Ladies and
gentlemen, this week I’m proud to bring Parisian dj Sven Löve to you, one
half of the famous Cheers team, who relentlessly defends with Greg
Gauthier, since 1994, the house & garage sound in Paris, in spite of the
short-lived musical crazes and changes of mind of the media. Talking about
eleven years of Cheers (which takes place now at Le Djoon, Paris new hot
nightspot), garage, and about his future plans too. Action !
Could you
first introduce yourself?
I’ve been
working in the music business for ten years now, as a dj and as a producer…
Any musical
training?
No. My
approach is rather intuitive, but I've learned to work with musicians ; my role
is to create musical sequences with them, and to edit what they have played.
I've got to have a good hear, too, to separate the wheat from the chaff in what
they are playing…
Could you
tell us about your start in music?
When I was a
child I used to listen to the music my parents and my uncles listened to. Rock
but mainly black music, classics such as Stevie Wonder songs, and jazz too.
During junior high school and my first high school years maybe I grew away a
little from black music, listening more to rock, but after that I went back to
my roots, listening to soul, blues, and so on…
How did you
come to listen to garage?
At this time
Greg and I were neighbours, and we had another neighbour who was a gay, a little
older than us; we liked him, and we used to go out with him. He took us to our
first garage parties. At that time there was three big garage dj's in Paris :
the most important was Eric Candy, and there were also David Serrano and André,
who is still alive today. So he took us to their parties, for instance Kit Kat
parties at Le Privilège (the club which was under Le Palace), and we fell in
love with this music, with the atmosphere of these parties. And in the meantime
we thought it was sad that the audience was exclusively gay, and that this music
had to be brought to straight people. So came the idea of Cheers … We had faith,
and luckily it was the right time to develop a party. We were supported by Radio
FG, our mixshow on this radio began as soon as the party started.
Cheers began
at the What’s Up Bar…
At first
Cheers was an itinerant party, the very first one took place in an ex-striptease
club called the Erotica. Then Greg was hired as a resident dj at the What’s Up,
and he brought Cheers with him, on a monthly basis! And it was immediately
successful… In fact, there were soon too many people for this place, and we
searched for another club, a bigger one. Finally we moved to the Queen club on
the Champs Elysées. It was my turn to be hired as a resident. We stayed here
three years.
And then in
2001 you moved to the Dancing de la Coupole, on Boulevard Montparnasse…
The Queen is
a great place, but we wanted more intimacy, and a more convivial atmosphere. We
also wanted Cheers to become a weekly party. It seemed to us that La Coupole was
the right place to develop it…
Your success
coincided with the explosion of the so-called French Touch sound, and actually
you played from time to time at Respect, the emblematic French Touch party. Did
you consider yourself as a part of this 'movement'?
At the
beginning the Respect team made us work a little for them… then they changed
their musical colour, but at the beginning they were very open-minded, they
wanted to gather all the electronic music styles. At that time I was rather
close to the Daft Punk, and so I had the chance to play at various parties with
them, but Respect ended up moving to other musical directions. Finally we went
our own way, and so did the Respect team too, but without being at loggerheads
with each other!
Whereas
Cheers was and is still a very succesful party, you never created a label to
defend your musical flavour. Why?
Greg and I
were already doing a lot of things together, we were close friends, we had our
party, and we wanted to produce music each on our own side. Accordingly we
didn't feel the need or the desire to work together on a label. It was already a
bit stiffling to put a lot of effort together in developing Cheers…
You highlight
the fact that you & Greg have never produced a song together… How do you differ
as far as music is concerned ?
I think we
are, and we have always been, complementary, and that is one of the things which
make the strength of our collaboration: we love the same music, but we don't
have the same approach, and accordingly we don't trespass on each other's
preserves, while being in the same field. He's got his own thing, I've got my
own thing too, and it works pretty good, as a binomial… It's especially true at
the moment, as Greg runs his own party, Dance Culture, where you don't hear
exactly the same music as at Cheers, and Greg is happy to have the two parties,
because it allows him to express himself with Dance Culture, while having a good
time making something different at Cheers… Moreover I think it is good for both
of us as well as for Cheers. There is less pressure when we work together. At
the end of our last season, at La Coupole, there were some divergences between
us, maybe, and it was a bit oppressive …
How would you
define your very own musical touch, in comparison with Greg's ? Less afro, more
techno & electro ?
