Teki Latex Just to begin with, thank you for having me and of course, this is a little bit of a weird circumstance, but I am really happy to be able to think about other things and do this this afternoon, instead of refreshing my Twitter feed for information about what is going on in Paris right now. I’m going to play some songs. You just have to keep in mind that I have some very cheesy tastes sometimes. I’m not here to lecture anyone on the greatness of French electronic music. It’s always going to be my point of view and it’s just going to be what I like and sometimes it’s going to be a little bit cheesy. Sometimes it’s going to be a little bit weird. It’s not representative of all French music, of course, and of all French electronic music, of course. Plus, we had to make a selection because we can’t play everything. I’m going to start with what I used to… what are my first memories of hearing electronic music, I would say. It goes through… when I was a child I was watching a lot of television. I was sitting in front of the TV all day. My mom was working in a hospital and she was not at home most of the time and I was just hanging at my grandparent’s house and watching TV all day. I watched a lot of TV shows and one of them was a Japanese TV show that in France was called X-OR. You will hear... I’m going to play the opening theme. You will hear why... I think for me it’s very representative of why disco is so embedded in the French people’s roots, because it’s all of the TV themes at that time were very, very disco-influenced. Vivian Host What time would this have been? Teki Latex This is like 1983, I think, or 1984. Something like that. The opening theme for X-OR… (music: X-OR Theme) Teki Latex Basically, it’s a Moroder song for kids, you know. This is what we all grew up on, so this is our first experiences for people from my generation. It was their first experiences of electronic music and of synth-based pop music, in a way. Another one of these early things is this song by Jacno called “Rectangle.” Jacno used to be in a punk group and then he decided that he was going to make pop music with synths and he was really, really... he was an important figure in the underground in France. I was obviously too young to be aware of that, but retrospectively I actually... he died ten years ago. A little bit less than that. Just before he died, I was cross-interviewed with him and so what I get from learning about him and talking with him is that he was really, really... he was part of the Stinky Toys which was a big French punk group in the late ’70s, early ’80s and then at the beginning of the ’80s he started making electronic music and it was a very new thing and it was a very unexpected thing from him. He wasn’t afraid to cross over to the mainstream, and he wasn’t afraid to let advertising agencies and products license his music to turn it into advertisements.
This was… I came in contact with this song by watching an ad for Nesquik, the chocolate morning drink. The chocolate milk drink. Chocolate powder that you put in milk. Anyway, there was a big character called Gros Quick. It was like watching... it was like a TV cartoon, except it was an advertisement and the music was this weird little, and very melancholic, and actually very sad little number. (music: Jacno – “Rectangle”) Teki Latex That was “Rectangle” by Jacno. Maybe… should I play a little Jean-Michel Jarre song? Vivian Host Yeah, can you talk about the importance of Jean-Michel Jarre for French people? Teki Latex It’s very highly debatable, his importance. There’s a lot of people who hate Jean-Michel Jarre. He’s seen as a very cheesy character, but he’s also a very important artist, I think, for French electronic music. He had a tendency to blow things out of proportion. He basically invented EDM. He made big, big, big concerts under the Eiffel Tower with enormous light shows and synths and, basically, triggering the fireworks and stuff like that. For a lot of people he’s just like a symbol of something you have to hate when you make electronic music in France. But, when you dig a little bit deeper and listen to his first albums, there’s some stuff that’s really crazy, crazy, groovy and awesome, and a little bit experimental, but at the same time, not trying too hard. Basically, he’s trying to make pop music but the thing that comes out are songs like “Zoolook,” which experiments with vocals and African rhythms and in a bit of a weird way, and in a bit of an awkward way, but the result is actually really good. Here’s “Zoolook” by Jean-Michel Jarre. (music: Jean-Michel Jarre – “Zoolook”) Teki Latex I love this song. Zoolook by Jean-Michel Jarre. Vivian Host We were talking… I was asking him because he was saying that… you were saying that you thought that that was a melancholy song and I read that a really happy song. Teki Latex That’s what’s great about melancholy. It’s emotions clashing. It can be happy and at the same a little bit nostalgic and little bit sad at the same… you know? Actually, those two things at the same time, that’s very specific of French music, I think, of that era. Music of that era in general. A lot of ’80s stuff is like that for me. Vivian Host Was Jean-Michel Jarre something was around you all the time when you were growing up or was it something that you came to later? Teki Latex Once a year when the fireworks were on, but it was around. He was… yeah, he was around, definitely. This wasn’t the music that was really in the charts. The music that was in the charts was that. (music: Desireless – “Voyage Voyage”) Teki Latex Voyage Voyage by Desireless. That’s her name. She was a… she had a crazy futuristic hair cut. Her hair was kind of like an upside down triangle. For us, for a kid like me… I was probably six when this came out... I was like, “Woah!” She was very androgynous and was like, woah.
This really felt like a cartoon character coming to life and singing this really beautiful song. It was French new wave in a way, or you know, a puppy version of French new wave. Sort of going into French Italo as well. Vivian Host I guess when you hear stuff like this you can kind of hear the roots of where something like Daft Punk or the French Touch Volume 1 got some ideas from. Teki Latex Yeah, and electroclash, very much. That’s the big, big, big, big, big new-wave influence on France. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know the story behind it because I was just a six-year-old kid watching TV when this came out, but in a way there was that and Depeche Mode and the same program, and it just made sense. Vivian Host Would you say that you’re still influenced by the aesthetic of that time? The cartoon time and the ’80s new wave? Teki Latex Yeah, I am because that’s my idea of pop as a culture. Definitely. Definitely. Another song that was really big at the same time, and I think it’s really... I love this song so I have to play it. It’s Images’ “Les Démons de Minuit.” I love it. It’s dark but it’s mysterious and it’s happy at the same time. It’s super funky and… Vivian Host And you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the French team do this in karaoke. Teki Latex All right. Images’ “Les Démons de Minuit.” (music: Images – “Les Démons de Minuit”) Teki Latex What’s also important, I think, about this song is that it’s one of the early traces of black music at the top of the charts in France. Boogie and funk and black dance music. There wasn’t a lot of that in the French varieté panorama at this time. The singer for Images was black and .. is still black... and he’s from Antibes and that was a big thing to have a black French singer on television in the ’80s. Vivian Host You mentioned French varieté. Can you explain what that is? Teki Latex French variety. French... ’80s French chanson, in a way. That’s not, I guess, acoustic and that’s not George Brassens, who was just sitting there with an acoustic guitar and singing his French chansons. I guess French varieté would be like the modernized version of that for the ‘80s. That’s a term that would just replace pop for French singers, I guess. Vivian Host When you were growing up as a kid, since sounds were all around you then. Teki Latex Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. TV shows on the top 50, which is... wouldn’t have the top 40. We had ten more. I don’t know why. The top 50. That was a big thing. Yeah. We were just very influenced by that before I started researching my own music and when I was just a kid. What’s next? Vivian Host That song is called “The Demons of Midnight.” What is she actually saying in that song? Teki Latex It has a lot to do with... Vivian Host Or he, rather. Teki Latex The clubs being in evil, a place of debauchery, and the video is amazing because they turn into vampires. There’s a priest that is tempted by a woman in heels, and it’s just like… it’s exactly… it has a lot to do with the French hedonism and this sort of mystique that was surrounding club culture and dance culture at that time, which made me want to go to clubs initially. The video is very weird and dark and something that would sound kind of weird on television right now, but very romantic also. Vivian Host I sense a theme brewing. Teki Latex Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. I know you want to explore that French romance theme. Vivian Host Ooh la la. Teki Latex The next song is by Les Rita Mitsouko. They were actually the most credible of the songs that I played so far. They were real awesome musicians and very alternative and they carried with them a tradition of alternative music in France. At the same time they were super big and they were on TV everywhere but at the same time, I don’t know, they really represent something important for France and they were influenced by music from all over the world.
