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Written by CGNY   
Tuesday, 24 February 2015 15:40

The beauty of any musical genre is the ability to be surprised and discover new music and new artists. CGNY is always on the look out for such people and through our friend Kavaro in Cologne we heard about these terrific young French producers As Patria from France. Here's our Q&A with them!

CGNY: So for our readers who might be new to you- tell us a little bit about who you are and where you come from?

AP : Hi, we are two French guys, one from Paris, the other from Bordeaux. We have known each other from college. We represent As Patria and we are passionate about music.

CGNY: I just love your dj name As Patria – tell us a little bit more about how you came up with that. As a name it seems to fit very well with the type of music you make!

AP: Our very first moniker was A Space Triangle, but at the time it became kind of clichéd with all the hipster stuff and the message became pointless.

As Patria is the new version. Technically it comes from the first letter of A SPAceTRIAngle. As Patria makes more sense because of the values it evokes. The family, the tribe, the ancestors and the feeling of belonging to a land or a community.

Patria in ancient Greek is the archaic heaven, the home from which the soul is exiled while on earth.

CGNY: What’s your earliest recollection of hearing any piece of music and where did you hear it?

AP: Hard to say, for me (Yves) it might be from my parents, either Michael Jackson’s tracks or Bruce Springsteen. It was my father who loved Jazz and made me listen to Steve Reich and Phil Glass.

Concerning me (Romain), I think it’s nearly the same thing. My dad was a dj when he was young and to this, he was always listening to music. Maybe the first thing I’ve heard was The Rolling Stones. But I remember something well, the first vinyl I found in his collection was Frankie Goes To Hollywood – “Relax”

CGNY: That's a classic!! How long have you been djing and making music? What prompted you to get into playing and making techno? What are your musical inspirations?

AP: We’ve been djing together for 5 years now. I (Yves) have been making music since I was 16 seriously so ten years now. The first shit I did was on Music on Playstation when I was 12 or something. Then came Ejay software and then Reason. (The serious phase).

I (Romain) bought my first turntables at 15 years old (12 years ago) and had my first gig at 17 in a small city in the South West of France. I began to think about producing when I met Yves at college 6 / 7 years ago.

We are playing Techno because it is a playful land where everything is acceptable, sonically.

CGNY: Your track The World (which I first heard on a podcast by Kavaro) has that kind of super heavy synth sound that I love. In many ways I suppose it’s a minimal track in the broadest sense of the word but how would you describe it?

AP: Our priority is to focus on texture. Therefore it might appear that our sound is minimal. We tend to create with the sufficient. Creating a simple track is often the best but it’s harder. Less is more is one of our motto. Also we aim to create tracks with tone rather than note.

Technically the track is a long journey of simple bass synth shifting frequencies and creating global harmony, in a pulsating way. The resonance and the frequencies are the keys elements. For our sound, it is hard to describe it, but our goal is to create tracks that work on the mind and then the body.

"We are playing Techno because it is a playful land where everything is acceptable, sonically"

CGNY: Well you are succeeding! Are you working on any new projects that you can tell us about?

AP: Still producing some tracks. We have an EP on Rising Management, our booking agency. They are doing a great work and we are very proud of being part of it.

Also doing our Precept Parties. We tend to book DJs that haven’t played in Paris yet. It’s in order to offer a different vision of the techno we listen to.

CGNY: You have a slew of gigs coming up with some big names Rrose, James Ruskin, Regis! Big names so congrats on that. Where have been some of your favorite places to play both here and abroad ?

AP: We have not played so much outside of France. We played once in Hamburg, Germany and it was great. The club, Golem was really amazing. At first sight it’s a café but thanks to a hidden door, you access to an underground club of 100 people.

Maybe the best place we’ve played is Concrete. The sound system is amazing and the dancers are crazy !

CGNY: Ooh that Golem place sounds tres cool! How is the techno scene in your native land? Last year I felt like France took over ! Voiski, Zadig, yourselves ! France got the CGNY techno vote last year!

AP: Thanks, great to see that the French Techno has some resonance.

Indeed we have the same findings here. Five or six years ago, there were only a few label records like Dement3d, Deeply Rooted and Construct ReForm that were dedicated to techno. And only Rex Club was programming the usual suspects of Ostgut Ton.

We think that this is why things changed. May be people would like to have more and more and then, new labels, new producers and parties emerged! Now we have a lot of protagonists in Paris and the most important thing (we think), is to have a real concept. This is why we’ve crated the Precept Parties. As we said earlier, we wanted to offer a diversified vision of Techno while booking artists that never came to Paris before (if possible in France).

CGNY: What is one of your pet peeves (if you have any !) about the industry you work in?

AP: The Techno scene is a family where everyone knows each other. Some people are just part of it because it is nowadays the trend, some are just pretending, and giving compliments and being hypocritical. We are doing our stuff by ourselves and we don’t give a shit about other people.

CGNY: An alien lands from another planet and has no clue what techno is! What track/album do you hand over as a learning tool?

AP: We would say Plastikman Consumed or Voices from the Lake. And also the Sandwell District album and the one from Silent Servant, Negative Fascinations.

As Patria play Blochaus x Precept at La Machine du Moulin Rouge this Saturday!

Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 February 2015 14:59