Dimitri From Paris

“My record is not a DJ’s album in the sense that DJs make music now. It’s not a dance music album. As a DJ, I don’t play it. I don’t want to clear the dance floor. It wasn’t made to make people dance, it’s more of a party record or something you put on in the background for a little get-together or a dinner. It’s more of an intimate thing. It’s music for intimate spaces or intimate moments.” Dimitri From Paris

On the remarkable “SACREBLEU,” Dimitri From Paris ” France’s most celebrated DJ ” cooks up a savory melange of house rhythms, modern technology, Left Bank jazz, swanky kitsch, and the bubbly cocktail lounge instrumental music of the swinging 60s.

Monsieur Dimitri’s indomitable wit reveals itself via puckish nods to Gallic cliches and a bounty of television/cinema references. The bossa nova bop of “Une Very Stylish Fille” samples the sax break from the “(Theme to) The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.,” while the liner notes jokingly declare the film-noir-a-go-go “Dirty Larry” to be “the theme to Yellow Productions” upcoming TV series, Inspector Sacrebleu.” The album also includes a pair of versions of Burt Bacharach”s “Nothing To Lose,” a song that originally appeared in Blake Edwards” classic comedy of chaos, The Party, just as homage to another significant Dimitri hero ” Martin Denny, the Sixties’ master of musical “exotica” ” is paid on “Un World Mysteriouse.”

“Basically it’s things that I like,” says Dimitri. “If you go into my apartment you could say it’s filled with references as well. It’s just my taste. I’m a real collector of things. I collect toys, I collect things from the fifties and sixties. Everything that I find interesting I kind of just get it and display it. So this album is like a big showcase really, of things that I’ve got in my mind and everywhere else.”

A post-modern feast of references and touchstones, from TV series like Mission: Impossible and the Gallic fave, Fantomas, to cocktail composers like Esquivel or house music legends such as Frankie Knuckles, ” SACREBLEU” respresents thirty-odd years of Dimitri”s musical and cultural diet.

“It’s like a compilation of different things, different moods,” explains Dimitri. “It could be some kind of trip, you know, you start from one point, then go to the other point without actually getting bored. Myself, I never buy albums because I find them boring. There”s usually a couple of singles that I like in them, but the rest for me is filler. If I do an album, I’m going to try to make something that you can listen to from beginning to end without getting bored.”

Born in Istanbul, in October of “63, Dimitri’s parents were travellers, “hippie intellectuals” who travelled around Europe before settling in Paris. Coming of age in the City of Light, Young Dimitri fell in love with the pulsating beats and hedonistic attitude of golden-age disco, which later brought him to affairs with old-school hip hop, house, and electro. With a multitude of U.S. 12-inch imports crowding his bedroom, Dimitri began to play with a mixing deck and a pair of turntables, pioneering what became known “bedroom culture.”

“Bedroom culture” is a term that describes people DJing in their bedroom,” Dimitri explains. “That is, just DJing for the simple pleasure of mixing and blending sounds together. They’re not necessarily DJs in a professional way. Their goal is not necessarily to go to a club and make people dance. They’re happy enough blending these sounds for themselves and using them to make their own music.”

“Fifteen years ago,” he continues, “DJing didn’t have anything to do with what it is now. Basically, you were a jukebox and you would play what the people wanted. And this is not what I wanted to do. I began to hear these records by the first hip hop DJs, like Afrika Bambaata, and I was very interested by the way they were actually manipulating the records. I’d say, “Wow, you can actually do something with the record. Not just play it, but play around with it.” So I’d be in my bedroom mixing records for hours, making tapes. Nobody would really understand that because, you know, my friends were more interested in playing sports or running after girls.”

As a result of his bedroom mixing style and techniques, in “85 Dimitri was offered a job at the European radio station, CFM. His popularity there led to gigs at other Euro-stations, including Radio 7, Skyrock and NRJ, where he hosted “Megamix,” Europe’s first radio show devoted to house music. 1985 also saw the beginning of Dimitri”s career as producer/remixer, a vocation that has seen him twisting knobs on more than 150 tracks by a diverse variety of artists that includes Bjork, Brand New Heavies, New Order, James Brown, Etienne Daho, Khaled, and Mory Kante.

“Nobody was doing remixes in France,” Dimitri recalls. “Then record companies started coming to me and saying “Well, you know, we’ve got this artist and we’re trying to have an extended version for the clubs, and you’re doing interesting things on the radio. Can you work on it?” And that’s how it started. I did the usual process of working with a 24-track master tape and rearranging the 24 tracks without adding anything, just extending the whole thing. Now it’s so easy to add your own stuff. I mean, that’s what they ask you to do. But back then, you would change just one chord and they would go mad, like, “What did you do to my record?” or “Why did you change it? Who are you to change my record?” So if there is one thing I created in my own country is that I helped in the evolution of the remix, of the way people handle club versions.”

As his music began to define the sound of tres chic Parisian nightlife, Dimitri began coordinating soundtracks for such designers as Chanel, Gaultier, Hermes, Fendi, and Lagerfeld. It all started when Dimitri became friends with another French DJ who was asked to spin for runway fashion shows.

“He didn’t know how to mix,” Dimitri remembers, “so he simply asked me, “Well, can you help me mix these records?” And I said, “Sure. We can do this together,” so he was selecting the music and I was mixing it up. It was always a challenge because he would select really different types of music. It would be like, rock, to electro and then hip hop, and I would have to mix all that. We started working with Lagerfeld. Then from Lagerfeld to Chloe and then Chanel, etc, etc. Chanel would film the actual catwalk show, and then they would soundtrack it with the music we had mixed together, and these tapes would go everywhere around the world in all the Chanel boutiques and it would play in the background. So one day some singer sued them because they didn’t pay the royalty rights in America for the use of a sample, and they came to us and said “We need copyright-free music from you guys.” I asked them, “What do you want?” and they said, “Whatever you want as long as it’s copyright-free.” So that gave me the dream opportunity to do, well, whatever I wanted. I said, “Wow, this is the chance to use all my references from other records,” like soundtracks and hip hop, and all these things. I started blending things together and they were really happy with that.”

In “94, two Parisian scenesters, named Chris and Yellow, founded the indie label dubbed Yellow Productions. Yellow’s raison d’etre was to release new and exciting music, adorned with comic conceptual sleeve art. And who better to fulfill that goal but Dimitri?

“After a couple of years I had all these tracks that were basically used just a single time,” he says. “The fashion houses were asking me to do four tracks for every season, so that was like eight tracks a year. When it came to around like twenty tracks, I said, “There”s some things here I really like, what should I do with them?” And I went to see these guys at Yellow Productions and they said “Yeah, sure, we like these. Let”s put them out.”

The DJ released a pair of EPs and a mini-LP, “ESQUISSES,” as well as contributing to the “LA YELLOW 357” compilation, before, in May “96, when Yellow Productions released “SACREBLEU.” An immediate critical hit, “SACREBLEU” received five stars in England’s Q Magazine, and was awarded “Best Dance Album of the Year” from the influential Mixmag. The public reacted with a similar passion: the Yellow Productions” release of “SACREBLEU” sold some 50,000 copies worldwide before the disque was picked up by east west.

“I know it’s very strange music in general,” Dimitri From Paris says, “and probably too strange for the mass market. But then again, it wasn’t designed to be a mass market thing. It is a very, very personal record. But I try to make my music as accessible as it can be because my goal is to touch people, not to make music for a small circle of friends and initiated people congratulating themselves.”