Yes, and also
more club friendly ! Greg perceives clubbing in a very specific way, which is
Shelter style clubbing, with a certain religious, mystic side. I really respect
this idea, but I recognize myself a little less in it, and I prefer more
traditional clubbing. I like to feel the atmosphere of a big club, you know,
people getting excited, lifting their arms up in the air, shouting out… but I
understand Greg is looking for something else, a deeper relationship with music…
Seeing how
succesful Dance Culture is, don't you feel like setting up you own residency?
No I don't,
and that's another difference from Greg: he has always wanted to have a weekly
residency, whereas I can't help tiring If I play at the same place every week, I
need to do other things, to see other people. Cheers is going to be a bimonthly
party after the holidays, the Djoon owner wanted to be a weekly party, but I
refused!
And what
about the "10 years of Cheers" birthday party, which should have taken place
last year?
We were not
able to organize it. It's hard to organize a very big party… We thought that if
we did it, it must be really great, and we started working on one or two plans,
but they finally fell through. We wanted a nice place, a great line-up, but it's
very complicated in Paris ! You can find good places here, but either their
price is outrageous, or a loud sound level is prohibited, or the owners are
'gangsters'!
Your divorce
from Radio FG?
It was the
end of a ten years long collaboration, but anyway we were not motivated anymore,
and FG had moved to new musical fields, more commercial ones. They fired many
resident djs, or they shifted their mixshow to ridiculous slots, like 01:00 to
02:00 AM in the middle of the week… So they didn't renew our contract, but we
didn't worry about it, because we didn't progress anymore, and our ratings were
low. They proposed us to shift our broadcast to Undergound FG, their webradio,
but we have our own website, so it wasn't wery interesting.
How do you
see Cheers future ?
For the
moment we're going to resume parties after the holidays, two times a month, and
I'm rather optimistic, because we've got a lot of new promotion means,
particularly thanks to the Djoon owner, who is very motivated, who loves our
party, and who would like to help his club take off via Cheers… Beside that
we're planning a big party in november… and we carry on managing our website,
broadcasting mixes on it. There are always a lot of people on our message board!
Cheers is the
longest running and most succesful house & garage party in France. Does it makes
you feel you have some kind of responsibility for the music you're playing ?
More precisely, do you consider yourself as the representant of soulful house
music in Paris and in France ?
We don't have
something to defend! Sometimes people think we have, but even Greg doesn't think
so! It's much simplier, we love this music, we play it, and we need to earn our
living too! We sure have to be appreciated, to make people like us, and it's
true that it pleases us when some people discover this music thanks to us, but
basically it's just a job, too… And to make money we have to do this job the
best we can, so…
In a recent
interview Greg said that garage, today, is not limited anymore to "a diva
screaming over a few keyboard notes". Any idea about the possible evolution of
this music in the years to come?
I think it
will keep on mixing with other musical styles… It is less formated than before,
like Greg said, piano, diva… There will always be a music affiliated to garage,
because this is the soulful side of electronic music, and there will always be
people to like it! That's soul music, in the broadest meaning. There will always
be underground clubs, and some of this clubs will keep on playing this kind of
music, emotional music… Because 'soulful' also stands for 'emotional'.
Don’t you
think it’s a bit wrong, now, to class garage among electronic music? In a way
it’s more akin to black music, be it jazz or r’n’b…
I don’t think
it’s senseless, because garage is a binary music, and accordingly it’s closer to
techno than to jazz! It’s a binary music, it is not played by musicians, or at
least it is reconstructed on a computer afterwards. If garage lose its
electronic edge, it wouldn’t be garage anymore! So to my mind we are in the same
family with techno or electro producers… But I guess Greg wouldn’t think exactly
the same about this.
Where will we
be able to see you this season?