This song is called “Marcia Baila.” It’s a song about choreographer who was close to the group who died from cancer. It’s a song that deals also with cancer and that deals with serious subjects in a festive manner. Again, a very French thing. (music: Les Rita Mitsouko – “Marcia Baila”) Teki Latex It’s a beautiful and very festive song but at the same time it deals with death and cancer, and it’s so hard when I hear it. Now I’m like, how was this on the top of the charts in the ’80s and it’s crazy that we could get away with that back then. It’s stuff that I don’t think we could get away with that right now… I mean, pronouncing those words it’s very tough. Vivian Host You were saying that this is music that people would play at weddings. These are all pop hits. Teki Latex Absolutely. Absolutely. Vivian Host I think this is a lot more avant-garde than what they play at American weddings. Teki Latex Oh yeah. Vivian Host Where we going from here? Teki Latex I think we should play a Mory Kanté. He is... he lived in Mali. I think he’s from Guinea, if I’m not mistaken. He has lived in many African countries before settling in France for a little while and when he was in France he made some world music songs. World music was the name they would give to popified, westernified African music back in the ’80s. This song was huge in France and I think it’s a part of the French pop history. It’s called “Yeke Yeke” by Mory Kanté. (music: Mory Kanté – “Yeke Yeke”) Teki Latex As I was telling Vivian, I was a little too young to know what was going on back then as far as racial issues in France, but immigration was already a big topic and of course in the ’80s and there was Touche pas à mon pote which was a big political association that was dealing with such subjects, but the same time, helmed by one of the French parties, so it was... I don’t know. I was just a kid who saw these things on TV without really understanding what was going on but there was a strong African community in Paris and it was sort of intertwining with French culture and French music, obviously. Vivian Host Well, we were talking the other day about how much African regional music from all these different countries, like Ivory Coast and the Antilles, etc., is like influencing club music and pop music to this day in Paris, like you were mentioning coupé-décalé. Teki Latex Yeah, we’re going to play some of that. Vivian Host We’re going to get there. Teki Latex Yeah. Of course this is our... it’s not as strong as it is in the UK, where Jamaican music has really given birth to a lot of whole history of UK underground music. In France... I think we’re going to develop that subject later, but France is a little bit too attached to its cultural and literary roots sometimes, which refrains it from totally embracing music that channels the body and dance music completely. We’re going to talk about that later, I think. French rap. Yeah! There’s so much French rap. I didn’t know where to start and I don’t want to play the obvious stuff. You have your... it starts with, basically, Suprême NTM and MC Solaar.
NTM are from the French suburbs and they’re really hardcore and they started as a graffiti crew, and they talk about being against the system and being against the police and they’re… a lot of French punk people and alternative people are seeing some sort of continuation of the punk spirit in them and so they’re embracing them, but the… obviously the mainstream is not embracing them because they are so hardcore. At the same time, they refuse to be called punk because they want to be liked for what they do, which is rap. Then you have IAM, who have a slightly more nuanced approach and who are still street and still talking about issues and still talking about their African roots, but they’re also talking about... they’re also bringing a lot of humor in it, and so I really liked IAM when I was a kid despite being from Paris and them being from Marseilles and there was always, just like football, always sort of a rivalry. I really liked them, but then again I think their music... I don’t know if their music, especially their early, early music, have stood the test of time. Then you have MC Solaar who was black. Both IAM and NTM were multiracial and MC Solaar was a black kid who had a very literary approach to his music and very intellectual approach to his music. A lot of French people liked him, because he was a poet as opposed to an angry rapper. He would rap over jazzy beats and be very De La Soul soul and Tribe Called Quest-influenced and sort of the French equivalent to that crew, Native Tongues, and to that movement. He made Jazzmatazz, he made that song with Guru from Gang Starr that was a little bit famous out of France for a lot of foreigners and Solaar was the first French rapper they came across. He was good, but he was very cheesy. It was very simple. It was like… for true rap heads, and I was sort of becoming one of them at that time, he was like… that was rap for the mainstream. At the same time, at some point he put a lot of really good rappers on the map and some pretty hardcore ones as well. Some of them were a group called Démocrates D. Démocrates D were a pro-black, super hardcore group, early Démocrates D. Early horrorcore, like, talking about serial killers and stuff. That song that I’m going to play is called “Le Crime” which means “crime” and it makes a lot of references to A Clockwork Orange and serial killers and the lyrics are quite simple, but the music is wonderful. It’s produced by Jimmy Jay, who made all of MC Solaar’s beats. Well, he made half of MC Solaar’s beats. The other half being produced by Cassius. The guys behind Cassius. So, “Le Crime” by Démocrates D produced by Jimmy Jay. (music: Démocrates D – “Le Crime”) Teki Latex Should I just say what I just said? Vivian Host Yeah. Teki Latex They’re literally saying, “I am making a reference to A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick in this song. In the lyrics of this song.” In general, that’s my little problem with French rap, is that they’re being very scholarly about. They’re being over-... they’re over-explaining things all the time. MC Solaar would make a reference to a French poem with a twist at the end, and he would reveal the twist in his lyrics. I’m like, come on man. No spoilers. Like, “Le dormeur du val isn’t sleeping. He’s dead.” I’m like, “Yeah. You’re not supposed to… OK. It’s okay. You read it. Great. Don’t... It doesn’t make you an intelligent rapper if you quote French poems.” Vivian Host They’re actually trying to prove that they were intellectual. Teki Latex There’s a little bit of that. It’s still a great song and I love this song and I love this song and I still respect the hell out of these guys, but my only problem with it is that they’re being a little bit on the nose. Is that a… Vivian Host Literal. Teki Latex A little bit literal. They’re a little bit like too... it’s too much. Pushing it on you. A little too much. Vivian Host You mentioned when you started talking about French rap about the suburbs or the banlieues. Can you explain a little bit about that? Teki Latex Yeah, it’s not the same thing as in the states and in some countries. The poor areas in France are actually in the suburbs and the inner cities are... it’s more expensive to live there and it’s richer areas and the richer people live there. Basically, the suburbs were built after the war to put all the immigrants there to help rebuild France and they were parked in projects and obviously a lot of conflict came out of that, because these are like cities HLM. HLM being “habitation à loyer modéré.” Like a cheaper... Vivian Host Government housing. Teki Latex Yeah, government housing and the project housing. These places... even in the suburbs there will be a small city and then maybe like ten minutes from the center of that city there will be the housing projects. They’re very isolated and there’s obviously tensions that come out of that and that’s where a lot of French rappers came from and, yeah, that’s where... in 1995, which is when that song came out, this was a big topic in French politics. It’s part of our life forever that, les banlieues and there’s been... La Haine is one of the movies that depicts that kind of tension. Some of you might have seen La Haine. French movie that came out around that time. Vivian Host What actually got you into rap in the first place? Teki Latex I’m not at all from the suburbs. I’m a little borgeois kid from Paris. Vivian Host What district are you repping? Teki Latex From the 15th. I just got into rap accidentally and I just liked... I loved so many things about it and it was so important for me and it was so new for me and so... I didn’t relate to the rock stuff for some reason. I was... there was rap in the Ninja Turtles and there was... De La Soul had colorful outfits and everyone was different sort of superhero, and I don’t know. I just liked that. There was more to it than just someone singing a song. There was context behind it and there was more to analyze about it, and more to think about, I guess, and that’s what I liked about it. Vivian Host Cool. Teki Latex Yeah. We’ll talk about why French rap blew up a little bit later. This song is a little bit of a gem for me. It’s not… it wasn’t very popular at the time. It never blew up so much. It’s really weird. It totally takes the… a different approach from what MC Solaar and most French rappers were doing at the time. There was... like I said before, there was a really heavy literary background, when it came to rap in France. You had to be referencing poets in order to be credible and in order to reach the mainstream and stuff. These guys had a totally different approach. This is a song by Sté. It’s called “Track Cheul.” It’s not... there’s a lot of English. You’ll hear a lot of English words in it because it’s not actually in French. It’s actually in what they call Veul, which is slang from a city called Vitry in the French suburbs. They had their own slang and they had their own language and it was really, really awesome to discover that through this song. It’s Sté and some people from her group Mafia Underground. I think it’s probably from ’95, ’96, that song. Veul is a mixture of French, English, and Verlan. But kind of different kind of Verlan that’s very specific to Vitry, and Verlan is when you invert the syllables in a word which is a thing that’s very usual in French slang. Basically, I didn’t understand… I still don’t understand a lot of what’s being said in that song, but it was just so awesome and it was very cryptic and very exciting. It was a little hit in the underground, but there’s a lot of... it never really crossed over, that song. It’s very important to people who really like French rap, because it didn’t rely on the tradition of French literature – it was just like a totally different monster, a totally different thing. Something you couldn’t... it was it’s own thing. I had the feeling of liking rap for what it was and not for like a modern version poetry or a hipper version of rock or whatever. It was just like... you had to be born at that time and to be living this to understand that track. (music: Sté Strausz – “Track Cheul”) Teki Latex So, yeah, a black female rapper. Rapping over a track with sirens, where in France, everyone was influenced by New York, but everyone hated on the Californian stuff. I was really into G-funk and I didn’t felt represented by French rap at the time. To put the things in context, I was listening to a lot of American rap at the time and I sort of didn’t really feel a lot of French rap and these guys came out with their own language with their own kind of slang. It felt so different from the rest of French... the name of the track is “Track Cheul.” “Cheul” is the veul version of “chelou” and “chelou” is the Verlan of “louche.” “Louche” means weird. It means “weird track.” It was just very encrypted and new and weird and it felt like if you knew the secrets of this track you were really special, so I love it, of course.
