Part of the illustrious story of Roulé – the relatively short-lived label of Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter – DJ Falcon has managed to bag himself a place in French house history without having created a whole lot of music. It’s been quality not quantity with him – his debut EP that gives this article its name, the anthemic Together and So Much Love To Give with Bangalter, that mental remix of Cassius’ La Mouche – the small output he made left a lasting impression.
But where did he go? Roulé disappeared off the face of the earth, Daft Punk turned into global superstars, and nothing was heard of DJ Falcon (aka Stéphane Quême – cousin on Alain Quême aka Alan Braxe) thereafter. After we saw his name on the line-up for Kitsuné Maison’s party in London this Easter, we just had to get him on the phone and get the lowdown. He told us about his return to music and more in our exclusive interview.
Tell us about growing up with music. Did you always live in Paris? And did you and your cousin Alain establish musical ties quite early on?
Yeah yeah yeah…I was born in Paris city. I lived all my life there, except I have a house in the South of France – Biarritz – ‘cos I really enjoy surfing a lot. So I went more and more and I spent the last year [there], but now I’m back in Paris because I’m doing music again with my cousin Alan Braxe.
You know what, it’s a bit surprising. It took us a long time to realise. I mean, he entered in exactly the same way as me, on Roulé – he had a collaboration with Thomas Bangalter, same as me – so it’s really similar and he’s my cousin, so obviously we are a bit surprised that it took so long to do something together. It just feels like it’s the right time, and also because we started to DJ also. I was pushing him also to DJ a bit, and we did a tour in America last year, so we started talking about this…but it took me a bit to get back into music.
How did you discover house music when you were young? Was it always through imports in record stores?
I was doing a lot of skateboarding with Pedro [Winter – Busy P] and he was my best mate and stuff, so I know the guy since so many years, and I used to work a little bit in fashion and stuff at my own brand, and this is how we started to go out. I used to get invited to some clubs and parties and blah blah blah, and Pedro was always with me at the time – so we both discovered the club scene at the same time. Right before this, we started going into some rave parties also at the same time, and then Pedro started getting really into it and organising his own party, and so started DJing. So we started DJing at this time. I basically started DJing with Pedro because he used to live in the same building as me, like the one apartment on top of me, and he used to have Technics – so this is how I started DJing. And I DJed for the first time at this party he used to do at the Palace, like 12 years ago.
And you met Daft Punk through him?
Yeah, but I found out I was in the same school as Guy-Maneul, and we just knew the guys a little bit…but it’s definitely true, through Pedro.
How did you get the job in the A&R department at Virgin?
I did this just for one year to be honest, ‘cos at the time I was organising parties and one of the A&Rs from the Belgian group really enjoyed my party, the DJ I had booked and the flyer that I did – so he wanted to meet me. And then after a few meetings he proposed me to work with him as an A&R for Delabel it was called – it’s like a sub-section of Virgin. So I just did it for one year to be honest. I’m not really excited about working on the big major companies and stuff.
You must have learnt a lot at Virgin. What were the most important things you learnt there?
It was really interesting to learn what’s behind the business side, but at the same time…I don’t know…I prefer the reactivity of small labels. It was just a big machine, it was too slow – plenty of ideas, but at the end just a few ideas….and everything just so slow…it wasn’t that exciting. I prefer like maybe the American model: you have an idea, people believe in it, and then you just go for it. Big, major company – I don’t know, maybe it’s just not my stuff.
So the opposite to that was working with Roulé…
When I started releasing stuff on Roulé, we had so much fun with Thomas and trying to find ideas – and the next day it was done, you know? Of course Thomas is such a wonderful guy and Roulé at the time was on top, so the whole time was really exciting of course.
Roulé and Crydamoure were two incredible labels. Why did Guy-Man and Thomas decide to stop running them?
You know what, Roulé is not officially over. It’s not finished. Crydmoure, yeah, but Roulé is still on…for some reason, I don’t know, ‘cos there’s nothing really playing on it,…but it’s not over. So maybe one day you know, maybe something else…because Thomas and Roulé was all about surprising people. So you never know what to expect from Thomas, which is good. But officially, Roulé is still on.
Nice! Bringing us up to present day, you are back making music…
I started going back into the studio at like, the beginning of February, and it just took me a bit of time to get back into production. I was really interested in modular synthesisers, stuff like this. It was the whole processes of learning new equipment and trying to find a bit of new direction and blah blah blah. So I’ve been spending almost two months with Alan, so we’ve got a couple of demo stuff that we probably need to finish this summer, so I hope to release stuff by September or something – but definitely this year.
And the good thing is that with Alan, we had so much fun doing this that we want to keep going and extend the whole idea. Next year from September from September we will keep going and will try to produce some more music and see what’s going on.
What sort of stuff have you been making? What can we expect?
We did some tracks more kind of like techno stuff, some more classic stuff with piano sounds, kind of pop…we try a lot of different stuff, which is good. Alan and me, we both like a lot of different kinds of music, and I feel when we start doing some tracks…we did tracks at 80BPM or 130BPM, from simply techno stuff to super-classic stuff…which is maybe a bit of a problem, ‘cos it’s not maybe defined now, you know? The style will go a little bit everywhere, but for us the main thing is to have fun and then the production side, we’re gonna find a link between all those different stuffs.
I was on the road a lot, and I’m enjoying so much travelling. For me, all the last year was wonderful, going through the world all the time…and I’m doing a lot of photography too, so this is also why I was not that much into production and stuff. But it’s really exciting – I feel like I want to come back into production.
Where can we see some of your photography?
I have some stuff on my Facebook. But they erased my favourite picture, because it’s just some naked girl or whatever…
DJ Falcon plays at Kitsune Maison at Heaven in London on Easter Sunday 4th April go to www.neonnoiseproject.com for full details.