World Exclusive Interview! 4 times World DMC Champions unveil their brand new album ‘Tetra’
The 4 times World DMC Champions are back grabbing the headlines with the release of their brand new album ‘Tetra’. Using turntables as bona-fide musical instruments, C2C combine unparalleled technical dexterity with flowing intuitive musicality in crafting a deeply melodic and atmospheric blend of electro, soul and hip hop that recalls the unmediated, euphoria-inducing joy of electronic and sample-based pioneers such as The Avalanches, Justice and Daft Punk. Dan Prince catches up with Atom as the band fine tune their hugely anticipated live shows for 2013…
Atom – welcome back to DMCWORLD. An incredible start to 2013 for you with the up coming release of your new album ‘Tetra’. When we last interviewed you 10 months ago the album was planned for a September release…so why the delay? The world has been waiting!?!
“Hi Dan, good to be back at DMC! Thanks for this interview request; it’s always great to come back to our roots! And as for the album, well, it’s always hard to find the right date to release an album. Sorry for the wait – that’s all we can say!”
The album has a huge 70s vibe thanks to your turntable manipulation and rearrangement of various vintage instruments such as strings, brass, bass, keyboards and guitar. Where did you draw inspiration from for the album – what artists gave you direction with the sounds?
“We can’t really name all of the artists who inspired us, there’s too many. But for sure we built our culture listening to 90’s hip hop such as A Tribe Called Quest and Gangstarr, digging the original samples which opened us to a whole new world of music: Soul, Funk, Jazz, Blues, Bossa Nova etc…But we also have more modern influences that you can hear in our drums or synths sounds. In our songs we always like to mix organic, vintage influences with digital, dynamic sounds from today.”
‘Tetra’ features 18 tracks including 4 edits/cover and a remix – all with their own flavors. Please talk us through this incredible long player with a few words on each tune…
The Cell
”We chose to put this track at the beginning of the album and at the beginning of our live set because it’s a song that begins with a tiny sound and develops into something explosive, rich and charged. The title “The Cell” has to do with cells multiplying and the relationship between the smallest and the biggest things. We thought it was a good opening title for the listener, the audience and the live act.”
Down The Road
”The first demo was very different from the version that exists today. It was a demo worked on with a strong Blues feel to it. We called out to friends of ours: a Blues guitarist and an Harmonica player. We all got in the studio, and took the stems that we had and the four of us started scratching solos and tried to give it some C2C feel with a Blues vibrancy – like the one we had back in the days…at that show DMC in 2005.”
Kings Season
”Kings Season features a rapper from Chicago called Rita J and a singer from a band called Moongai, Eva. This track is about the Kings Season thematic, which is a reflection on the “Arab Spring”. It’s more of an observation on the way things happened, the way all these Kings fell one after the other.”
Because Of You
”This song features John Pigeon who is a rapper and singer from LA. The session with him went really well, he gave it his all with his unique energy. We then went over it by scratching up the vocals, and bringing in some original samples to give it a little C2C touch. For the record, we even used our own voices, we gave a little bit of ourselves in the song.
Delta
”In the tracklisting it’s ranked 5, but it’s actually the last song that we finished, only a couple of days before the mastering. It was originally a sample made up of 4 chords that had been placed in a certain way that worked well. Then one day 20syl did some tests using that grid and accelerating the tempo. Straight away, the track became more funky, even more electronic. Then we added some vocals and there it was: Delta !
Who Are You
”It started from our typical way of doing music; we were jamming with our four turntables. We invited three great singers to record the backing vocals; it was exactly what we needed. Olivier Daysoul who we discovered on Onra’s album sang on it and it was a prefect combination and result of what we had in mind: A Soulful track!”
Happy
”Happy features Derek Martin, a soul man from the seventies who collaborated with absolute legends. We starting playing interments and creating our samples, trying to make crazy structures and original ones as well. Then, Derek came to our studio in Nantes and spent two days of really cool collaboration with us. It’s that collaboration that makes the song rich and gives it its great vibe.”
Give Up The Ghost
”For the record, it started from a demo that didn’t change that much even if it was less digital, less electronic at first. There was an original sample feel to it. We wanted a voice that would fly above the track, a high-pitched masculine voice and when Jay Jay Johanson’s name came up, we thought that there was some kind of legend around the guy and it turned out that he knew quite a few DJs. His voice fits perfectly to the atmosphere of the track, it’s very melancholic, the emotion is here. We passed the vocals through the C2C machine, and obtained what we had in mind.”
The Beat
”It started from a demo that 20syl did in September 2010, during the first session. It was very funk, it didn’t have a hip hop side to it. At first we thought it’d be fun it we rapped on the track so we wrote lyrics. When we listened to it, just the four of us, we thought that it was pretty convincing. So we then decided to play it to other people but we lead them to believe it was made by a bunch of American MCs. We didn’t want to tell them that we did the rap, and then have to ask “what do you think of us?” – we wanted objective answers. Our girlfriends, families, close friends and even manager didn’t recognize us. We decided to keep it.”