I have to say one thing before we go further. I talked about my taste in music being very cheesy and weird. It’s mostly different from other people. I don’t know why I always had that. If you consider, for example, Street Fighter characters, everyone’s going to pick Ken or Ryu. Some people are going to pick Chun Li but they’re the most balanced characters and I’m a Blanka guy. Vivian Host Respect. Teki Latex I’m just attracted by stuff that’s a little bit more out there. Vivian Host Did going to rap shows take you all around Paris? That’s kind of what happens in New York where if you get into rap shows, then all of a sudden you’re going to the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, everywhere. Was it like that here? Teki Latex Yeah, but it was mostly inside of Paris. I started going to rap shows a little bit after that. I would listen to that on French underground radio stations, which was a thing at the time. It’s not really anymore... I mean, it changed. It goes through the internet now. It was just a... I was in high school, so I wasn’t going out much. I started going to open mics and stuff like that a little bit later on when I started actually making rap and being a rapper. I am now a retired rapper. I was in a group for ten years. We’re going to speak about that a little bit later on. There wasn’t a lot of rap shows, to be honest. Ice Cube and Warren G would come to France every once in a while and Das EFX and the Fugees, but there was like not a lot of rap concerts because there was a lot of trouble when there was rap concerts. There was always some... there’s a big history of riots at French rap concerts. I’m not a rap journalist but if you have the opportunity to talk to one or read about it at some point, there was legendary showcases that turned into big riots that they would talk about on the news on the next day, that happened in France at that time, especially a concert by X-Men, which was a French group and I’m going to play a song a little bit later on. Well, right now actually. This is the X-Men. They were my favorite rap group for a while because they really had a laid-back, but at the same time, very technical style. They were very confident in their raps. I was really into flows in rap, as opposed to “lyrically” lyrical. Being lyrically lyrical. I was more into how you play with words and how you play with the rhythm of words rather than the message. These guys, while still having a very strong message, they were super-technical in their flow. Not in a demonstrative way, but rather in a very natural way and a very laid-back way. They’re awesome.
When they played in Paris for the first time at, basically in a record store, they created a big riot and there was a lot of trouble, and it was on TV on the next day. I was heading there and I saw people running all over the street and robbing stuff from the record store, which was a FNAC, which is a... it was also selling hardware. When it turned into a riot a lot people just stole a bunch of shit and ran away with it. It was an interesting thing. (music: X.Men – “J’attaque Du Mike”) Teki Latex X-Men, “J’attaque Du Mike.” This wasn’t on the radio. French rap was popular back then but basically only NTM, IAM and MC Solaar were really selling a lot records and being on the radio.
All of the sudden, there was a law in France that said you had to... every radio had to play a certain percentage of French music. I think like 60% or something. Basically, all of a sudden you had to play a majority of music with French lyrics in France. Everyone was like, “What are we going to play?” French rock wasn’t that popular. The French rock that was popular was basically sung in English. All the French chanson and French varieté was just appealing to older people and was Johnny Hallyday who’s a very cheesy French singer who... it was that kind of stuff that existed as far as French chanson goes. That didn’t appeal to the kids. There was a radio station called Sky Rock that was just playing a bunch of pop music, mostly from the States, or in English, at least, and all of the sudden they had to change their whole programming to switch it to the French thing. They kind of... their approach to it was like, “We’re going to turn into rap radio. We’re going to play all rap so that we can play more French stuff that is going to appeal to French kids and we’re going to make French rap blow up” and that’s exactly what happened. One of the first songs they played was “Viens Voir Le Docteur” by Doc Gynéco, which is a... he’s called the gynecologist. He was part of a group called Ministère AMER, which was very hardcore and very politicized. He was... Ministère AMER were... they were like a riot group. Doc Gynéco was a little bit more passive. He was in the crew but he wouldn’t rap that much. Vivian Host He was busy being a doctor. Teki Latex All of the sudden, he’s like, “OK, I’m going to launch my solo career and I’m going to make some really sweet songs for the radio with super hardcore lyrics put in them.” All of a sudden, this guy blows up, with the help of Sky Rock becoming a rap radio and it was already a very well-established radio. All of a sudden, French rap sells a lot and these guys are becoming really rich and it becomes easy to be on French radio when you’re a French rapper and the pervert thing about it is that people are starting to make music with Sky Rock in mind. A lot of French rap also became stereotyped and very formatted to be on Sky Rock. Vivian Host What years are we talking about here? Teki Latex ’96, ’97. That’s when I graduated. “Viens Voir Le Docteur” by Doc Gynéco, which is also, interestingly, a very Californian-sounding track and so it speaks to my heart because, again, I was a big G-funk fan at the time. (music: Doc Gynéco – “Viens Voir Le Docteur”) Teki Latex This song could not exist, especially in the US in 2015. He talks about seducing a 15-year-old girl and he’s telling her, “Come to the doctor” and stuff like that. It’s very super-awkward. It was big. Trust me. It was a big hit and we all loved it to death. It was so huge. Like, Doc Gynéco was everywhere. His album is considered a classic. There’s songs about... he touches up on really specific subjects. He talks about suicide. He talks about... it was heralded as one of the greatest French rap albums of all time. He was called the rap Gainsbourg, in a way. Very controversial character. This was big and what else can we play? I just want to play a couple of songs by 113. We talked about French rap that had it’s own identity and didn’t need to reference French literature or pre-existing stuff to exist. There was “Track Cheul” by Sté still references US rap, but there was not a lot of French rap that was just French sounding in the way that it didn’t copy US rap and it didn’t need to look at what happened before in rap to be its own thing. One of the rare people making that was 113… There was a group also from Vitry and their particularity was that they were very interested in electronic music. They were super hood and super talking about... this song is about robbing a bank and it’s very detailed and what they’re going to do to the owner of the bank and what they’re going to do to this family. It’s very hardcore, but at the same time, the beat is super-disco. The guys behind 113, the guys who are making beats for 113, there was a lot of different people and this song is by this producer called Pone, which is not to be confused by DJ Pone. It’s two different Pones. Pone was from Fonky Family, a Marseilles group but there was also... a very important member of the crew behind 113 was DJ Mehdi, who little bit later on became a part of the French electronic music world and released a lot of great house songs and was close to the entourage of Ed Banger and Daft Punk, who is now deceased and who was a very important person in the French electronic world. I’ll play a little bit of a song produced by Mehdi but this one is not produced by Mehdi but it’s super-disco and it feels like rappers saying really hardcore things over an Abba beat. (music: 113 feat. Intouchable – “Hold Up”) Teki Latex Beautiful song. I’ll play another one by 113 produced by Mehdi which samples “Planet Rock.” The link with the electronic music is even more obvious there. That was a thing for a minute in French rap, that sort of crossover between filtered house and French rap. It’s a very unique French thing, so it’s a thing we’re very proud of. (music: 113 – “Ouais Gros”) Teki Latex So, you have to keep in mind that these guys are not hipster rappers at all. These are the most hood of the hood rappers in France at that time, which is 1998. They’re no joke. This is not like... Vivian Host Club raps. Teki Latex ... white kids making club rap. This is just like the hoodest rap over some clubby bits and electronic-music-influenced stuff. Vivian Host Were already the rappers in the house clubs at this time? Is this where it came from? Teki Latex Well, I think Daft Punk was a thing that all the rappers respected, because there was a huge influence of ’80s funk, like Imagination and that kind of stuff. That was a big thing in the French projects, like US boogie was a big thing the French projects. It was a part of the drug dealer aesthetic to wear tight clothes and listen to basically ’80s funk, disco-funk that they were playing in clubs at the time, sort of a Travolta style. There was sort of a Travolta-meets-Scarface aesthetic in the French projects amongst the older brothers. That sort of crossed over with some of the younger people who were making rap at the time. Transpired on the rap thing. Everyone loved Daft Punk mostly because of this song… (music: Daft Punk – “Da Funk) Teki Latex Filtered funky music and of course vocoder and sort of a breakdance vibe. That’s helped a lot, crossing over with the rap audience. I remember just being a rap kid at the time but everyone’s like, “Yeah, fuck this electronic music shit, except Daft Punk.” Vivian Host What was it like for you when Daft Punk was coming out here in Paris? Teki Latex First of all, it was confusing, because they had punk in their name it didn’t sound like punk. It was like, what is this? The narrative was very much... these guys blew up in England and outside of France before they blew up in France. It was like, “Look, we have some real talent in France and we’re not even able to see it. It has to blow up in other countries before it blows up here. It’s a disgrace.” Then it eventually blew up in France, massively. Vivian Host Was it a source of... I mean, I feel like this was the first electronic music that many people came to that they identified as French. If you didn’t catch the disco thing from the ’70s and ’80s then this was the first time a lot of people in our generation were like, “Oh, Paris, France. This is huge.” Teki Latex Yeah, the disco thing was in our veins since the TV shows of the ’80s and since growing up on Italo, because, I have to say, Italo was also omnipresent in France at the time. It was just... we had been ready for it for a while and then it just happened. It was easily... it easily crossed over with the rap thing and it was... at the same time it was house music but with a French point of view on it. It was something we could relate to and we were really proud of having people who are exporting their sound and who didn’t have to have French lyrics to do it. That was a big thing. Vivian Host Were you already going to clubs at this point, or were you still just rap only? Teki Latex Sort of starting to go to clubs. What happened was that I started going to rap clubs and hip-hop parties and then, very soon I got into indie hip-hop. I would go to indie rap show and then indie rap started crossing over with IDM and Warp and people like Prefuse 73 and Chocolate Industries, Skam and all these underground IDM labels and they would play at the same shows and the same venues. Also TTC, which was my rap group at the time, signed to a English label called Big Dada, which was a sub label of Ninja Tune. I was getting exposed to a lot of music from Ninja Tune and getting in touch with electronic music more in depth through that. In reaction to that I started getting into club music and more like club-centric music in 4/4, like four-to-the-floor stuff via electroclash. I feel like we should maybe play one more like French touch-era song before we get into that whole genealogy. I have to pick the right one. Maybe one that’s a little less known. Filtered house was big, but there was also a fringe of... a branch of the French touch stuff that was a bit more nervous and a bit harder. Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk was doing as a solo artist sounded very nervous and very cut up and like a weirder version of Chicago House. Chicago was always a big influence on French House. This is Spinal Scratch. I’m just going to play small bits of a couple of songs. Spinal Scratch by Thomas Bangalter, which is half of Daft Punk. You’ll see it doesn’t sound like your typical happy, groovy, Daft Punk song. Teki Latex Very chopped up and very nervous style and the kings of that style were Jess and Crabbe who are amazing producers who are still making music and especially releasing music and playing shows... playing DJ sets in Paris.
