Rachael Hannan catches up with Martin Solveig, an integral part of the French house music scene.

So, who are you and where are you from?

My name is Martin Solveig, I am 27 years old and I am living in Paris.

‘Rocking Music’ is really put you on the map.. Where did your inspiration for this come from?

To be honest I think my main influence for the song was the ‘Quincy Jones’ album by Michael Jackson. I knew that this singer was available who had a Jackson vibe about him and I wanted to do something that was a mixture of r&b, classic disco and electronica. So I started with a programmed bass and drums, dropped electronics on top, recorded some guitars and then I wrote the vocal – in fact I think that’s the only vocal I’ve ever written completely, from start to finish. I recorded it the same way as they do in r&b – even if there’s only one tone, they have two or three singers together so it’s a blend and it sounds quite rich. The singers were doing exactly what I wanted them to and it sounds great, I’m very proud of this production.

It’s been getting fantastic reactions in all the clubs. Were you ready for that level of success?

No, not to that extent. I thought that it was a good tune – even when I first played it and no-one had heard about it I got good reactions, and I was happy with it. But now in some territories it’s really going out of control – like Australia and northern Europe where it’s really going high up in the charts and that was a really nice surprise. Not least because in terms of how it’s produced and how it sounds it’s very much in the style that I want to go through. So if it’s fine with the people then it’s fine with me.

A lot of people commented that it sounds a bit like Justin Timberlake…

Yes it’s got some of the same flavour, but that’s fine. For me, Justin Timberlake is the new Michael Jackson. I love some of the new Justin Timberlake stuff - some of the Neptune productions are amazing.

Would you have liked Justin Timberlake to sing on ‘Rocking Music’?

Ah, maybe I would like him to sing on another song that I would write for him. (laughs). Justin, if you’re reading this…

You’re part of the French house scene which has produced some fairly legendary DJs. Which of them have been the most supportive for you?

The most supportive were probably Bob Sinclair and Claude Monet – a very famous Parisian DJ. Bob Sinclair was always playing my records, even ‘Out of Africa’, and then he invited me to join the Africanism Allstar team, which was brilliant because that was how I met Gregory, Julian Garbores, all those guys who had already been producing for a long time and I learned a lot through collaborating with them.

But my favourite DJ to dance to has to be Louis Vega, especially when he’s jumping from one style to another then coming back – that’s exactly what I like in DJing and what I try to do in my own way.

Are all your productions strictly electronic, or do you introduce live elements into your music?

I use both electronics and live musicians, sometimes with classical instruments like keyboards, horns and any piano instruments. Most of my drums are programmed, but what really love is using classical instruments with an electronic device. For example I used a big BB3 Hammond, which is an organ, recorded a whole session with a musician and then took bits from it and made it sound almost like an electronic sample. You still have the good quality of the instrument, but with the ability to make it a bit faster or more repetitive or whatever. That’s what I like – to get inside an organic sound and make it electronic.

Is the fact that you studied classical music from an early age of any relevance to what you do now?

It’s a very different kind of music so it’s not of any great relevance to what I do now, but my training did help me develop my ears, make me more sensitive to melodies and form the technical basis of my musical writing – which is always useful, even when you produce very basic forms of music.

Do you like to incorporate a lot of world music into your sets and take in a wide variety of styles in the way that Louis Vega does?

Louis is very much into Latin music because he’s of Spanish origin – he’s a Latin American guy. I’m a little more influenced by Africa, which is fairly typical of Parisian music because the African scene is very strong in France. We have a lot of very good African instrumentalists in Paris so it’s easy to find collaborators.

You also run your own label, Mixture, what’s the ethos of the label?

Mixture is my own label and I started it about five years ago. I was fairly lucky because my first release was pretty successful for a small record – it was called ‘Out of Africa’, it features on my album incidentally – and so Mixture is run like a very personal label, there’s no pressure involved. I have only had fifteen releases over the last five years and I focus very much on things that interest me as a DJ. I like club music and dance music, but I especially like original music so I try and restrain myself to a few releases and with the label I plan to mix a few different styles into house music; and that’s where the name Mixture come from.

‘Sur la Terre’ is your debut album so obviously it’s very important to you. What did you try and capture with it?

‘Sur la Terre’ is really the definition of a debut album, with all the imperfections of a young guy who is not very experienced. There’s also a lot of fresh stuff, because I guess I wasn’t corrupted by all the elements so I just did it exactly how I felt, so it’s very personal. Even if I’m not happy with some of the production and how it sounds now – because I’ve learnt a lot technically since – but I’m still very happy with some tracks like ‘Someday’, or ‘Out of Africa’ or ‘Linda’, which don’t sound like a lot of other tracks.

