Genre
Paris, mid nineties: filters over disco loops, compression pushed hard, and for a few years a sound you could identify inside a second.
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Song French touch
I:Cube
Disco Cubizm
In 1996 Nicolas Chaix's first record came out in Paris, on a label that had just been started off the back of a cassette posted to a radio station. On the twelve-inch there is also a remix by two people who were not famous yet. French touch from the room, not the party.
Genre French touch
Alan Braxe
SP-1200 and Alesis 3630
A twelve-channel Mackie desk, a sampler with ten seconds of memory and a cheap rack compressor: that is what made the most famous French record of the nineties. Alan Braxe has listed the machines inside it, one by one.
Selection French touch
Étienne de Crécy
Super Discount
French touch is almost entirely a matter of technique. Take a loop from seventies American disco or funk, run it through a filter that opens and closes, compress it until the track breathes on its own. Put like that it sounds like a recipe, and to a degree it was: one that circulated among a small number of people in Paris between 1995 and 2000.
Those people all knew each other: Étienne de Crécy and Philippe Zdar as Motorbass, Alex Gopher, Daft Punk. Pansoul came out in 1996, Super Discount the same year, Homework in 1997. Three records in two years, made in small studios and pressed in small runs, from a city that briefly had a sound of its own.