Interview: Julien Chaptal

Interview: Julien Chaptal

27 September, 2008 | 3.14PM

• Written by: Ben Raven
• Filed under: Music News: julien chaptal, remote area

Julien’s album ‘Tokens’ on key Dutch label Remote Area is one of the best long players to bubble up from the underground this year.

Find out some more about Amsterdam’s favourite Parisian after the jump.

We’ve been banging on about the Dutch scene all summer on Beatportal.

Julien Chaptal’s new album is proof that something special is happening in the Netherlands.

Although a Parisian at heart, Julien’s been living in Amsterdam for almost a decade and has become a must-see name on the live techno circuit in Holland.

‘Tokens’ is an inspiring dancefloor journey with the energy of a live band in full flight set improvising on stage masked in the synths and drum machines of electronic music.

Tracks like ‘Luther’s Finest’ are simple peak time dancefloor workouts while others like ‘La Ribouldingue’ tweak out the tension or like ‘Lechuguilla’ provide the melodic plateaus to give all the buildups he creates a pay off.

We spoke to Julien to find out some more about the album and why he fell in love with Amsterdam.

What’s your favourite track on your new album and how did it come about?

That’s a difficult one; I really have a few favorites.

But since I have to choose I would say ‘La Ribouldingue’.

I think this track is quite different from anything I’ve done before, and I’m not really sure whether I’ll be able to touch this territory again soon.

It all started with the djembe rhythm, then I played the bass line over it with a keyboard and everything went very quickly from then on, the whole track was made in one afternoon.

I sampled the horn section while working as a monitor engineer in a live venue for Incognito (the funk/jazz band behind the huge 90’s hit ‘Always There’), I put so many effects on it for the riff that it barely sounds like horns anymore.

The album works both ways as an engaging live set with peaks and troughs and as a listening experience. Was this your intention?

Making an album is something I have been thinking about for a very long time.

One thing I was certain of even before I started working on it is that I did not want to restrict myself with one type of sound or style; I just like too many things in dance music.

It also had to be an album which could make people dance, and yet, because it is being released on CD, I really wanted to make sure it would be music you can listen to at home or in the car as well. 

A lot of people think that this is a live set, but it is really a mix of the tracks.

Live, I try to deconstruct and rebuild them, I still try to be all over the place musically but I do not play interludes.

How did you find yourself becoming a French man in Amsterdam?

I first visited Amsterdam with a friend in the summer of 1997 on my way back from a year living in Texas.

It was really an eye opener, we visited club Mazzo and met people who were much wilder than anyone we had ever met before.

The music scene was peaking at the time, DJs like Angello and Cellie were really rocking the floor and I was introduced to E at Dance valley festival a few days later.

That was all great but I couldn’t picture myself staying there at the time so I went back to live in Paris, and later Montreal.

I only returned to Amsterdam at the end of 1999 to settle and started working as a technician for a TV music show, and later at the Melkweg venue as a sound engineer.

The life in Amsterdam is just so much more relaxed than in any other big city I’ve been to.

The fact is you should probably call Amsterdam a big village rather than a big city, you travel by bicycle and the feeling is just great.

The people really make it what it is though.

It’s like an island in the Netherlands. I hear most people never leave the city.

Tell us about your teaching job.

I started teaching a dance music production course almost two years ago at the Rockacademie in Tilburg.

Gert Van Veen (the man behind techno pioneers Quazar), who I am also organizing Welcome To The Future parties with, was teaching there at the time, and he invited me to coach his students for performing live.

I really enjoyed doing it, the relationship with the school developed and I am now busy coordinating the dance music department.

It’s an amazing job, I get to share what I know about producing and performing, and the students are very talented, some of them managing successful careers as producers while studying, I also learn a lot from them!

Were you musical as a kid? Have you got a musical family?

My father was playing a bit of guitar when I was a kid but it was really just a hobby for him.

He encouraged me to start playing piano at the age of seven though, and I took lessons for about six years.

I was bathed in music of course, as most people are. My parents would listen to a lot of disco, funk, and Latin music.

I also got to listen to all the big ‘70s rock bands.

I loved making mixtapes for my friends and family at a young age with my dad’s record player.

You couldn’t mix though to you’d have to stop the cassette recording in between each record change, or be really fast.

How did you discover electronic music?

As a kid I did hear commercial house music on the radio, but it wasn’t until 1993 or ‘94 that I went to my first rave party.

It was around Paris and a friend of mine was asked to work there as a volunteer for a charity organization for the homeless.

It was something I had never seen, the hall was huge, I saw a guy running around with a potatoes bag on his head, some people were lying inside these huge speakers.

And most of all the music was absolutely mental, Manu Le Malin was playing, hard and fast, I loved it.

I went on to buy Thunderdome compilations, but my interests shifted very quickly to club and groove techno sounds, once I discovered DJs like Derrick May, Laurent Garnier or Carl Cox, I never turned back.

How did you get your break as a producer?

I was producing some disco house tracks together with a friend of mine, Noah Pepper, and we decided to start performing together as Le Clic in 2002.

We teamed up later with Aron Friedman who I had seen as an MC in an electro act.

Le Clic was really successful on the live circuit In the Netherlands and we were offered to do an EP on Darko Esser’s label, Wolfskuil.

Around that time, Dylan Hermelijn (2000 and one) asked me for some tracks for his newly founded Remote Area imprint.

The ‘Moldy Beans EP’ was the result, and my break as a solo producer, the record was a success and we decided to collaborate for the coming years.

‘Tokens’ is my first album, and I guess in a way, the break I was looking for.

It is a format I like more than singles because you get to tell a story. I feel like working on a new album right away.

What do you love about electronic music right now?

The music is evolving constantly at the moment; a lot of producers go through great lengths to produce something fresh the result is very exciting.

The German minimalist sounds are giving birth to all kinds of new styles, organic on one side, and even more abstract and digital on the other hand.

Of course electronic music works in cycles, and I am really happy to hear ‘90s inspired house music tracks making their way up everyone’s charts.

The sound I like the most is warm, with strong funky grooves, and there is a lot of it coming out.

This is truly a great time for dance music!

What do you hate?

I’d have to say I dislike stagnating movements, and at the moment I suppose it would have to be trance music, someone’s going to have to reinvent it someday.

What are your top five tracks currently on Beatport?

In no particular order:

Attias ‘Hanami’ (Rush Hour)

Senor Coconut ‘Chocolatina (Mirco Violi Remix)’ (Be Chosen)

Decimal ‘Detect this (Mathias Kaden Remix)’ (Material)

Polder ‘Bondage (D’julz Remix)’ (Intacto)

Gruber, Nuernberg ‘Laugh lines’ (8Bit)

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