continuing from part I…
Right now the disco is here for sure. It almost feels like a reaction to the trashy electro that made every club go crazy a couple of years ago.
- Yeah maybe. Disco is uplifting music. To find a loop or a chorus that is really outstanding and uplifting and really makes you wanna dance. Music that really makes you wanna dance, not forceful like the distortion stuff, it’s upliftning in a different kind of way – it makes the hair in the back of your neck to stand right out. You knew it’s so distorted and so aggressive, it’s propably the same reason why heavy metal is so popular, an aggressiveness – if you were in another room and heard that noise you had to go in to that room because it’s so loud and you want to check it out.
- But with disco, it’s uplifitning in a different way, it’s uplifting chords and the groove and within the bass line it’s like phase, listen at the sound and it’s a lot more about the arrangements and the overall feel of the track. You know it’s like finding the combination between the funky bass, the funky guitar, som synths, piano. It’s the combination of instruments that makes the sound, rather than the huge bassline with loads of distortion. It’s more real sounding. It’s not digital, more man-made. I am glad that people has realized that it’s about more than the sequenzing of things. If something isn’t right on it’s propably a good thing, you know if the snare isn’t at the bar the people realizes oh it sounded so great when that snare wasn’t in sync, it’s like it was played live. Rather than everything beeing dead on.
The feeling of new disco influenced music is something that Louis keeps coming back to. The uplifting feeling of bassdriven music that makes you want to dance when at the same time you can feel the musicianship behind it. The feeling of the music is also something that’s important for him when performing on stage.
- I like the idea of cathing someone’s attention with a sample or, almost not really in pressing the person, but more like surprising them and introduce a sound they already know but done in a new way, something they necessary have to have heard before, but really when they think about it they have. Which is what the whole disco wave is, it’s a new take on an old sound. So, to surprise people and make them want to dance from hearing something refreshing, something different.
Producing
In September the first single, called My Turn, from upcoming album Hello You is ready for release. Louis isn’t one of those producers that produce just for the sake of it. He’s a perfectionist that doesn’t allow more than three people listening to his material while producing and wouldn’t think about putting up an unfinished track on SoundCloud. At the same time you can feel his excitment on getting the right now 70-80 % finished debut album out there. My Turn featuring Yann Destal a k a Modjo on vocals has been ready for almost a year.
- I’m so tired of that track. I can’t listen to it anymore. Still I will probably listen to it all the time when it’s released but right now I hate it.
Speaking about producing with Louis we once again notice the music nerd in him. You can’t help to get overwhelmed by the amount time he probably spends thinking not only about his music in general, but about the process of producing music. It’s like the process of making music is a natural part of him. When getting into talking about why he started to produce electronic music, the answer really doesn’t suprise us.
- When I understood that you have to LEARN an instrument to play it I got tired. I tried playing the bass guitar and the drums but when I didn’t got it right away I stopped. Computers were a different thing.
With computers and the possibillity to sample old songs new ways of producing music is opening up. Modern disco and filter house is two of them. Hip-hop is another one.
- Making modern french house and making modern disco is almost like to working like hiphop producers do, when they sample they sample the drum hits, the snare, the hi-hats, and when it comes to the loop they generally sample the bars, so they’ll sample from kick to snare and the music that is in between that and then from the snare to the next kick, so you’ll sample in bars, basically from that you can create a whole new arrangement from the songs by taking bars, half-bars and mixing then up in the song so it’s exactly what the producers do when producing french house or disco house, that’s why these are so linked.
- The samples, essentially like the Chicago house or french house, disco is hiphop sped up to a disco tempo with filters. In my mind, that’s what disco house and french house is. There’s so close links between these. If you sat down, a hiphop producer and a french house producer and asked them to explain how they work I am pretty sure they are very similar.
Louis La Roche has made himself a name not only by producing his own tracks. Remixes on Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx and Gorillaz has gained appreciation from people all over the world. Being a producer thinking a lot about the process of making music we had to ask about his view on producing remixes versus original tracks as well.
- It is a different way of working. When you got a sample you have an idea of where you wanna go in your head. You know what sound your after, you know which way to go. When you’re doing a remix, you’ve got someone elses idea, their parts,their thoughts and you have that to work with that, and only that. Everything in the remix has to be original material only, you can’t sample things. It’s like you’re stuck to their chords, their key, you can’t go out, you have to come up with an idea within their key and their arrangements. There has been remixes when they’ve sampled just a little bit of the vocals and then done a whole new arrangement, mainly when I remix I’d like to take the vocal line and maybe some other parts like the bass line or a handclap and include them in the remix.
- My way to do a remix is to get the track to completely stand on it’s head. Changing the arrangements completely so it’s almost like a whole new song. But I’m keeping the main essential parts of the song so you know it’s there, like a complete vocal line. If someone hears it in the club they know they recognize the track, but the arrangement surprises them. The backing track almost sounds like it was the original, like the remix was the original. That’s a good sign of a remix, to convince the listener that they are listening to the original.
- And in some cases the remixes do better than the original. A good one recently was the Crookers remix of Kid Cudi Day N Nite. The remix did a lot bigger in the Europe and in the UK, but at the same time in America it was the original that did well.
Louis La Roche will be releasing his upcoming album Hello You sometime during late 2010 or early 2011.
Keep your eyes and ears open. And be ready to dance!
Louis La Roche – My Turn (feat. Yann Destal)
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Etiketter: Louis La Roche