D’Julz – Influences

This track is important in my early musical personal history for 2 different reasons.
First; I can say I discovered music through Cinema because the first records I ever bought were movie soundtracks: John Barry (James Bond theme), Ennio Morricone, Nino Rotta (Fellini movies) and this particular soundtrack from the Bruce Lee movie Enter The Dragon, which lead the to second reason I picked up this track. I was a huge Bruce Lee fan, when I was a kid he turned me onto martial arts which I studied for a good 10 years. So as weird as it can sound, Bruce Lee indirectly had an important role in my musical enlightenment.

Here’s another childhood hero. I could go on for hours about Prince, I can say he was my entry point to my passion for music. Thanks to him I discovered funk, soul, rock, new wave, jazz… In the 80’s I was collecting every album and bootleg I could get my hands on. To say the least, I’m not so much a fan of the music he’s been releasing since the 90’s but I still think he is the best live performer alive today. I go to see him in concert or in after-shows (even better) whenever I can. It would have to been too hard to choose just one song and he removed them all from YouTube anyway, so I chose this concert which for me is one of his best early performances.

Just when my passion for Prince was starting to fade away I was getting into Hip Hop. I liked the early classics from Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaata and I even did a bit of breakdancing in my teens (in France we were calling it Smurf dancing haha) but besides maybe Public Enemy I wasn’t into the hardcore gangsta rap turn things took. I was missing the positive party vibe. Which is exactly what I love about bands like DeLaSoul, A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers… Something more light, more creative and sometimes humoristic. For these reasons this album remains to this day one of my favourite hip hop albums of all time.

Disco must have been in my subconscious since I was 5 or 6 as I remember being on summer holidays with my parents in the late 70’s hearing Donna Summer’s songs. But I was too young to know what it was. Much later, actually even after I got into House music, I started to really dig deeper into it, listening to Larry Levan and Ron Hardy mix tapes. This song and Arthur Russell’s work in general stands out for its futuristic, slightly experimental approach to disco. This genius truly helped define what not long after became the roots of House music. To me, this song is the perfect theme of 80’s New York.

From Hip Hop to House. This song, and the original Todd Terry instrumental (Can You Party?), were the first House tunes I ever heard.
There was this underage club called Wisky à Go Go in the St Germain area where I was going with my high school friends. Looking back iIrealise the DJ there was really good at mixing up old soul and funk with hip hop and early house. It was a very smooth introduction to this then new music. A few years after I was old enough to go to proper clubs and to raves. The rest is history.

From New York to Chicago. If I remember well, Laurent Garnier played me this track for the first time in 92, I was just starting to DJ. It blew me away. I always loved Chicago house and acid house in particular but this one had something even more special to it, almost spooky. I was lucky to find it a few months later when I played abroad for first time. I found it in a Berlin record shop that had just opened called Hardwax. Many years later I was asked to remix it which wasn’t an easy thing to do. I stayed as close to the original vibe as I could.

Another mad tune that blew me away during the rave days. Back then there was no Discogs and even the records distribution system was very different so it could take a long time to find a record you were looking for. Already finding the title could be hard because a lot of DJs were putting stickers on to cover the label. Anyway, for this particular record I was ready to do anything to find it, which is pretty much what I did: I heard there was one store in London (Fat Cat) that still had copies so I flew there (no Eurostar yet) just to buy my copy. That’s how crazy we were… I also went to the legendary party called Rage at Heaven the same night to celebrate, but that’s another story 😉

It’s impossible to finish this piece without mentioning Detroit and it’s almost impossible to choose just one track.
From Transmatt to UR, from Octave One to Moodymann or Gary Martin to E Dancer, I love it all. I was lucky to have had the chance to share the decks with most of these producers but I had to pick up this remix, produced by Derrick May and co-produced by Carl Craig because they are probably the 2 artists from Detroit who influence me the most to this day.