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France’s Scan X- Techno is More About Attitude Than Style
6 years after walking away from releasing records, pioneering electronic artist Stephane Dri (aka Scan X) is back, with a typically intelligently titled new album How to Make The Unpredictable Necessary. Out now on Laurent Garnier’s superb independent label F Comm, the album is both innovative and entertaining, marrying dark, melodic Detroit-style tunes with metal machine style electronic beats. Though whether it’s strictly ‘techno’ is a question Stephane’s happy to debate.
“When people like Underground Resistance or Derrick May or Juan Atkins started to make techno, they didn’t say to themselves ‘OK, I’m doing techno’ rather they set out to make music in a new way, with new tools,” he points out.
“Those people were listening to different styles of music and making it in a different way and that was a new attitude that became known as techno. To me techno represents making something different.
Skrufff: You had a six year break from making your own music, why did you stop for so long?
Scan X: “For many reasons. I’d been making techno since 1993 and by 1997 when I took a break I’d become tired of all the loopy techno that was around. That was the period when everybody had adopted Jeff Mills’ style, which was often boring. I remember going into record shops and there would be ten tracks by the same artist at the same time and when I’d listen to them all only one or two would be interesting- the rest would be identical. So I started working on different projects, such as film soundtracks, and music for Playstation videogames and commercials.
Skrufff: Did you leave your own music behind altogether?
Scan X: “I was still performing techno PAs during this period and from doing that I’ve also totally changed my way of making music, I’ve started testing tracks on crowds then just developing them at home. So the new album is much more spontaneous. There’s always that strange aspect of making electronic music, certainly when you’re not a DJ, that you’re making music intended for a big crowd but when you’re actually creating it you’re by yourself in a tiny room, which is a totally opposite situation.”
Skrufff: I see you name checked Lady B on the sleeve notes, what do you make of electro and electroclash?
Scan X: “The electroclash was born from a frustration in my generation not to know what was rock & roll at the time. It’s a new way to make rock & roll with new tools. I know Michel from The Hacker and his background, and I know he used to like The Cure and Siouxsie & the Banshees and bands like that. In electronic music it’s easy to introduce all of your background. The first time I heard techno was 12 years ago and at the time, the kind of people you’d find at the parties were completely different types, who were listening to different music at home. Some were into jazz and others rock, so for me techno then was a new way to federate people (ie to bring people from different groups together). People like Carl Craig brought jazz into the music whereas now someone like The Hacker is bringing Gothic rock to electronic music.”
Skrufff: How To Make the Unpredictable Necessary, what’s it all about as a title?
Scan X: “There are many reasons but one serious one and one jokey. The serious one is that loopy techno was boring me because all the records were so predictable, you’d know the sound, the style. A track becomes necessary when it brings something to your life; when you really love a track you need it. The funny reason was that my album was first scheduled for release two or three years ago and has been delayed many times so it was unpredictable in that sense. But I don’t want to explain the title too much- the liberty of music and art is that you can see whatever you want to see in it- that’s why I love instrumental music, it’s not about bringing messages but rather an atmosphere.”
Skrufff: Do you think of yourself as an artist?
Scan X: “I don’t know, what is an artist? My position is that when you make music or paint, you don’t control everything. You are like a medium. If a human controls 100% of a song or painting, it’s poor. You create something that you don’t understand yourself. So being an artist is being a medium. Sometimes I listen to tracks I made eight years ago and I don’t recognise myself in it. It’s very pretentious to say ‘I want to say this or that in my music’. You can think about music before and after but when you’re actually making it you don’t think about anything, you try to create an atmosphere and to surprise yourself.”
Skrufff: French people seem to have a greater appreciation of art and culture than the British or Americans, how is electronic music perceived in France these days?
Scan X: “Sometimes knowing too much about culture or ideas about music could be a handicap. It’s like poetry, you can be a good poet without being an expert in grammar. I have the same feeling for music, music firstly is emotion before being a science. Sometimes people who think they know everything about music really bore me. The test to know whether a record is good or bad is to play it and see if you feel something. For some people in France they snub electronic music when I think actually many people could listen to it, since there’s so much variety. Maybe people say they don’t like styles of music when they don’t understand it. They don’t want to make the effort to understand something new. In the UK people are more enthusiastic and impulsive- if they like something, they like it, they don’t spend so much time analysing things. I like that aspect of the English; people are more spontaneous. In France, they want to over-intellectualise the music.”
Skrufff: You’re based in Paris, is it really so different from the rest of the country?
Scan X: “Yeah it is, in Paris it’s very clubby, they’re more into house music and most of the producers here, make house. Outside Paris you do get more people making techno, such as the Hacker, Vitalic, Oxia and so on. None of the techno producers live in Paris.”
Skrufff: Do you socialise much with the other Paris producers?
Scan X: “I don’t socialise too much with house music people. All the (house) people have made a little circle (clique) where they only accept people who make their kind of music; it’s a little strange but it’s the reality of Paris. I don’t care. In England you can meet people at parties who follow drum & bass or house and there’s no difference between the people, you can speak to them all. You’ll never find this mixing in France. I remember explaining this to an English guy once and he said ‘in England we drink beer so we are happy, whereas in France you drink wine so you’re not smiling.”
Skrufff: I understand French authorities are cracking down on cannabis right now, how do they view dance culture and clubs?
Scan X: “They have an aggressive attitude towards it though that’s because they misunderstand it. Unfortunately in France we’re used to crackdowns because in the mid 90s they viewed techno and rave parties like the devil. Raves were supposedly places where you could find any drugs but what they forgot was that the first thing was the music. It’s true that a few years ago there were many free parties in France, sometimes with 20,000 people and there were a lot of drugs at some of these parties with some young people there looking zombified. Those parties didn’t present the best image for this music and I think maybe today we’re seeing the fallout from those days, unfortunately.
But people in France are used to fighting and I mean that in a good way. We have to fight to make parties as we have to fight to make our music and to get people to listen to us so I think over time, things will be OK. With Nicholas Sarkovsky (France’s ultra-puritanical right wing Justice Minister), we’re going to have a hard time, it’s true because some clubs have already closed in Paris. One club, 287, for example was raided with 100 officers to find drugs and of course, they found something, but just 60 pills. So with 100 policemen, costing 1million euros (£700,000) they only found 60 pills, which is ridiculous. Drugs are everywhere, techno doesn’t have a monopoly on them. But police never raid show business clubs, for example.”
Skrufff: Almost every other electronic producer seems to DJ these days, why don’t you?
Scan X: “I DJ at home but not out at all because I’ve found a way to express myself through my live PAs. I don’t need to be a DJ and from what I see there are very few people able to be very good at producing and DJing at the same time. Sometimes I’ve listened to excellent producers DJing and been so disappointed because they were making top quality records but as DJs they were crap. Sometimes it’s the opposite. I think there are only about ten or 15 people who can really do both, people like Richie Hawtin and Jeff Mills.”
Skrufff: Do you still go out to clubs to dance?
Scan X: “When I’m playing somewhere if I like the music then I’m going to dance. One of the reasons I took a break from recording was because I was looking for excitement and pleasure from club music again. One of the keys to making good music is to get pleasure from it. If you are bored your music is going to be boring.”
How To Make the Unpredictable Necessary is out now on F Communications
http://www.fcom.fr
Jonty Adderley (Skrufff.com)
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