Jess and Crabbe, they have a label called Bazzerk now and they’re still digging for new artists. Back in the day, they found out about Daft Punk and nowadays, they find out about amazing kuduro and release it on their label. They still have an ear to the underground and they’ll release people from Gang Fatale and people from... they’ll go all the way and learn Portuguese to be able to communicate with people in Lisbon and put out the first records by people like Niggafox who are now on Príncipe. These guys... they found out about these guys before and they’re really great people. At that time they were making sort of a more thugged-out version of French house. This is them chopping up a Billy Ocean sample. The track is "In Your Eer," by Jess & Crabbe. (music: Jess & Crabbe – “In Your Eer”) Vivian Host We were talking about... I mean, that sounds a lot like you can definitely hear the echo of that in Surkin and Bobmo and some of the other guys. Teki Latex Yeah, a lot of Institubes kids were very, very influenced by Jess & Crabbe. Jess & Crabbe were part of the first generation of French touch, but they have influenced the second one a lot, rather... the second generation didn’t really... wasn’t really influenced by the filtered house, sort of wavy laid back filtered house. They were more into the nervous, almost rock stuff. Jess & Crabbe were a big influence for them. I was mentioning that Jess & Crabbe were still active and that they have a label and that they release amazing music. They have an ear to the streets and they have... they were particularly interested in this style of music that happened, I would say a few years ago, five years ago in France called logobi which is sort of an evolution of coupé-décalé which is music from Ivory Coast. Dance music from Ivory Coast. When that dance music from Ivory Coast came to France and started fusing with the tecktonik stuff and the electro-house stuff, and the tempo started getting a little faster, it gave birth to logobi. That’s stuff that’s basically only YouTube and that kids dance to in the halls of their projects. Jess and Crabbe took one of those songs and released it on their label Bazzerk. This is ZaZa Twins “Instru Coupé-Decalé.” It’s amazing. (music: ZaZa Twins - “Instru Coupé-Decalé”) Teki Latex This is from 2010. There’s a dance that goes with it. Vivian Host Do you want to show it? Teki Latex No, I can’t. I’ll make a fool of myself. It’s a very... the dance is in between the tecktonik stuff and the coupé-decalé stuff. It’s really, really good. Vivian Host Hey Teki, what’s tecktonik? Teki Latex Tecktonik is like electro dance. It was very popular in 2009, 2008 I guess. The closest thing we have to a local, sort of dance movement. It’s not as cool as footwork or local dances from Baltimore and Jersey, and stuff like that, but it was our own thing. It’s a very white, lower-class aesthetic of people. These kids, they had haircuts with a lot of... how do you say... Vivian Host Gel? Teki Latex Yeah, a lot of gel. They had crazy, spiky haircuts and sort of like very slim outfits and a little bit gothic with a little bit fluorescent pink thrown into the mix. They would pose on pictures like this. The dance is basically like this. It’s inspired by vogueing a little bit, but also by hip-hop dance and by house dancing. It was a big dance craze on YouTube for like two years. Then, the main French TV channel, TF1, sort of co-opted them and put them in every cheesy television show and then it was over. Vivian Host They killed tecktonik. You’re kind of underselling it because it actually was pretty cool. Teki Latex It was cool. It was a little bit cool but... it was cool. It was very unique and I admired the insular aspects of it and the fact that it was born in the French suburbs, and it was a really grassroots movement. It looked like nothing else that happened anywhere else in the world. It was a very French thing. It was very interesting but at the same time, it was a little bit... it was a fad, in a way. There’s plenty of things like this all over the world happening all the time, you know? Tecktonik, it gave birth to beautiful things like logobi and it had its purpose, and now it’s over and we don’t have to dwell on it. Anyway… Vivian Host Anyway, we haven’t heard any of your music. Teki Latex Oh, that will come a little bit later. I want to talk about electroclash first. VIVIAN HOST All right, all right. Teki Latex This is Miss Kittin and the Hacker who were the flagship group for electroclash, which is basically… which was a worldwide phenomenon of new wave and Italo-inspired dance music that had a little bit of a Gothic aspect to it as well, and that was like basically Depeche Mode on steroids for Berlin kids in the early 2000. No? Vivian Host Fair enough. And New York kids. Teki Latex Yeah, yeah, and New York kids, of course. Shout out to Larry Tee. This is “Stock Exchange Women” by Miss Kittin and the Hacker who come from Grenoble. (music: Miss Kittin & the Hacker – “Stock Exchange Women”) Teki Latex A lot of New Order, a little bit of Drexciya and a little bit of French flair and voila!
