Focus on France: Teki Latex (Sound Pellegrino)

Focus on France: Teki Latex (Sound Pellegrino)

6 September, 2010 | 11.01PM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: focus on, france, sound pellegrino, teki latex

Borrowing their design motif from the venerable Deutsche Grammophon label, Sound Pellegrino are a rising force on the Parisian underground. With a smart, modern, irreverent sound and an unusually open-minded policy, their roster runs from local heroes like Para One and Mikix the Cat to Jesse Rose, Round Table Knights, and L-Vis 1990.

As part of our Focus on France series, Sound Pellegrino’s Teki Latex leads us to the source of their spring. Don’t forget to also check out our “Focus On France” compilation featuring free music downloads from Cassius, dOP, Martin Solveig and more.

Which were the most important local clubs, DJs, and record labels for you when you were first getting into electronic dance music? What were they like, and how did they influence your own music and career?

Feadz was super important in our introduction to dance music. We (TTC and our extended crew, Para One, Tacteel etc.) were hip-hop kids who were starting to get into IDM and labels like Warp, back when the whole indie rap scene was starting to collaborate with cats like Prefuse73, Chocolate industries, Funkstorung, Techno Animal. We were really into the abstract/intelligent side of electronic music, but we could feel that we were kind of growing out of it and getting more and more fascinated by more modern and mainstream forms of hip-hop/electronic hybrids—people like Timbaland, Neptunes and the whole dirty south thing that was emerging with Ludacris, Ca$h money… And then Feadz came and really shifted our focus on the dancefloor again.

He was really into Neptunes and Timbaland himself, but he was mixing it with techno and house, and it sounded beautiful. He introduced us to DJ culture, he really taught us about techno, mainly via Bpitch Control since he was releasing singles for them, and he made it OK to listen to more straightforward 4x4 house and techno beats again. It was all happening in clubs like Rex, Batofar, and later on Le Paris Paris and Le Triptyque (which is now called the Social Club).

This was around 2002, so the big thing at the time was electroclash, and as TTC had the same distributor as people like Vitalic or Miss Kittin, we started really getting into the more techno aspect of that whole movement. Of course Daft Punk were a big unconscious influence because they were always around, and soon we became interested in the whole French touch movement and people like Jess & Crabbe too. Jess & Crabbe were playing a lot of booty house and ghetto tech at the time so that really affected us a lot. Around 2004 TTC released an album called ‘Batards Sensibles’ which was sort of a synthesis of all these influences and I think it kind of defined a small yet influential part of the Parisian scene at that time. 

What is it that sets French or Parisian music apart? Do you think that it’s possible to define the “sound” of your France or Paris? Has this changed over time?

Music is getting more and more global due to this little fun thing called the internet, but there have been hints of French electronic identities over the years. The main one is the funky-disco filtered house sound of the “French touch” that emerged in the late ‘90s, but when you look at the state of dance music now, this style of music has more representatives in Australia than in France.

The French touch mixed with French hip-hop’s influence and the hybrids that came out of the micro-scene that TTC and Para One were a part of around 2004-2006 kind of set up the foundations for the second wave of French touch that saw the rise of labels like Ed Banger and Institubes, and that is definitely another very specific sound typical of France.

We as Sound Pellegrino release music made by artists from across the globe but we are definitely defending a certain French vision of house through our choices, our DJ sets, or even our artwork. There is a new-new-new French scene developing around people like Brodinski, Radioclit (let’s not forget they are half French!), and labels/crews like Bebup, YoungGunz, and Club Cheval, who are mixing tropical influences with a certain fun/tongue-in-cheek/easy-going approach.

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

When it comes to relative newcomers: Douster, French Fries, Bambounou, Manaré, Myd, Sam Tiba, Canblaster, Panteros666 if you like sparse house music influenced by sounds from all over the world, from African rhythms to cumbia via UK garage beats. If you’re more into straightforward minimalist techno with a colder (yet still funky) edge, i recommend a label called Get The Curse Music, whose main representative is Clement Meyer.

People like Brodinksi, Gucci Vump, and Momma’s Boy aka Mikix the Cat are making really amazing music right now. Of course if you want a glimpse of France’s electronic history check out Roulé and Crydamoure, the two labels founded by Daft Punk, and check out the amazing Jess & Crabbe. Get familiar with the darker French electro/techno sound of the early 2000s with Miss Kittin, the Hacker, Oxia, Vitalic, David Caretta. Buy all the old Feadz releases on Bpitch—they are true gems, he and Para One probably invented modern techno-dubstep without knowing it, 10 years before the big dubstep craze.

Sound Pellegrino on Beatport

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