Date
of Interview:
22nd June, 2001
Contributed by:
Cyclone
Dimitri From Paris has experienced unexpected crossover success in Australia with his mix-CD A Night At The Playboy Mansion - a quirky collaboration with Hugh Hefner's empire and the French nightclub Respect Is Burning. It even entered the top 50. No wonder, then, that the French DJ is now a regular visitor to these shores, selling out gigs in advance.
Part of Dimitri's appeal is that he's cultivated a strong persona - he comes across as a suave Continental with a love of the 50s, 60s and 70s aesthetics, and kitsch. Dimitri laughs when asked if his apartment in Paris really is styled as a retro mansion. "Actually, it is!," he insists. "Yeah, I'm not faking it, I really like it. It's more late 50s - mid-60s that I really like in terms of a style, as opposed to early 70s. My favourite period is '60 to '68 in terms of style and design. I love furniture and I'm always visiting furniture stores (laughs) and just complaining that I cannot bring this back because it's so big. When I go to Scandinavia they have beautiful furniture; when I go to America - like, in small towns - you see some amazing stuff, and it's really cheap, but you've got your two record bags and you're not gonna bring back a sofa with you. But, yeah, I'm really into that, definitely. I love it!"
In fact, Dimitri was among the first wave of producers to spring from the 'French touch' scene, delivering his ingenuous debut album Sacre Bleu - heavily influenced by the Continental music of the 50s and 60s - in late 1996. The Parisian admits that his follow-up is long overdue. Indeed, Dimitri has been forced to delay work on it because he's constructing a studio. However, he has started the project and will finish it around August. "At the moment all the demos are ready, but I have to finalise the songs, and get them ready, get them recorded, really, so thatŐs pretty much where I'm at," he begins. "It's definitely not gonna be dancefloor material, I keep the dancefloor side of things to my compilations or to the remixes I do for other people. It's gonna be something that can be listened to at home in a chilled out atmosphere, so, in that sense, it's gonna be probably more a follow-up to the first album than anything close to the Playboy Mansion CDs that most people know of me recently."
Nevertheless, Dimitri is quietly thrilled that Playboy Mansion has sold so well in Australia considering that it's not obviously commercial - hard, anthemic - dance music. The DJ hasn't necessarily experienced anything like this elsewhere in the world. Now Dimitri plans to complete a second volume - with a different concept. "It's gonna be, basically, What happens after the Playboy Mansion? The party's over, and then what's next?" It sounds naughty but nice.
Last year Dimitri likewise put his name to a compilation, Disco Forever, a collection of rare disco classics issued by BBE. "The response was pretty good - I mean, I think they sold about 40,000 units, which is pretty good for a super obscure compilation of disco that even most of the disco people didn't know."
One decade Dimitri hasn't explored in his work is the 80s - which was when he took up DJing. "I have a lot of emotional attachment to it because these are the records I started playing out as a DJ," he says. "I really don't like the style that I see in fashion, because I think the 80s was probably one of the ugliest periods in terms of design, but musically it has a cheeky sound to it - like, with the more-or-less good use of the early synthesizers and the particular sound it gave to pop music and New Wave, and English pop in general. So it's something that I'm quite attached to and it's definitely gonna come back big, because you can see the trends pointing out in every form, and also in the music form. It's something that I feel quite at ease with because I got brought up on that, so my musical taste just got shaped around the 80s. I play a few things from the 80s in my sets, but I'm not an 80s fanatic like Les Rythmes Digitales or even Daft Punk (the new album is very, very 80s). So style-wise I'm kinda stuck in the 60s but, in terms of music, I always like a bit of 80s sound in my things. I always did, actually, because that's part of my culture."
Dimitri continues to DJ world over - he is touching down in Australia for the second time in recent months. "I'm DJing because I cannot get into the studio and, of course, people call me up, so I say, 'Well, I'd rather do this in the meantime.' DJing can be tricky because it's like instant gratification - I mean, if it works, people are there and they're happy - and doing a record is a much longer process, where you really don't know what's gonna happen way after it's been done. It's a lot of anxiety - like, Are they gonna like it? Are they gonna like it? - as opposed to when you play a record you know instantly whether they like it or not and you're less responsible, anyway, because it's not your record, it's the one you pick up. So putting a record out is much more of an investment and a commitment for an artist. It also takes a lot of time because there's a lot of pressure." So true. |
|
Also
in this section :
