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Dimitri From Trash Palace (& Paris)- London Is More Perverse (and I Like It).</b> “Trash Palace started out with the idea of music as sex, which is not exactly a new concept but I think that the way sex is usually exploited in the music and fashion business, in fact generally in all commercial areas, isn’t really sexual; instead it’s slick and exploitative and there’s nothing dangerous about it. I wanted to approach a deeper side of sexuality.”

Sitting in a west London bar on a sunny afternoon, Trash Palace main-man and former Parisien producer Dimitri Tokovoi, speaks softly as he outlines the centrality of sex in his electronic rock band and more specifically the importance of real sex behind Trash Palace’s aesthetic.

“There are so many programmes about sex on TV here but when you watch them you feel like you’re at school studying a subject such as how you should give a blow job,” he snorts.

“Sex is not about that in reality at all; it’s fashion, perversion, love, whatever; it’s much more complex than just the image that’s portrayed in the media at the moment.

He’s equally opinionated about Trash Palace’s perfectly formed fusion of rock & roll and electro-disco, which he’s created with the help of a highly impressive cast list of collaborators.

“I deliberately set out to find different people to collaborate with because sexuality is about a relationship between two people, it’s very hard to have sex by yourself,” he points out.

“I wanted to have different views, different moods and different sorts of perversions on the album and that’s why there are so many different people involved.”

That Dimitri’s as persuasive as he’s well-connected is clear from the characters he tracked down, who include Velvet Underground legend John Cale and Placebo singer Brian Molko. He also managed to seduce Italian sex siren Asia Argento into performing a version of Je T’aime, though admits he didn’t actually know her until she walked into the studio to lay down her part.

“I had this idea of doing Je T’Aime because I’ve always loved the track, but my idea was to invert the characters’ roles,” says Dimitri.

“In the original track, Serge Gainsborough is fucking Jane Birkin, he’s doing the act of penetration and I wanted to invert the roles; to have Asia doing the role of penetrating someone else. Brian (Molko) said he would do it so I asked Asia by sending her an email. Immediately she sent me an email back saying ‘yeah, I really want to do it’ so I flew to Italy to record her voice.”

“She was very nervous when she did it because she’s not a singer and she didn’t know what I was going to ask her to do, she was still shooting XXX at the time,” he continues.

“We did it in a small room with a very basic recording set-up and I remember her chain smoking with me sitting in front of her. It was a little bit of a tense atmosphere but that was good for the track. She didn’t know me, I didn’t know her so it was a slightly bizarre environment.”

With Asia being generally acclaimed as one of the world’s sexiest starlets, the resulting track is as salacious as Dimitri presumably hoped it would, reflecting the overall highly polished standards of all 11 tracks on Positions. Musically, he’s succeeded in tapping into the talents of all his various collaborators, to produce a album of punk, funk and electro songs that genuinely (and unusually, in this day and age) truly rocks.
 
“I come from a rock & roll punk background but like a lot of people from my generation, when I was 14 I got a computer and started to make music on it, I was always trying to translate this punk vibe to electronic music,” he explains.

“I used to love AC/DC and Motorhead and all that stuff. I think a lot of people from my generation grew up with that idea of translating that concept from one medium to the other.”

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): How long ago did you start Trash Palace?

Trash Palace (Dimitri): “I started it four years ago, I moved to London from Paris seven years ago and it was a fairly frustrating period for me initially, because I had to start all over again. I started Trash Palace because I had time to do it and all these ideas were floating around in my head about making music. Before that I was already a  musician and a music producer and over the years I’ve done remixes for bands like Goldfrapp, and The Raveonettes as well as working with lots of other bands.”

Skrufff: Did you know many people in London when you arrived here 7 years ago?

Trash Palace (Dimitri): “Not one person at all; which meant it was a difficult time in my life. I left France because I didn’t feel the music scene there was going anywhere and also because I’m not a big fan of French electronic music, it’s not really ‘my cup of tea’ (taste- slang Ed.) I’ve always preferred the harder kinds of music you find in the UK. 7 years ago I was into people like Tricky, PJ Harvey or even Bjork for example, who were much harder than French bands like Air or Daft Punk. Even more electronic bands like Depeche Mode are much harsher than them.”

Skrufff: How did you recruit your collaborators?