That’s how I got into club music, really, through the electroclash thing. There was that and it crossed over with the techno thing a little bit because Vitalic and a lot of stuff coming out and DJ Hell’s International DeeJay Gigolo, which was DJ Hell’s label, was sort of like in between techno and electroclash and that was very important stuff for us at the time. It was very melodic and very, again, melancholic. At the same time, very powerful and the kind of techno we’d be into as kids who didn’t go to raves, basically. I mean, some of us but I personally didn’t but I could relate to that easily. We got into club music and we still had our rap background and our IDM background and basically we were... me and my entourage were basically kids who got into electronic music through very intellectual stuff like Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, you name it, and Kid606 and Otto von Schirach and that kind of stuff. Then, discovered the more easy, danceable version of it. At the same time we were into complicated rap, like Company Flow and Antipop Consortium and Abstract Root and Tribunic and that kind of stuff. Then, we started going back towards club rap and Lil Jon and the crunk stuff that was happening at the time and Ludacris, and that kind of stuff. We wanted to merge the two together, not when we started making music but around the second TTC album. Vivian Host Can we back up a second here? When did you start TTC and who was in it? Teki Latex I started... we started TTC in 1999 and it was... I was one of the rappers and there was also Cuizinier, who is my cousin and Tido Berman, so these were the three rappers. The producers were... at first who were working with a whole bunch... many different producers. One of them was Flash Gordon who later became Mr Flash who later signed to Ed Banger, who’s notorious French digger. Later on, it was Para One and Tacteel and our DJ was DJ Orgasmic who still does Sound Pellegrino with me. Yeah, that’s it. Vivian Host How did you meet DJ Orgasmic? Because he’s been with you basically since the beginning of you putting out records. Teki Latex I met him on the ski slopes. We were skiing together. I had a Public Enemy t-shirt and he was like, “Yo, you’re into rap!” We were like 15. Something like that. Maybe 14. I was like, “Yeah, I’m into rap.” He was like, “I want to be a DJ.” I was like, “I have one turntable and I scratch a little bit.” We exchanged a lot. He ended up becoming more of the DJ and I just started getting into rap around that same time. We’ve known each other for more than 20 years. We’re still friends. I’m still friends with the other members of TTC as well, even though the group is not active. We’re still buddies. One of them is my cousin so, of course. Vivian Host You put out your first album in 2002? Teki Latex Exactly. Vivian Host On Big Dada, which is a subsidiary of Ninja Tune records. Teki Latex Yeah. It was a very abstract rap sounding album. I don’t like that album that much. I have trouble listening back to it now. It sounds very adolescent and it sounds like a rough copy of something that would become more interesting later on. Vivian Host Does that mean you don’t want to hear this track with DoseOne? Teki Latex We can play it, yeah. Let’s play it. Vivian Host I just want to give people an idea of the evolution of TTC and Teki from then to now. Teki Latex This is stuff that makes me cringe a little bit now. It’s a little bit pretentious and a little bit different for the sake of being different. I guess there’s still qualities to it and I think it’s a good Para One beat. I haven’t heard it in many, many moons. It’s probably kind of good. Yeah, let’s listen to it. Vivian Host OK, this is TTC “Pas D’armure.” Oooh, my French. You say it. Teki Latex “Pas D’armure” by TTC featuring DoseOne and I think other people. Vivian Host Hi-Tek. (music: TTC – “Pas D’armure”) Teki Latex Yeah. I’m the guy who can’t listen to stuff he has done five years ago. Or in this case, more than ten years ago. I still… some friends of mine said, it might sound wack but it was dope at the time. Vivian Host For sure. I think that’s kind of interesting that you and Dose are sort of doing chanson. Teki Latex Yeah. Vivian Host Kind of traditional French sounding singing in the beginning. Teki Latex Yeah. DoseOne who is someone that I still really very much admire, who was one of the rappers from the Anticon collective rappers, singers, pop guys, weird, experimentalists from the Anticon collective. He was a big influence of mine at the time and he was pushing rap boundaries and he came to France and he was like, “I want to do something with you guys.” We wanted to do something with him and he was like, “OK, let’s not just have me do a verse. Let’s just write something together. Can you translate this? I want to say this in French. Let’s sing the chorus together in French. Let’s make something that’s coherent.” He was very involved in the song. The song was produced by Para One, who had a long career after being a part of TTC. Vivian Host I think that along with Mehdi, you’re one of the people that is a definitely obvious link between the rap scene and the club scene in France. I see that you have something cued up from another person that people probably know from more house, or electro-house records but he’s a hip-hop guy. Teki Latex It’s Feadz. Feadz was a... when I met him, he was signed to BPitch Control which is Ellen Allien’s label out of Berlin, who also were the home of the first Modeselektor albums. They were super-important, I think, for the Berlin electronics scene, so Feadz was signed to that German label and we started TTC and he sort of introduced us to a whole world of techno that we had no idea existed. At first, [inaudible] was part of a group called Attica which was a very popular and cool French rap group. They had so many members. They had like 21 members or something. It was a big posse… Two of them were Tacteel who was a part of TTC and Feadz. Feadz had one foot in the rap world and one foot in the electronic world because he was making scratches on Mr Oizo albums. Because Mr Oizo didn’t want a tour, he said, “OK, Feadz, you’re going to tour instead of me. You’re going to do the F Communications tour with Laurent Garnier and whoever. You’re going to go in my place.” Feadz started touring as a DJ in techno venues because it was the F Communications, which is Laurent Garnier’s label, which Mr Oizo was signed to that were throwing the parties. He sort of got in contract with that world and started going to Berlin and going to Hardwax and digging in electronic music shops and finding out about all these labels, including BPitch Control. Then, he sent a demo to Ellen Allien and she released his first EP as a solo artist and that EP included a track called “Fizzle” and for me it is really... this is like 2000, 2001 maybe. This is a real fusion of electronic music and hip-hop before dubstep existed and before a lot of UK music, that really sounds like this existed, and like half-time sort of electronic weirdness. This is a blueprint for that kind of music and it’s a… not a lot of people know it. A lot of people know Feadz from what he has done after, which is produce for Uffie and be a member of Ed Banger. Before that, Feadz was making that kind of weird hybrid music that some of us later called Euro-crunk. (music: Feadz – “Fizzle”) Vivian Host Who else was with you in this nascent Euro-crunk posse? Teki Latex Basically, it was the early... well, the second album... right in between the first TTC albums, so 2003, so that’s the kind of stuff that Feadz was releasing. Orgasmic was also making beats for the Cuizinier that came out a little bit later on. Sampling songs like “I Like To Move It” and turning them into crunk songs. (music: Cuizinier – “J'aime Bouger Ca”) Teki Latex There was that and Para One was also making solo stuff that... it was before he was making 4/4 stuff. He was just experimenting with rap and instrumental, weird club music. We were coming out of our IDM phase and were like, “OK… This is music people are going to dance to,” but we had no idea how to make dance music. It still sounded really weird and really bizarre and we didn’t know how to make pure dance music or house music or electro music. We were just... it was clubby in our head, but it really sounded weird. This is a track by Para One called “Nobody Cares,” from his first EP on Institubes, which is the second release on Institubes. Basically what happened was around the same time Justice were putting out their first records and Vitalic was really big and 2ManyDJs were starting to be interested in the whole French scene and they were playing the Justice record, “We Are Your Friends,” all over the place. This became super popular. All these French producers started to think to themselves, “Well, maybe if we do 4/4 music and make it sound like bangers, we’re going to be more popular and we’re going to get some bookings outside of France.” That scene sort of cannibalized all the experimenting that was going on and a lot of people just started doing 4/4 stuff. Some of them still kept the spirit and people, like Surkin and Bobmo, these guys sort of retained some of the spirit from those early-2000s days when we didn’t know what we were doing. But still, no one was doing half-time stuff anymore because it was considered electronic rap, which was becoming a little bit of a dirty word and a nerdy thing that wasn’t cool anymore. We sort of abandoned this, and scenes like... the beat scene sort of took over and occupied that space. I feel like a lot of stuff coming out of Montreal too, sort of took that space. It was really a pity, because we were in the center of it and we sort of abandoned it in order to make big bangers. I’m always a little bit sad when I think of this. Vivian Host I want to show video number, which is TTC “Telephone,” just to give people an idea of what you guys looked like when you came out and what you were doing. Teki Latex This is not when we came out, though. This is like 2006. Vivian Host In the middle. Mid-career. Teki Latex Last album. Telephone was from our third and last album. Vivian Host Let me about the making of this video that we’re going to watch. Teki Latex It’s just like a... there’s nothing really to say… Vivian Host You guys got video number one back there? Anyone? Bueller? Just basically like very Baltimore-influenced. The beat is produced by Orgasmic, the guy with long hair in the video, who has since cut his hair. Yeah, it was just a fun track. Very gimmicky.
We were thinking, “How can we control the world and how can we become the biggest thing in the world? Oh, we should make a song about phones because everyone has a ringtone now and it’s a thing. So, we were going to make a song about that and maybe everyone’s going to use it as a ringtone and it happened a little bit.” We were just trying to go pop and trying to do it in a fun way and trying to make a fun song and wear bright colors and just be cool. Vivian Host I think you achieved that. Teki Latex Sort of. Yeah, a little bit. Vivian Host Well, I wanted to play this, too, even though it might not be your favorite because you guys became really big in France, and now when you walk down the street a lot of people are stopping you. Teki Latex Yeah. This was super big in Montreal, this song. A lot of people were stopping us on the street because of this song, and doing the dance that I do at the end of the video, which we won’t show. Vivian Host We’re all going to learn it later. Teki Latex Yeah, so a lot of people liked it. I don’t think it’s the best TTC song, but it’s a good one. It’s a good little pop number. It has the disposable quality of a good song. Vivian Host While you were in the middle of doing TTC and releasing records, you also started a label called Institubes. Teki Latex Yeah, yeah. Vivian Host You actually started that to put out a rap record. Teki Latex Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like a rap super group of like indie rap. French indie rap kids called L'Atelier. We had nowhere to put it out, so we decided to make our own label. Soon after we wanted it to be a more dance-oriented label. But, then again, it was still our version of dance music which was a little bit warped and weird and so the first Para One EP came out on Institubes and the first Tacteel stuff too. A lot of that stuff sounds like... can I play a Tacteel song? Vivian Host Sure. Teki Latex Here’s a Tacteel song that sounds like a Kanye beat from 2015, except it came out in 2004. Vivian Host Who all was involved in that label with you? Teki Latex It was me and a bunch of really fun intellectuals. Jean-René Étienne, who’s a big mastermind and very important figure for me. He really made us discover a whole world of music. Him and Étienne Menu, who was also a journalist, who has impeccable taste and a real vision in music.
