Gotta well make your mind with it folks ! Each year looks like seing some French people gaining worldwide recognition. 2004 might pretty well be Martin Solveig's who, on the footsteps of his "Rocking Music" single and a bunch of recent remixes, is to see his 'Sur la terre' debut LP having a re-release on UK label Defected with all such a situation is up to suggest…

Everything in Martin's LP looks like turned into suggestion. From the artwork of its sleeve (onits French release 2 years ago) seing him going out from the earth  as if it was a birth to its title ('Sur la terre' meaning 'On Earth') giving the feeling as it's coming from a man who knows where he is at. Not to mention its content showing him as the preacher of a pretty well done interaction betweeen both delicate and festive house vibes and influences inherited from African music.

As a matter of fact, references are quite numerous when coming to have a word about Solveig. A character made of humility and heat who's look tends to be somehow inbetween Tintin (for his adventurous mind) and Gilles Peterson (for his elegance and placidity).A guy who, like the latest, has taken his time to fully concretize his ideas. Funny how you mention Gilles, he says, remembering two to three people who, while crossing my path, had initially thought that I was he a couple of years ago. And the very best out of it is that we never met so far… This said, talking about this album, those who already have an idea of my background so far know how I've taken my time, since "Heart Of Africa" and the other singles which have followed that I've remixed in order to make them suitable at the perspective of doing this album. A work which has taken a year and a half or so.

Not that easy to talk about some particular line regarding this LP, says his author interested both in Afro-beat, West Indies rhythms (calypso) and soulful vocals. Could it be Afro-soul ? Partly, he admits, but more widely a patchwork of things that I love, like "Linda" (which would come with a remix from Kenny Dope at the time) described as a sort of Afro-French concept or more garage oriented songs. The advantage of being a producer, he explains, allowing you to call both instrumentists and singers from different areas that would help you to generate some bigger diversity in terms of approaches. As if there was both a bit of Alexkid, DJ Rork, Greg Gauthier and of course Africanism on one album… Our man precising that everything tends to find food from everything nowadays.

The fact that there's now a small community in France has also something to do with this, he says. But if I've got the feeling to be a part of it, it's rather on the affective side of the things, quoting DJ Gregory, Claude Monnet, Chris 'The French Kiss', Julien Jabre and Next Evidence, not to mention DJ Deep, although we end up doing different things from one to another. What I'm deeply into is rather a sort of French family, with the pleasure of meeting its members in Miami, at some precise gig here or there or while record shopping. On the other hand, I don't feel like being a part of some local flavoured identity, simply because I find it somehow reductive to say that French people are into a specific sound or a style rather than another. As if, and it seems the case, the French production had finally taken its distance from its older counterparts (mainly US and UK production) and entered a new era while having now its own life, sounding like a boiling laboratory. Once again, we influence ourselves from a part of the world to the other one and vice versa, in a more or less conscient way and I don't see how it could be different. Unless living on a desert island, we have to find ways to escape from the rest of the world one way or another, like Next Evidence have done for instance, not to mention Julien Jabre. But let me go back to this idea of laboratory, he enthuses, which to me is the most approrpiate one talking about the French scene. Simply coz' there's more and more research over there and subsequently some widening of the spectrum we're working on. It's not anymore a style like back in the days (the so called French touch), but different people exploring different directions whereas you may find dance oriented works but also moody ones and I tend to think while going abroad that we've reached a certain level, with people over there whose work begings to pay in the sense that we now can stand the comparizon with countries where people have a longer tradition of doing music.

True, I feel a little bit like in search of music that I would like to listen here in France, he keeps on. But on the other hand, I may pretty well understand that the audience, whose work is not to make music, expects accesible stuff and when I listen to Nova and RadioFG, I can feel that there's a minimum of space dedicated to new things, which isn't the case everywhere in the world. Why then not being more commercial instead of producing music that would hardly get a real exposure as compared to the usual mainstream stuff ? First, because it has become like a need, he answers. Ideas are coming out of the brain. I've been a DJ for quite a while now and I've wanted to go a bit further, be active and communicate. Say : these rhythm patterns, I hear them like this ; these voices, I hear them like that… It's a real need to get myself behind my mixing board to create and transmit an emotion. All on all, considerations that might sound a bit far away from the strictly business side of the things… We're in front of two universes today. The first one, made of heavily tested things, a little bit the way you would make cars which, to me isn't anymore art but marketing. And the second one, which I tend to know more where people are doing music almost with anything, instinctively I would say, where you'll see people going a bit further than some others who would prefer staying on a more intimate environment. Let's just hope that marketing won't end up reigning on everything.

I don't consider music as a product, says our man who also happened to study… marketing. I've simply wanted to have my music having the chance to be submitted to a wider audience while signing a distribution deal for my album with a major company (Universal) in France. And no doubt that the position of Defected had been for much in his choice to sign with them in UK…

MARTIN SOLVEIG Sur la terre LP (to be released on June 28 on Defected)

(More info : defected.co.uk)