Fedde le Grand finally takes control

Fedde le Grand finally takes control

14 October, 2009 | 5.53AM

• Written by: Kirsty Kane
• Filed under: Music News: fatboy slim, fedde le grand, flamingo recordings

Euphoria and excitement took over Fedde le Grand’s life aged 28, after a twisted bassline and a memorable vocal propelled him from the safety of his own bedroom straight to the top of the pop charts and MTV.

It began with ‘Put Your Hands Up 4 Detroit’ in 2006, and only now, three years after he wrote one of electro house’s biggest anthems, is the rollercoaster finally coming to an end.

“At the time, you don’t really see what’s happening, and you just go along with it,” says Le Grand, from his home town in southern Netherlands.

“You ride it out, and grab every opportunity thrown at you, but it has to end at a certain point, the time comes to wake up and grab control.”

With his recent debut album ‘Output’ embracing hip hop and pop, a new underground alias FLG, and a remix of Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’ out this week, we sat down with Fedde le Grand to find out where he’s heading next.

You’ve just released a remix of Fatboy Slim’s anthem ‘Praise You’, how did that come about?

I do a lot of edits for my DJ sets. I have a more commercial profile than I actually play, and I’m generally pretty careful about where I get booked, but just in case I get for a more commercial gig, I do edits of well known records.

I did the ‘Praise You’ edit just for myself, but with today’s internet it spread quickly, so we contacted the Fatboy Slim guys and they signed it off.

Why do you think you have a more commercial profile than you play?

For me, it kinda just happened. ‘Put Your Hands Up’ was never meant to be a crossover record, - it was meant to be more of an underground record, but for some reason it got played everywhere on the radio. Of course it opened up a lot of doors, and I just had to grab the opportunities that came my way, but it did lead to a more commercial profile.

Your debut album ‘Output’, was quite poppy and more of a dance/hip hop hybrid.

Well, I love working with vocals. I had a quick start to my international career, but I wanted to end up where I wanted to be, not where people wanted to put me.

For my album, a lot of doors were open to me and from the producer side, musically it’s more interesting to do pop than straight up dancefloor tracks.

You’re one of the few dance producers to have topped the pop charts.

Even though I had crossover records, they were never cheesy in my opinion. But people always mix up commercial and cheesy, and that’s always the hard thing with dance music.

In one way, it’s good that dance music doesn’t like cheesy music, as it makes the scene more of a special thing.

But people should stay fair to both the underground and the mainstream. In general, it should be about the quality, and not about the marketing or hype around a track.

On the other side, it’s only fair that a lot of people discover you through the crossover hit, and therefore I don’t regret it one bit. My remix of ‘The Creeps’ was a bit more where I wanted to go, but my LP is more of a musical search for who am I, and where do I want to be?

As a commercially successful dance producer, I’ve had to deal with a lot of opinions. Actually, most big dance producers face the same struggle, how to remain underground and credible.

Like who?

I never talk to Eric Prydz, but I know his manager and they have to be extremely careful about his DJ bookings, as the majority of people know him for his crossover hits, but he’s a lot more underground generally. His Pryda and Cirez D tracks are amazing, and very different to his crossover stuff.

Prydz has Pryda and Cirez D, and you now have an underground alias, FLG.

I’ve always said that if you make something, you should never be ashamed of it. I never wanted to use an alias, but the FLG alias made sense for me, as everyone still knows it’s me, but it communicates something different to my name.

By launching FLG, I’m able to go more towards pop music which I did with my album, and use FLG just for the dancefloor cuts.

Why the interest in pop music?

I think my pop making skills came with time, and as a producer, you always want to take your music to the next level.

I’ve always had an interest in funk and soul, but was never interested in mastering instruments. Learning to produce was a nice way for me to make music.

In general house is about just two or four chords, but with a band or a pop song, you have bridges, chord changes, and a lot more possibilities.

Tempo wise also, you can be a lot more creative with pop. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a DJ, but it’s nice to not be bound by house music rules in the studio.