‘Sur la Terre’ is kind of a representation of everything I’ve done since I started producing, like a kind of round up. It’s not a concept album, or one with a theme, it’s just everything that I did since the beginning.

The foot logo comes in a lot in the artwork on your sleeves, and even to the extent where you have it painted on your face. What does that represent?
The foot for me means the evolution – as in the footprint. We actually filled the footprint with ‘ground’ – so it’s a kind of reversal, most of the time when you leave a footprint you leave an empty space so we’re trying for the idea of being a bit paradoxical.

It’s also the meaning of the evolution because my first album is called ‘Sur la Terre’ which means ‘The Birth’, so now step by step I’m trying to walk on the musical ground. It’s also catchy because it’s very related to my music, which is music that comes from the earth and from the soul, in a way the opposite of the ‘atmospheric’ music, like trance for example. So for me it’s full of meaning, in lots of ways.

On your website you have a facility where you can actually remix ‘Rocking Music’, what was the thinking behind that?

I love my website. Especially in the sense that I can be quite close to the people that follow my music, the fact that they can leave messages saying whether they like or don’t like certain things. I’m always interacting with those guys who are the big fans, so I proposed this idea and I found it very very exciting.

People seemed to like it, it’s very simple to use and it’s kind of about house music too because it’s all about loops and you can put one loop on top of the other and build your own tune, so it’s a little bit about producing, a little bit about DJing and I think it’s really exciting.

You collaborated with a very respected musician, Salif Keita, on ‘Madan’. How did that come about?

It started like a very classic remix request coming from a the label Univeral Jazz. At the time I was working on another afro-disco track, and when I heard the chant on it, which was a traditional chant, I realised that this was exactly what I was looking for to complete the track! I worked on an instrumental in two days and then did the whole remix within one week. I had the exact idea of what I wanted from the first listen to when I completed it.

What was he like to work with?

I didn’t meet Salif to begin with, but then the remix went down very well, especially in France where it got into the top 20, so there was a video and we had a few chances to perform the track together with live musicians and everything. That was very exciting, he’s a brilliant singer and even though I didn’t use all that much of his voice in the actual track, he’s a very interesting person to be around – he’s full of history, and the humility of the African guys; I liked him very much and hope to collaborate with him again.

I was originally a bit worried because he’s a very traditional artist, so I was worried that this contemporary interpretation wouldn’t go down too well with him. But he was like ‘Non! C’est fantastique! I really like it.’ He’s very into the general remix idea so he was really happy with this, he also found a whole new audience because of it.

You also managed to get Mousse T to remix one of your tracks. Was that a good result for you?

Mousse T has always been one of my heroes and it meant a lot to me that he spent time working on my music.

With regards to the sound of it, there were actually two mixes so I think that he had a lot of ideas. His first idea was to do something very classic – the voice of the singer sounds a lot like James Brown and all the other classic soul from the 60s and 70s, and so he produced a track that’s kind of soul – it sounds like house but with live instruments, but it also sounds phat because Mousse T has a very phat sound. So it’s a kind of breakbeat-soul mix and it’s lovely, one of my favourites in fact.

He also did a more classic electronic mix - more funky but still house, more for the dancefloor. So I have the two sides of Mousse T with these mixes, which is great.

Has working with Defected been good for you?

Defected has been a very important step in my evolution because now I have a good experience of working with a big label. Sometimes it’s hard to make yourself artistically understood, which is a problem that you don’t have with Defected because it’s a specialist house music label so it has a great background with so many major releases both in the underground scene and in the crossover scene, so it’s in a great position.

Even though it’s an independent, it’s still quite a big company and has the capacity to get to radio or other places that smaller labels, such as my own, probably couldn’t reach. So in that sense it really represents the kind of company I want to work with, and to be associated with so many huge names is a big honour.

You’ve accelerated fast as a DJ and now that you’re quite well established the future is looking very bright for you. But do have any advice for any budding Martin Solveigs?

It’s getting harder and harder for the young guys to emerge because the industry is a bit down and there’s a bit of a crisis in Europe.

But in a way I think that’s a good thing because when it’s hard there are less people interested and the ones that do come through have had to work very hard – so that’s one bit of advice - you really have to work hard. You have to keep the faith in the music and in what you do – that’s probably the most important part. And you have to believe in yourself and really knock on the door because no-one is going to do everything for you, so you have to push a little bit and hopefully step by step… everything’s possible.