There was many other people involved but the originators were Tacteel, me, Jean-René, Étienne, and a guy called Olivier who then left. It was just some... a crew of people who were... a lot of them were very... they had done really big studies in political science and they were applying the same kind of nerdism that they applied to their studies, to music. They were listening to Autechre and Boards Of Canada and all that kind of stuff and making the rap kids in my entourage listen to that stuff very early on. They were very defining for our musical tastes. Vivian Host One of the things that was so notable for me seeing Institubes in the States, which was a huge electro-house label alongside Ed Banger... you guys were like the biggest thing for us, and the branding and all the ideas around not just that you guys were a supergroup, but also the label looked impeccable and the logos and the sleeves and you had scarves and everything was so perfectly done. You basically made a whole world that you could tap into. Teki Latex Yeah, thank you. That was important for us to have coherence in what we did and to tie the visual aspect with the music as well, but I think every label is like that. We didn’t invent that kind of stuff. Obviously Mo' Wax and people like that paved the way. Ninja Tune, Warp paved the way for that kind of aesthetic and tying the design with the music. Vivian Host During that time you were also hanging out a lot at a club called Paris Paris. Teki Latex Yeah. I just wrote an article about it for RBMA. Yeah, it was an important club for us. It was a small club in Paris, where we used to hang out and it was a very hedonistic place, where anything could happen. Some very dirty things happened. We were just living the life. TTC was very popular at the time. Institubes kind of had its place and Ed Banger were, of course, blowing up. We were flossing and the pace to floss was Paris Paris. Vivian Host Do you have video number six that we could show please? If we can show this video, this is a video of an iPod battle that you were creating. The reason that I picked this is just to show... it shows DJ Mehdi in the video and also So-Me, who’s the graphic designer for Ed Banger. I don’t know who else is in it. Teki Latex Probably the Justice guys. Emil from Sound Pellegrino, Tacteel, a bunch of journalists. Hip people from the mid-2000s. We were doing this iPod battle thing that started as a rock-versus-rap thing and then it was just anything goes. It was kind of like our dandy French version of a soundclash. Each one plays a song... each team plays a song and at the end of the day we measure the applause and whoever gets the more applause wins. Vivian Host OK. We can roll it. Yeah, a lot of fist pumping and just like us being bros. That was, again, it might sound wack but it was dope at the time. Vivian Host For sure. I want to move on from that, but first I was hoping we could drop a couple tracks from Institubes just to get the flavor of what you were putting out. Teki Latex Are you going to select them? Vivian Host Yeah, I’m going to select them. This is just a sample of a couple things. First one is Surkin, “Ghetto Obsession,” 2006. (music: Surkin – “Ghetto Obsession”) Teki Latex When I talked about transitioning from clever intellectual... intelligent dance music, IDM, towards more club stuff. One thing that was very important for us was ghettotech and DJ Assault and DJ Deeon and juke and ghetto house and DJ Funk and that whole scene between Detroit and Chicago. That was very important for us, and I think you can still hear that element in Surkin and Bobmo’s music. The sort of second generation Institubes guys. Even the first generation. We had that thing. Like I said, some of the guys in Institubes who didn’t make music but who were taking decisions and being artistic directors for the label. One of them, Étienne Menu, said something one day that sort of became a motto for us and some words to live by. We were talking about this song by the Roots with Erykah Badu that had a jungle, drum & bass sort of breakdown at some point in the song. We were like, “No! This is not... we can’t imagine the future of hip-hop through elements from the past of electronic music.” We were... because a lot of rap kids were finding out about drum & bass ten years after. They were putting drum & bass in their raps and being like, “Oh we’re being futuristic right now. We’re making that stuff that English people made ten years ago.” A little bit... kind of like what’s happening with grime now days in US rap. We were like, “Well, we can’t imagine the future of rap with the past of electronic music. At the same time, ghettotech was happening and we were like, this is the right fusion of hip-hop and electronic music.” DJ Assault and what Disco D was putting out at that time. We were really influenced by that. I think you can still hear it in those songs. Vivian Host You’re flossing in the club. It’s like 2008 or whatever. Institubes is going strong. You’ve been on tour all over the world with TTC. Then it was a big shock, to me at least, or everyone I knew that Institubes was no more. Teki Latex Yeah. That was a little bit later on. That was 2010. Vivian Host Can you talk about Sound Pellegrino forming and Institubes ending? Teki Latex There was also a time around 2008. I had made a pop album, produced by, and composed by, [Chilly] Gonzales the pianist. I had a big hit on the French radio called “Les Matins De Paris.” We can play that. (music: Lio & Teki Latex – “Les Matins De Paris”) Teki Latex It’s still a great song. It’s still a perfect pop song and it was on the radio and I achieved what I wanted to do with it and, basically, I still love it. This happened in 2008. I was very busy with this stuff and also very busy touring with TTC so I was a little bit less involved in Institubes at the time and Institubes had been taken over by other members of the crew. They were doing a great job with it but they took it in a different sort of direction. After a while, Orgasmic... it was mainly Orgasmic... I was, of course... because he is one of my best friends, I sort of followed his lead into playing a little bit more house-music-influenced stuff and a little bit more club-music-influenced stuff. Basically, what everybody was doing at that time as far club music goes in Paris was big, distorted bangers. Big bro stuff that... and it had a metal aesthetic almost. Everyone was wearing leather jackets and being like rock and being like “Yeah, lets rock this.” Very bro-ey and nobody danced anymore. The clubs were just a bunch of kids wearing loud colors or like heavy metal jackets going like this, you know? Fist pumping, and it felt like concerts more than dancefloors. We wanted to go back to the DJ and the dancing element of it and we were influenced by other stuff, different stuff from what was popular at the time in Paris and we... Institubes had gone a different way and Institubes was releasing stuff by Midnight Juggernauts, Chateau Marmont, which was more like ’70s-pop-oriented. We had Crystal. Unfortunately Ryota [Miyake]
from Crystal was going to be in the second term of the academy but he didn’t come.
We had some really strong, more like home-listening stuff going on on Institubes, and I wanted to bring it back to the clubs. Me and Orgasmic wanted to have an outlet where we could just release the club music that we loved and pump out club hits every month and not have to worry about waiting and oh no, this guy need to put out an album, so we have to wait. We needed to create something different from Institubes so we created Sound Pellegrino, which started as an offshoot of Institubes and was digital only so we didn’t have to wait all this time for vinyls to be made. We could just pump out records every month. It was very liberating for us to have Sound Pellegrino. That was in 2009, when it started. Vivian Host You also have a DJ team with Orgasmic. Teki Latex Yeah, that’s when I started DJing, actually. After the pop stuff... when the pop stuff happened, I wanted it to be larger than life. The single was big, but the album was never big. We didn’t have... soon after I got dropped from EMI, so we didn’t have the budgets to go on tour with a full band and give life to this pop music that I had in mind, in a live form, in a concert form. I was still being asked to perform so I started doing DJ sets and I wasn’t a DJ, so I was terrible at first. But then I started thinking, “You know what? I want to do this seriously because I love DJ culture and I love... I’ve been hanging out with people like Feadz and Orgasmic and DJ Fab and all of these guys all of my life. I want to take this seriously, out of respect for all of these people who have paved the way.” I was fascinated by the fact of taking two tracks and putting them together and creating a third track with them. I was just genuinely fascinated by that. I decided to take DJing seriously. We started performing together with Orgasmic as some sort of window for the label, under the name Sound Pellegrino Thermal Team and we made tracks as well. Vivian Host Did you bring some tracks with you from Sound Pellegrino that you wanted to play? Teki Latex I don’t think I have them on this key. Vivian Host I got a few. What... you mentioned what sort of the driving quote of Institubes was. Do you have a similar thing for Sound Pellegrino? Like a banner? Teki Latex It’s not a punchline but it was basically going back to more like minimalist tracks and going back to dance music as a form of music, where... well, basically, a form of music you can dance to. You can... the fact that... influenced by labels like Dance Mania, but even like dance labels like Dirtybird that were just putting out a lot of records all the time and it doesn’t matter if all of them... if some of them are a little bit disposable, as long as you can keep putting them out and giving an identity to the label and feeding the DJs with music, basically. You wanted to feed the DJs with music with Sound Pellegrino. Vivian Host You have some releases that are kind of just club tools. Teki Latex Yeah, exactly, and it’s not a problem. We love that. It’s part of our aesthetic. Vivian Host Even though you have people all over the world releasing on Sound Pellegrino, there is quite a few French artists, Parisian artists as well. Teki Latex Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Vivian Host Can you name some of them? Teki Latex Well, right now there’s Coyote who’s French DJ who actually... he’s actually one of the people who made ghettotech and juke a big thing in France at some point. He was silent for a while and then he released three EPs on Mixpak. We were always supporting it, and now he’s releasing on Sound Pellegrino. There’s a new kid called Doline, who makes sort of weird trance-based music. Very elegant and very pure and not at all like EDM-sounding, but rather more like ambient sounding actually, but still with a beat and still with some drums. It’s sort of hard to describe but he’s making a very unique sound and he love him very much. There was Douster, who’s actually from Lyon, who released the second Sound Pellegrino record and who’s still around and who has a track with Feadz on our next compilation. Even though he’s not on the roster officially he’s still making stuff with us.
