Meet the French jesters, dOP

Meet the French jesters, dOP

8 October, 2008 | 2.21AM

• Written by: Amanda Connon-Unda
• Filed under: Music News: circus company, dop, eklo, noze

The trio dOP are the latest French sensation, but unlike Justice or Daft Punk, or disco house or any other French sound that might come to your mind, dOP sound more like Nôze.

Beatportal grabs Dam from dOP to ask him some questions, but it ends up turning into a joke fest.

The trio, Clement Zemstov, Jonathan Illel and Damien ‘Dam’ Vandesande, started making rock and hip hop first, and then got into club music, particularly vocal-tinged tech house, jazzy deep house and wonky minimal.

Nôze actually are in part responsible for introducing dOP to the sounds of club music several years ago.

We heard that Nicolas Sfintescu from Nôze gave dOP a secret book called ‘The 7 Arts of Techno’, but when Beatportal asks Dam about the book he says they aren’t allowed to talk about it.

“We want to give Beatportal some information - I just hope Nico never reads this interview because he will be furious with us,” says Dam, but after a full court press he reveals the golden rules of techno.

“The rules are: Never be on stage sober; never go into a club if you don’t play; never travel with low costs....and also never play with low costs; never play techno without speakers; and always play the keyboard standing up.”

Those are quite the rules of engagement, which could explain their lively and over-the-top stage manner.

Apparently, says Dam, “The complete book is made up of around a thousand pieces of advice and rules.”

That’s not all Dam tells us. He also shares secrets about dOP’s special rider when working in the studio.

For such an engaging and brilliant band we expected to hear a lot of technical information about their instruments, but Dam says their rider usually consists of “One bottle of pastis, one bottle of vodka, 250 grams of weed, five to 10 ecstasy pills, 10 grams of cocaine, one computer, one microphone, two saucissons, three to 10 friends, some expensive girls, a lot of couscous and a few beers.”

Whilst the band like a joke, their music isn’t - dOP’s latest EP entitled ‘I’m Just a Man’ out on Eklo Records is stellar.

With keys and jazzy horns on the track ‘Horns’ N Roses’, this EP follows up their highly praised tracks such as the earthy Afro-fusion ‘Foly feat. Sibiri Samaké’ on Milnor Modern, and their remixes for Nôze on Circus Company.

‘I’m Just a Man’, the title track from their EP, is funky, with percussion and sultry vocals reminiscent of emotive deep house or jazz-soul.

There is no song structure lacking here – rather than tracky minimal music, they’ve produced a lush and full sounding EP that has a good pace for dancefloors, but is not hollow sounding, monotonous or unchanging.

Keep an eye on these boys (and listen to their fabulously funky tracks in the player below), they’re sure to go far.

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