OK Vitalic!

Breaking the techno rules

Paris 

10/06/2005 - 

Following his stunning La Rock 01 in 2001, Vitalic took his time before releasing a debut album. The wait was very much worth it, though, since OK Cowboy breathes new life into the French techno scene.

The story goes that Vitalic was born in the Ukraine, or more precisely in Borodianka, into a family with a sea otter fur business. In 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Vitalic emigrated to Germany with his dog Mini Robot. Life was tough for this new immigrant, who lived a hand-to-mouth existence going from small to job to small job. Vitalic decided to get out his trubcka, a traditional Ukrainian instrument which he had played for many years. He got started with an electronica collective from the Munich region. On the International Deejay Gigolo label, he found a measure of fame with his 12 inch Poney E.P., which spoke of the suffering of ponies at country fairs. All this, in any case, is what Vitalic would have you believe…

"The joke wasn't funny any more," says Vitalic, alias Pascal Arbez, who had dubbed himself Vitalic purely for the way the word sounded. "I really wanted to create a character from a sad, realist type movie, and Ukraine added an exotic yet credible touch." Until very recently, a lot of people swallowed the story hook, line and sinker. In the UK, Vitalic gave interviews in English but with a strong Russian accent, recounting his tale of woe. His friends and family were sworn to secrecy if contacted by nosy journalists.

Daft Punk, the revelation

One thing is certain, Vitalic really did have his first success with his Poney E.P., released in 2001 by International Deejay Gigolo. On the advice of his friend The Hacker, Vitalic had sent a demo to DJ Hell, the label's boss. La Rock 01, a hard-hitting techno track, set the dancefloors on fire right across the globe.

At the time Pascal Arbez was living near Dijon, the mustard capital of the world. It's where everything started: in 1995, during a Daft Punk concert in Dijon, Pascal suddenly realised what he wanted to do. He was 17 years old, bought himself some Roland synths, and started writing. The following year he produced his first 12-inch under the name of Dima, which he would use until 2000. At the same time, he created a label with a few friends, known as Citizen Records.

He may not have played the Ukrainian trubcka, but Vitalic was nonetheless a dab hand at the trombone, which he'd played from the age of eight, right up until the Daft Punk concert.  "But being a musician is not always an advantage when you're making electronic music: unless you're brilliant, you don't tend to break the rules." And in fact techno had gradually closed itself off into a rule-bound genre and had become "too codified, when in fact it is above all an experimental type of music." On his debut album entitled OK Cowboy, Vitalic has tried to break away from those rules. Sometimes the tracks use the couplet-chorus structure, with occasional references to traditional popular forms (brass band music, polkas, etc.), but above all Vitalic uses his synths to reproduce guitars, brass and drums sounds. On this album, everything is electronic, and there are no acoustic instruments or samples, although it sometimes sounds like there are. "The difference between electronic and acoustic music is not very important. What I want to do is sow the seeds of doubt in the listener."

A long-awaited album

This melancholic yet festive album abounds in influences. Vitalic is a fan of Italian disco from the late 1970s: "It was a more electronic disco than in the United States, because it was made more cheaply. With the cold machine background sounds, the warmth comes out in the vocals, and the end result is something that is half great, half cheesy," says Vitalic, a connoisseur of the epic, sombre disco classics of Giorgio Moroder, an important influence. As a teenager, Pascal wanted to sing new beat, a house style with a loping beat that was very popular in 1988 (think Confetti’s, One O One Electric Dream…). We can be thankful he abandoned his childhood dreams…

So what does Vitalic listen to these days? "It changes from period to period. In the last few months, for example, what with my album's release, the concerts and remixes, I've kind of lost touch with the current scene. It's more music that finds its way to me. But it's been quite a while since something really made an impression on me." The last time was Wim Mertens, a Belgian composer of repetitive classical music. But Vitalic also likes current favourites such as Fisherspooner, LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture or Bloc Party. In other words, more guitars than rhythm boxes.

The wait for his first album has been long, following his 2001 success:  "People were telling me 'You have to get something out now, while the buzz is there.' But I preferred to do my album when I wanted to and when I had something to express." There were also a few legal problems to sort out before he could leave International Deejay Gigolo. After the Poney E.P., Vitalic travelled around a lot and performed live just about everywhere, giving a concert a week. He has a very hard-hitting, no-holds-barred live sound, which leaves the audience shell-shocked yet happy. Vitalic is very much a live performer; he has never been a DJ and has no desire to be one either. Over the years he has constantly refined and improved his performance. This summer he will be playing at festivals across the world: at the Eurockéennes in Eastern France, the Dour Festival in Belgium, Fuji Rock in Japan, as well as Dance Valley in the Netherlands. Vitalic knows how to get the best out of his machines on stage as well as in the studio. "There's no need to be virtuoso, other than a programming virtuoso. That allows me to be more personal. But most musicians don't bother with more than the 127 sounds you can get out of your synthesiser." He may well be a gifted programmer, but he is also a musician who knows how to ask for the impossible from his equipment.

Vitalic, OK Cowboy, (Different/PIAS) 2005.

 

Nicolas  Dambre

Translation : Hugo  Wilcken