There’s a lot of people... and also people from the UK who we did records with L-Vis 1990 early on in his career. We had Tom Trago and Bok Bok together on a release. We had Surkin and Todd Edwards together on a release. We had people like Teeth from Finland. Aero Manyelo from South Africa. Harvard Bass from the states. Who else? A lot of different people from different places in the world. Vivian Host Rather than playing that, I actually want to play a bit of this mixtape that you did called Deconstructed Trance. I think one of the things that you’re doing at the moment is really looking for new frontiers in club music, whether that be through Sound Pellegrino, especially your compilations, or of mixtapes and DJ sets that you’re doing. Teki Latex Like I said, I’m fascinated by the sort of construction element of DJing and of dance music and the fact that it’s like Lego. You take different elements and put them together to create something new. That very... it’s a very important thing for me. That’s how I channel my creation now. Now that I don’t make my own music anymore and now that I don’t make vocals anymore, because I stopped that a little while ago and I sort of ran out of ideas in that area a little while ago, and now I’m just channeling it through DJing 100%. I don’t want to just be a selector. I really want to create something original with my mixes and do something a little bit... it’s a dirty word but a little bit conceptual. Well, at least, yeah, channel my creation through things like that. I made a mix. It’s actually called Deconstructed Trance Reconstructed. I came across the music of Lorenzo Senni who makes... he’s an Italian produce who makes drumless trance. I saw him live at the Macba in Barcellona. Blew my mind. It’s just him playing these beautiful arpeggios without drums and there’s a big laser... there’s a laser being coordinated with the music and it’s really, really beautiful. I really like him. Impressed me a lot. I love his music and inspired by what he made. I sort of started sticking beats on top of his music from other genres from techno to grime to just like club music in general. I started... I was always fascinated by the idea of drum tools. When you play a lot of drum tools, it get a little bit boring and there’s... when there’s no melody whatsoever in your DJ sets, you kind of look for things to make your music a little bit more lighthearted and a little bit more colorful. These trance beats without drums were a way for me to include more melody in my sets while keeping that sort of construction game aspect of it. I started looking for trance buildups from original trance songs and looping them. I made that mix with three CDJs. It’s all made live. I’m really proud of it. Part of it is drumless tracks, like ambient tracks. Tracks by... there’s a track by, I think, Pearson Sound that’s just like a drumless melody track. There’s a bunch of tracks from grime guys like Slackk and stuff like that. I made the connection between that, the trance thing, classic trance tracks, and also... you can buy trance tools on certain digital platforms. It’s like separate tracks from... it’s like CDs with... they used to have CD’s with just the drums and just the trance beats and stuff like that. I started digging in that kind of stuff and picked up my favorite stuff from that and put that all together over techno beats and grime beats and the result is this. (music: Teki Latex – Deconstructed Trance Reconstructed) Vivian Host That was Teki Latex, Deconstructed Trance Reconstructed. Right now, moving into the future, you’re actually in search of new forms of club music, or specifically French club. Teki Latex Well, I tried to bring together some young French producers who are influenced by bass music and the kind of stuff that I like and try to find out with them why there has been no typical French club music in a while. The last time we tried to have our own French identity in club music was the French touch stuff. It’s a very... the French touch thing is a kind of a middle-class thing. There was never... it was kind of a bourgeois thing. It was a thing that... made by people from Versailles who... it was basically very pop also except for some nervous exceptions that we heard a little bit earlier on. It was a very clean and radio-friendly thing. There hasn’t been pure club music from the hood or from young people who... like underground people. There hasn’t been stuff like that in a while whereas in the UK, there is the whole genealogy of soundsystem music that evolved into drum & bass, and grime, and dubstep and all that stuff. These are very specific and local English styles that influenced the whole world. People from France are going to look for these artists and book them in France because they want to hear that sound. Same thing for the kuduro stuff with Angola and Portugal. Same thing for the Baltimore stuff, the Jersey stuff, the South African stuff. All these places have... out of the struggle and the local way of consuming music were born all these styles that are very specific and why don’t we have that in France? Why is French club music nowadays sort of very influenced by stuff that comes from all over the place, but doesn’t really have an identity.
It’s always someone trying to make grime or someone trying to make techno or someone trying to make this or that but there’s no... there’s very little specific Frenchness to these styles. There’s exceptions, of course, and in the techno world it’s a little bit more complicated because techno really doesn’t have a specific sound connected to a country, but there’s no equivalent to kuduro in Paris. There’s not equivalent to grime in Paris. There’s no equivalent to kwaito or gqom in Paris. I put together a team of French kids to try and find out why and maybe explore what could be done to change that and if it needs to exist or if it’s just something that exists by itself and that comes together because of non-music-related reasons. There’s a lot of questions to be asked and I think it’s important to think about those things. Right now, techno is omnipresent in France and there’s a lot of... techno is everywhere in Paris. There’s a lot of big festival and big parties and stuff like that, but it’s a very... I find that the French club identity is... there’s a lot of Paris trying to be Berlin. I think it’s a shame that we don’t have our own thing. As far as producers go, it’s always like that; trying to emulate sounds coming from other cities, rather than creating our own. I’m trying to think of a way to do that. It’s an ongoing reflection. Vivian Host Amazing. Well Teki, thank you so much. Teki Latex Thank you. Vivian Host We’re going to take questions right now, if anyone has any questions. Audience member Hi. Teki Latex Hi. Audience member You said you are looking at how a city develops its own sound, right? Has there been any epiphanies that you’ve had so far in your thought processes towards that in your conversations with other artists? Teki Latex Not really. I mean, aside from the obvious, the fact that people make music to forget about the reality and try to escape the problems they have in their ongoing lives, aside from that, aside from what we all know… we haven’t had the real answer except that maybe France is, like I said, very... the culture in France goes through channels that are more literary than body-centered. There’s not... dancing is looked down upon. Dance culture is always attached to cheesy electro house or David Guetta and stuff like that and people don’t take you seriously when you tell them that you’re a DJ or that you go to... going to clubs is always like... that’s not a real cultural activity. You have to go to museums and you have to read books. Every rapper that... in order for a rapper to really blow up in France, it goes through emulating poets or being compared to poets. Even the most hardcore French rapper, when he’ll have an article in mainstream magazine, he’ll be compared to Céline or he’ll be compared to a French writer and even though he has never read that guy, even though he’s just making his own thing, which is rap, he’s always going to be compared to that sort of literal heritage. Literary... excuse me… heritage.
There was... I think what happened is that we never had pirate stations in France. We had underground radios, but we never had a real pirate station culture like they had in the UK.