Genius
”This track was at first a little demo that had to undergo an incalculable amount of changes. I think this track has the most amounts of versions. We wanted to try things and there was something that we really liked about the band Gush; something between the Beach Boys, Queen and the Beatles. We also thought that it was the moment to show a balance on the album, that we couldn’t always be in a musical, instrumental, scratch trip. We wanted to show that we are also capable of doing traditional tracks, so we worked in that direction.”
Together
”This song comes from a work session we made in 2006, 20syl had this afro-inspired demo with the voice of Ledeunff (from Hocus Pocus) on it. The more modern touch came late after that when we choose to use it for the album. Then we re-recorded Ledeunff’s parts and invited Blitz The Ambassador, who blew us live with his band, to pull a verse on the song. Another magical moment happened when Candia recorded the Kora parts, we played him the track looped and he just improvised on it, he gave us much more than we needed! If you listen really well you can hear us following him with a scratch…”
Arcades
”I remember the working process was really long and tedious. First we thought having an MC on it would be nice, then we didn’t make it and just spent time finding and recording sounds that would fit well, but without any precise idea of what the song would become, so we ended leaving it aside and go on other songs. After a few months we went back to work and finally found the courage to tidy all this mess and get a good artistic direction for this track.”
Le Banquet
”We wanted to do a big banquet where we would invite all of our World Champion DJ friends from around the World who took the same paths as us. We had DJ Netik who comes from Rennes which is not far away from us; Tigerstyle who is English and who has been World Champion a few times; DJ Rafik is a German who has also been a World Champion; DJ Vajra last year’s World Champion and the Japanese DJ Kentaro who was World Champion in 2002 and is now at Ninja Tunes – he’s one of the World’s greatest scratch legends. It was very interesting to synthesize all this material that came from all over the world and to be able to create a sort of UFO track, since it’s 6 minutes long. It gives a good balance to the whole.”
F.U.Y.A.
”F.U.Y.A is the very first track we finished, and also the very first track/video we released for our “comeback”, so this one is really important to us. It kind of introduced (in a very good way) this new start for us.”
The album has been clocking up hundreds of thousands of sales across Europe already and you have been roadtesting the album for a while now. What tracks have REALLY been going down well on the dancefloors…?
”Definitely ‘Down The Road’ which has made people dance the most, but ‘Happy’ and ‘Delta’ are also tracks that really work well on the dancefloor.”
What is your personal favourite track on the album and why?
“I don’t have one favorite as I love the whole album. But Dan of you are going to puch me, t I would pick ‘Le Banquet’ because this track is a DMC Champs meeting and a homage to where we all came from!”
What are the next big events coming up for you in 2013 that you are getting excited about?
“We have another tour here in France in bigger venues, (so a bigger show) starting in February. We also play at Koko (London) in March. Last but not least, the album is out in the US and we should go on tour there in April.”
You were in the news again a couple of weeks ago winning the Public Choice Award at the EBBA 2013 Awards in The Netherlands beating off competition from artists from six other countries. The EBBA’s aim is to encourage artists to make the most of the EU Single Market by appealing to audiences beyond their home country – how was that evening, you performed alongside Alphabeat and Katie Melua which must have been quite surreal…?
“It was a great night !! Really blessed to win this prize ! We had the opportunity to meet the guys from Dope DOD who were nominated as well.”
I also noticed you on the pages of The Guardian newspaper in England as New Band Of The Day. What does it feel like as an underground bunch of DJs doing the urban thing for so long, to be suddenly crossing over to high brow, important media publications? Was the dream always to go mainstream with C2C?
”Actually the dream was to make this album as we wanted it to be, which we succeeded – even if it took quite long. We feel blessed to see that our music is appreciated by so many different people.”
What is the current top 10 you are spinning right now?
– Apollo Brown & OC : “The Pursuit”
– Flume : “Sleepless”
– Benny Sings : “Realize”
– Danny Brown : “Grown Up”
– Dungeon Family : “Rollin'”
– Frank Ocean : “Super Rich Kids”
– Soul Square feat. Racecar : “Vibes”
– Nemir : “Sûr”
– Shuko feat. TY & Akua Naru : “Best Friends”
– Kendrick Lamar : “Sing About Me, I’m Dying Of Thirst”
What did you get each other for Christmas?
“A few days off!”
What are the next studio plans from the C2C guys?
“There’s a few remixes in the making…be on the lookout!”
And finally, it’s DMC’s 30th Anniversary this year – will you come and play for us at our party in September?
”It would be a blast! it just needs to be checked if that’s possible according to our agenda and everything with our managers but it would be a pleasure to see the whole family again, it’s been a while!
Video for new single ‘The Beat’ – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b03hoW0TKc
‘Tetra’ swings our way on March 11th via Mercury
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMultiRoom?cc=gb&fcId=428591846
