Focus on France: Infiné

Focus on France: Infiné

22 September, 2010 | 3.50AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Videos: agoria, danton eeprom, focus on, france, francesco tristano, infine

Despite the involvement of co-founder Agoria, the French label Infiné isn’t really a techno label, at least not by any conventional definition. Instead, it emphasizes the crossover between electronic dance culture and contemporary classical music. Fittingly, the label’s first release was a solo piano rendition of Derrick May’s “Strings of Life,” arranged and performed by the accomplished young musician Francesco Tristano, and accompanied by remixes from Apparat and Kiki. (The label’s second release, on the other hand, was Danton Eeprom’s “Wings of Death"/"Venom Dance” single, featuring two tracks of pure, dark techno.)

In the four years since, Infiné has continued to tweak conventional categories across adventurous releases fromTristano, Eeprom, Clara Moto, Tristano’s band project Augfang, the experimentalist Arandel, and more. We spoke to Infiné label manager Julien Gagnebien about the ways that France’s club-music history helped create the preconditions for the label.

Our Focus on France series is drawing to a close, so don’t forget to grab your free copy of the Focus on France compilation featuring Arandel, Handycraft, dOP, Cassius, Dan Ghenacia, and Martin Solveig. It’s available through the end of the month, and after that, c’est finit!

Which local clubs and record labels were most influential to you when you were coming up?

In France, the underground club culture is, sadly, essentially located in Paris (Rex Club for sure, the Pulp back in the days). Back in the days, some secondary towns like Dijon were offering high quality parties but now good electronic music is mostly promoted by big music festivals of the like of Trans Musicales in Rennes, Nuits Sonores in Lyon or Scopitone in Nantes. That might be related to some kind of singular French nostalgis for rave parties. Electronic music in France is to be enjoyed outdoors or in former industrial warehouses.

There were naturally some quality in some pure techno labels of the likes of GoodLife ([[Oxia, The Hacker) and we also had very cool specialized record stores (Katapult in Paris) but with time, it seems, they remain locally quite marginal and most of them have now disappeared.

What is it that sets French music apart? Do you think that it’s possible to define a French or Parisian sound?

Getting back to how French electronic music sounds, I think this limited development of the pure club culture forces the labels to merge electronic with other genres and develops some music that everybody could listen at home or which could fit to broader stages.

If you take a cult French label like F Communications, Laurent Garnier and Eric Morand were among the first one to merge jazz and house (St Germain, “Crispy Bacon") African rhythms (Frederic Galliano), crazy rocking electro (Mr. Oizo)… some of those records have reached impressive sales figures worldwide at the time. On the other hand, Daft Punk have been the first band to popularize Dance Music to a crowd that used to listen to rock music. Ed Banger and Institubes have kept on investigating a decade after Daft Punk the same artistic direction and again with some international successes like Justice. 

So of course, France was king of filtered house and electro house, but I think what makes France so specific is its ability to re-invent the “club sound” and to popularize it to a broader population. In some way, that is also what we are trying to achieve with InFiné by bringing young artists with a classical background to push the limit of electronic music. You should definitely check out Aufgang and Francesco Tristano’s next album. 

Which artists and labels from your country should people be looking out for, and why?

There are very good specialized labels like Circus Company and Deeply Rooted House but most of the French labels have a profound liking for eclecticism. Easy catch: Kill The DJ, Tigersushi, Versatile Records, Initial Cuts. 

A fistful of interesting new labels have emerged for a couple of years. Funnily most of them are coming from the strong French “blogosphère.” Often musically super educated, those young guys have now decided to set up their own labels and not so surprisingly they are targeting an international audience. We will be checking the developments of Get The Curse in the few months to come to heat the dancefloor up and Fool House for its more leftfield approach. I think Danton Eeprom’s Fondation should also reveal some nice surprises… check his remix for Tristesse Contemporaine. 

Infiné Music

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