We... dance culture was always looked down upon, and it’s changing now with the new generations and with the internet, but there was always... underground music... we didn’t need to have our own genre of underground music, because rap was so big. Mainly because of that radio thing were we had to have lyrics in French, so for something to blow up, it had to have lyrics in French. People from the projects and people from the hood didn’t feel the need to create their own style of dance music, because they had rap and they could be really successful with it. They could make real money out of it. Why invent something else, you know? I think that’s one of the reasons but there’s no epiphany of how we’re going to create our own thing yet. Audience member For the dance music side, I’m guessing that French people, from what you said, would be more accepting of more sophisticated forms of dance music? Teki Latex Of course there’s a real romantic and intellectual way of making dance music in France. It’s a good thing, too. Audience member OK, yeah. Thank you. Vivian Host Anyone else? Audience member It was interesting watching you talk about other people’s music and get really into it and vibing on it. Then, when you were playing your own music, you seemed to be quite self-critical. Do you find that that’s an obstacle when you’re creating? I know that lots of people have that problem, getting too precious almost. Teki Latex Yeah, it’s an obstacle to the point where I stopped doing it. Audience member Yeah, OK. Teki Latex I mean, I’m critical in general, and for... I mean, because I’m passionate about music and I played a lot of music I really love from the bottom of my heart, but there’s a lot of music I hate with the same passion. Part of it is my own music. That’s how it is when you become an old person like me, and you’ve lived through a lot of different phases, and a lot of different trends in music. You start to become very critical of it in general. Like I always say, some of it sounds bad but it sounded great at the time. It has its own importance in a way and that’s how you evolve and yeah, but in my mind I’m still... when I do a mixtape like the one that we just heard, the Deconstructed Trance Reconstructed one, I still feel like in a way, that’s kind of production in a way. Even though I’m just playing with other people’s music, it’s... there’s a real sense of trying to make something new with it. Audience member OK. Teki Latex I do it and I love it and I think there’s so much stuff out there that pleases me. When I started making rap it was also out of not being happy with the French rap that was out at the time, and so trying to create my own version of it because there was nothing that I could relate to. I mean, so little things that I could relate to in French rap. Now, I guess that there’s enough dance music for me to be happy so I’m just going to play it instead of making it. Audience member Cool. Thank you. Teki Latex I think it’s also important to differentiate the work of a DJ and the work of a producer. I think there can be great DJs who don’t produce music. It’s not because you’re a producer that you have to feel the need to force yourself to become a DJ and do it badly. I’d rather listen to a good DJ who doesn’t make his own music play other people’s music in a great way. It’s two different jobs and some people have trouble making that difference. Also, there’s a lot of pressure on producers to perform in front of a live audience, and sometimes it’s not easy to make an electronic live show and to sell a lot of tickets by doing that, so a lot of producers are tempted to just go and DJ and they don’t do it seriously and they just do it to make an easy buck and keep... be able to keep creating music in the studio. I think these are two different things, you know? Also, a lot of DJs think that they’re not going to have bookings if they don’t produce so they hire a ghost producer or they just make shitty music and stuff like that, where they’re just really good DJs and should stick to making this. But in the mind of people, these two things come together whereas I think they should really be separated. Audience member About this moment that you were really interested in pop music, where does that come from? Is that part of your wish to forward, or advance French music and... what was your motive? It seems very contradictory at the same time. Teki Latex Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, but it makes sense to me. For me, when I played those songs early on in the lecture that are super-big pop songs, this is what I got into music... this is what I listened to before I made music, so it’s part of my DNA, and I wanted to recreate that. These are still forward-thinking songs. I had the illusion... that was 2008 so you have to put yourself back in the context of there was no Pussy Cat Dolls and no EDM and no... the pop music that was coming out at the time was still kind of forward-thinking. It was OutKast, it was Justin Timberlake produced by Timbaland, it was Gwen Stefani who was also making sort of ’80s-influenced music but it was still the Neptunes behind it and Timbaland behind it so it was still sort of cool and new and futuristic and there was real excitement behind it. There was the Knife as well in all the European, like Scandinavian pop people who... again, EDM didn’t exist yet so it was still a little bit experimental and not big and loud and... I mean, not cheesy. I don’t know. It was cheesy but there’s a difference between ’80s pop cheesy and EDM cheesy. I think that difference is the emo aspect of it where ’80s pop is pure and based on pure feelings, and romantic feelings, and EDM cheesiness is based on, “Look at me! I have emotions. Look at me! I’m emo.” That kind of stuff makes the difference, and I don’t like emo stuff. So yeah, I was influenced by that when I made this album and I wanted to live that fantasy and I wanted to be like a big fat bald Gwen Stefani. Punchline. Audience member Do you think it’s still possible? Sorry, one more question. Do you think it’s still possible or do you think the world is... do you think that phase is over? Teki Latex It’s hard to say. It’s hard to say. I want to believe it’s still possible but I don’t think I have it in me to make it possible… anymore. Audience member Thanks for doing this, first of all. Teki Latex Thank you. Audience member It’s very interesting. How do you see the current French rap that’s maybe more popular right now with the young audience, like maybe more street-oriented stuff like Kaaris or Gradur? How do you see them fit into the narrative for what you were just talking about? Is there any sort of connection? Because from the outside perspective it really feels like this lives in a silo, and it doesn’t really cross over with any of the things that you and your friends will do. Teki Latex Well, what they do is great and some of it really has a French identity to it, I think. For example, stuff like PNL really has a French identity to it, but it reflects a state of mind that I don’t really... that I can’t get into because, I don’t know, I sort of gave up on it for some reason. I don’t know.
It sounds like... the stuff like Gradur and... well, the contemporary French stuff is just a reflection of the US stuff, which has become slower and more wavy and a little bit more emo as well. I can’t really connect with it anymore, and I think that it’s a reflection of our times.
The last wave of rap I was really into was the mid-2000 stuff. The crunk stuff and the Diplomats stuff and people had big outfits, and it was larger than life and everything looked like a Hollywood movie and it was over the top and Cam’ron was wearing pink and he didn’t give a shit and he was just being very extravagant, and there was a lot of positivity to be taken from that and a lot of bragging, and that’s what I loved about it; the cartoonish aspect of it without being silly and without being goofy. They were really serious about their stuff and it was talking about real subject and real hood stuff, but it was done... he was referencing The Goonies and he didn’t give a shit. It was just fun stuff. He was very... all of these guys were really flamboyant and stuff like that, whereas... and since then there was the recession, and now people have a little bit more of a sad approach to rap and I can’t really relate to that. It doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of the world we live in and the financial situation that we live in, but I just don’t want to hear that in entertainment. I want to escape from it. I want to hear boasting, colorful stuff when I listen to music. I want to escape from my everyday life, so I don’t want rappers to talk about stuff that makes me depressed. Audience member Thank you. Teki Latex Thank you. Audience member Hello Teki. Teki Latex Hey. Audience member Thanks for doing that. I was just thinking about what you said regarding incorporating grime or drum and bass into rap music or club music and in other time and then feeling futuristic about it. In with regards to what you said about your quest of creating a new type of French identity in club music and finding it, is that possible to create something like that, without traces of the past, do you think? Teki Latex It has to be subconscious, you know? It has to be basically something that comes out naturally, instead of sticking a drum & bass beat on top of a rap song in 2001, you know? Or rapping over techno beats or whatever. It has to be something that’s in our DNA, because we grew up listening to it and it comes out naturally in the music we make, but it’s a hard thing. This is why it’s an ongoing process. I haven’t found the right way to do it yet. We’re trying to also analyze what makes... what’s the specificity of French music and what do we love about the French touch or the French pop, or African-influenced French stuff that came out in our childhood and trying to take the best elements of that and make something new out of it. It’s all about making something new out of it and not just rapping over drum & bass. Audience member Thanks. Vivian Host Anyone else? All right. Well, then I guess we’ll go eat dinner. Teki, thank you so much for being here. Teki Latex Dinner already? Vivian Host I think it’s time for dinner. Teki Latex Thank you so much.
(music: Para One – “Nobody Cares”)
There was a bunch of French people making that, mostly from our entourage. We felt like Diplo and the early Hollertronix stuff that was going on in the States was a sort of... had affiliation with that. We felt like Modeselektor were like the German version of that. There was a lot of people all over Europe… the Radioclit guys in Scandinavia and the UK were sort of like-minded.
We all loved the first grime records. We saw grime as Ludacris and gabba put together. For us, it was really exciting. “It’s OK to listen to Lil Jon now, it’s OK to mix that with electronic influences, it’s OK to dance to it even though we didn’t have a clue what dance music really was.” It was just an exciting time where everyone was experimenting and not really knowing what they were doing and Feadz was playing an Ellen Allien song mixed with a Noreaga song and it totally made sense. Orgasmic was also playing Missy songs into Dopplereffekt and it totally made sense. We loved it. We thought this could have maybe given birth to a movement. For a second, one of the Radioclit guys... I don’t know if you’re familiar with Radioclit. They were... one of them was from Sweden and he’s called Johan and he now has the group the Very Best. The other one was Étienne, DJ Tron, who was French. They were based in the UK. It was a very multicultural group. They had the idea to market this whole scene as [Euro-crunk and they had a connection in the hip-hop magazine... in the UK hip-hop magazine... called, I think, Hip-Hop Connection, if I’m not mistaken. They had a big article called “Euro-crunk is coming,” with all the artists showcased but it was more of a joke. The name is silly and the name really never caught on.
[Video is played]
Speaker: Teki Latex
(music: Tacteel – unknown)
This is what we were putting out, basically, at the beginning of Institubes.
[Video plays]
Speaker: Teki Latex