The Soulful
Sessions parties are over. We resume Cheers parties, as I've already said to
you, et I'm going to keep on working for Filipe, who organizes the Delahouse
parties, but I don't know what he will do. In all likelihood the Delahouse
parties at WAGG Club are over too, but he's got lot of other plans. Besides I'm
connected with Laetitia, who sets up afters with Sam Karlson, I'll keep on
working with them after the holidays.
And what
about your album ?
A first 12"
is going to be released, normally our collaboration with Blaze, including a
remix by Greg, very Dance Culture-ish, and other remixes. It will be released on
Kif recordings, and normally we will also release our album on Kif. After the
first 12" there are going to be two other, one each month I hope. And in the
meantime we are going to complete the album. It will be garage, with our usual
pop edge, which can be felt in the structure of the songs. For the moment we
have got too many songs, so he have to add some instrumentals! We have worked
with several singers, Paris Gilbert, Paula Ralph, Josh Milan, Rashaan Houston
(who hails from Colorado), and Ange (a Cameroonian singer who worked with
Cerrone). It's close to what we have already done, but it's more elaborated,
especially as far as sound engineering is concerned…
Could you
tell us a little about your collaboration with Blaze ?
They came two
years ago for the special « Garden Of Love » Cheers party at the Jardin
d’Acclimatation ; I gave an instrumental to them, they liked him, they brought
it back with them to the USA and six months after they sent me a song Josh Milan
had written and sung over our instrumental…
You’re also
releasing a remix of Sébastien Tellier "La Ritournelle"… At first he seems to be
an artist pretty far away from your own music!
Not so much,
in fact! We belong to the same generation, in a way, and I've known the people
from his label, Recordmakers, for a long time. This remix is a very personal
project, and I'm rather proud of it: I loved the original, and I thought a club
version would sound very great at Cheers for instance! So I get in touch with
the label, and luckily they wanted to release remixes of the song… and they like
ours! So there will be two 12", one with English remixes, mainly electro, with a
Massive Attack style radio re-edit, and another one with remixes by Recordmakers
artists : a pop remix by Hypnolove, a remix by Turzi, which sounds like a song
by Cure, and our own remake, which is the only house remix. We stayed very
faithful to the original, even if we put our personnal touch in it (or so it
seems to me, at least)… I'm quite satisfied with the result! At first I was
fairly reluctant to produce remixes, but finally it turned out to be pleasant,
so I would be glad to do it again!
Last
questions … your heroes in the music business?
I'm really
into Brazilian music, Caetano Veloso, Seu Jorge too, an artist discovered in
France, who often plays in Paris. As far as house music is concerned, Tony
Humphries off course ! I have a passion for cinema, too, particularly Italian
cinema from the 50's and the 60's. By the way I'd like to work in cinema, as a
screen writer or as a director, like my sister who really works in this field…
Any artist
you would like to work with?
Working with
Blaze was one of my dreams, so now it’s fulfilled! I would love to do something
with Tony Humphries, anything; booking him for a party in Paris for instance… I
would have loved to release a record on Yellorange, too!
SVEN LOVE & CATALAN FC FEAT.
BLAZE All About Love (Kif)
SEBASTIEN
TELLIER La Ritournelle (Catalan FC + Sven Löve remix) (Recordmakers)
More infos
:
Cheersparis.com
Playlist summer
05:
1
Fantasia - Free Yourself (Harness & Spencer)
2 Sebastien
Tellier – La Ritournelle (Catalan FC + Sven Löve Remix) (Recordmakers)
3
The Backroom Bandits – One Day
4
Quentin Harris - Let's Be Young (The Horn's Track)
5
Tabianamoto - Forever And A Day (George Mena & Franke Estevez Mix)
6
Behind The Groove feat. Carla Prather - Whatcha Gonna Do About It (David Harness
& Charles Spencer Mix)
7
Catalan FC + Sven Löve feat Blaze – All About Love
8
Tier-Ra-Nichi - Release (Nitegrooves)
9
Real Tune Cuts Vol. 1 - Someday (Franck Roger Remix)
10
KB - Feelin U
INTERVIEW