Trash Palace: “It was mainly down to luck. I was working with those people in different ways as a producer or programmer, and most of them I was introduced to them through my work. I told them about my project and usually I got a really enthusiastic response from them.”

Skrufff: Is your ambition to be famous, to be a star yourself?

Trash Palace: “No, I like to be in the shadows, I’m quite happy to be the man behind the keyboards and the computer, I prefer that, I find it more exciting not to be seen.”

Skrufff: You were wearing make-up when you performed at 93 Feet East recently . .

Trash Palace: “It’s possible, yes.”

Skrufff: Were you dressing flamboyantly in France before you came to London?

Trash Palace: “Yes, though looking back I don’t really know why. I think it’s a question of taste but going on stage is an act, it’s a performance and my main aim is to make sure the performance isn’t banal. I think it’s important to provoke something out of the ordinary and that’s how I always approach the stage show: I’d rather people hate the project than they don’t care about it.. I want the image on stage to be as strong as possible and to renew itself. Live performance is something unique, it will only happen once and you live with the memory of it that will keep evolving in your head.”

Skrufff: Is Trash Palace essentially you and the story of your life?

Trash Palace: “No, they’re two different things, Trash Palace is my fantasy, it’s something that I’m taking out of my mind. Sometimes I come very close to living it as well (chuckling) but essentially I don’t want it to be an explanation of my life. If I try to recreate my life through Trash Palace it will have limitations, whereas my fantasies or those fantasies that I’m generating with other people, are limitless. With fantasies there are more possibilities.”

Skrufff: Having lived in London for seven years, do you see yourself as a Londoner now?

Trash Palace: “I see myself as a foreigner living in London, I’m not a Londoner but I’m enjoying my life being a foreigner living in this country.”

Skrufff: How do people in Paris react to you, now that you live here?

Trash Palace: “It’s a little strange, I’m an outcaste in Paris as well, because I don’t live there, they see me as a guy who lives abroad, I’m a bit of a tourist in my own town when I return. I don’t know what’s going on in Paris, I have no contact with people so it’s a bit weird. I’m not aware of things, in the way you are when you live in a place. It’s interesting, I’m a freak everywhere I go.”

Skrufff: Many French people are quite nationalistic, I’d say more so than Brits, do you come across people saying you’re betraying France by living here?

Trash Palace: “I get a mixed reaction, some French people think I’m pretentious, they think you think you’re bigger than your country. For me, I have more freedom here because I don’t have any background, I don’t have any personal history of living in this country so I can create something new, It’s a brand new life for me and a brand new way of presenting things. The language factor also makes a difference. I think you have a different identity, depending on the language you use and the country you live in, it’s a bit like schizophrenia. It’s like when you’re with your family or friends; you act in different ways. That’s an early stage of schizophrenia and I think |’m at an advanced stage. And on stage it’s different.”

Skrufff: Have you taken Trash Palace to America?

Trash Palace: “Not yet, I wanted to start with the UK because it’s the place where I live. But I’m afraid of Americans.”

Skrufff: Why are you afraid of Americans?

Trash Palace: “I think it’s a place which has a lot of blind conviction, they follow ideas to an extreme, without necessarily knowing why, which I find very scary. It can be amazingly positive and amazingly destructive, so I’m afraid of this aspect of America.”

Skrufff: How do you regard London’s vibe in sex terms, compared with Paris?

Trash Palace: “Sex is more diverse here and more pretentious in Paris. There are a lot more taboos in England which makes it a lot better because it makes everything a bit more perverse, so more interesting. There are more rules to break and places to go in the dark to break them, which I find really interesting. One of the aspects of sex I like is its danger; that makes it more exciting. In France, people are more upfront; there is less perversion in France, I think, perversion is more a part of the English culture.”

Skrufff: Are you a big fetish club regular here in London?

Trash Palace: “I’m not a regular but I like the idea of fetish clubs, though again, as soon as something becomes a routine or a cliché, you lose the excitement and the interest. To keep the excitement you need to keep meeting interesting people that have different views. As soon as become a member of a club it becomes a habit so even if it’s the biggest perversion you can imagine, it will quickly become something quite banal, which then has no more meaning to me.”

Trash Palace’s new album Positions is out now on Fulfill Records.

http://www.trashpalace.net

Interview by: Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)

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