Percentage wise, what’s the split between pop and dance music for you now?

If you look back over the whole year, it’s roughly 50/50. But my album was 70% pop.

Now that I’ve done my album, I’ve had enough of vocals!

When you made ‘Put Your Hands Up’, your studio must have been very different to your pop-making studio now.

My first studio was actually mainly hardware, but nothing interesting ever came out of that. As soon as Logic came along, I jumped to the software side.

So I made ‘Put Your Hands Up’ using just a PC with some speakers in my bedroom. Software recently has got really powerful and I don’t see the need for much hardware.

How has the software improved?

With more power, the more accurate software you can have. For things like reverb, which require a lot of computational power, if you want a nice verb with a nice tail that is very accurate, with more power, it sounds better. You get better compression these days also.

Technology is moving quite fast at the moment. As you get better tools, it will hopefully make it easier to make better-sounding music.

What producers excite you?

I’ve always admired Eric Prydz, and a lot of the people in the Berlin area are making some amazing grooves, some fucking amazing grooves actually.

Stimming - I really love him. And Hugo from Italy, I really like his stuff. And I’ve always been a big fan of Booka Shade.

I like producers who are understandable, but still out of the box. The guys that are different from the other guys. I try to put myself in that category!

One of the things that makes you unique, is that you actually appear on your own music videos. Not many dance producers do that.

The first three videos I did, were actually done when I didn’t know shit about anything. Ministry of Sound just said, we have three scripts for your video, choose one.

So my last video, was actually my first proper video. I hate being in it though, as I’m no actor, but you have to put your face on it.

We took our own team along to make the video, and it’s a bit different from the usual tits n ass. This is the first video that is kind of getting to where I want.

There is one director who is the man for music videos, and I really want to get him to direct something for me one day. He’s the guy who did all of the Fatboy Slim videos. But now it’s really hard to get those kind of budgets. Cool and creative people are not that accessible.

Why do you think it’s important to put a face to music?

It’s only natural. You have to have a name or a logo for your band. But I probably have to put my face to the music more than most house producers, as I’ve had some crossover hits, and you want people to at least find your music.

Do you ever get recognised in the street?

Sometimes I get recognised, but usually it only happens at airport check-in, as my artist name is actually my real name.

The funny thing is, if I stand next to a DJ booth waiting to go on, only one or two people might recognise me. So it’s not so bad.

It sounds like you haven’t been much in control of your own destiny, since ‘Put Your Hands Up’. Do you feel like you’re finally going in the direction you want?

For the first two years after ‘Put Your Hands Up’, I couldn’t take control, even if I wanted to. But now it’s like, where do I wanna be, where am I happy? Is it small, is it big?

In the end I just want to do what you like. And maybe back in the early days, I was really naive.

How so? Would you change anything from those early and successful days?

I dunno? I always figured, I’d try to do my best. Sometimes you make mistakes but I don’t regret anything. Of course, you could have done some things better.

I always try to look forwards not back. Even though that sounds super cheesy, it’s true.

So where now?

I would love to be a Faithless, or a Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada, or Daft Punk - not musically I mean, but stylistically these acts had a defined sound.

I want to get to a point where my style is so defined that it doesn’t matter if it’s house or pop, or chill out, just that it is yours.

They managed to get there. The hard thing is, once you get there, you’re also alone. If there are 15 people doing the same sound as you, you’re not alone.

You’re certainly not alone now, with your record label Flamingo Recordings. How many people work there?

In total, around 10. It’s structured like every other dance music company, I guess. There’s a couple of guys doing the label, some one doing internet stuff. I basically just make the music, and we have a financial guy, and a PR company taking care of the marketing and accounts.

I never imagined I would have my own company, so I’m finding out at the moment if I like it. But I think about building a studio in my garage sometimes and just putting out tracks, and I could always do that. But I’m gaining new skills, and I have people working for me, so it’s always interesting.

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