Chloé

Gerd Janson

This afternoon lecture features a guest from Paris, France, a DJ, producer, and if you want an electronic songwriter. She has done records on Karat and Kill the DJ, and has released her debut album The Waiting Room. Please give a very warm welcome to Chloé from Paris, France. [applause]

If one looks at your name on Discogs, there is a description saying your music is somewhere between German minimalism and dirty electro.

Chloé

It is always easier to give words to which category you belong to, and in another way I don’t like it because it gives only a few words on a spectrum of music. I like a lot of different styles but I think basically I like house music and I play house music in a general way.

Gerd Janson

But how did you get into it?

Chloé

I started to DJ more than ten years ago, maybe 12 or 13 years ago. It was a time in France where electronic music was not so famous as it is today maybe, and I discovered electronic music because I started to go out to parties and I really liked it. In France, there were raves going on. I was based in Paris and in Paris and there were very few parties going on in some clubs, but mainly it was gay clubs. There were three gay clubs and that was where there was house music and also there were some techno DJs got invited at Rex Club. That is how I came into electronic music. I was in between the Rex Club when Laurent Garnier had his residency at that time. There are a lot of producers, French producers, that were at Rex Club on Thursdays listening to Laurent Garnier, and he was a big inspiration for a lot of producers and DJs.

Gerd Janson

Maybe you can describe a little bit what’s so great about Rex and Laurent Garnier on a Thursday night?

Chloé

The fact that it was one of maybe the only parties going on in Paris, where he was playing very eclectic music. He made us discover the whole [spectrum] of house music, and you could understand how to build a set from beginning to the end. I think he keeps going and he still likes to play a lot, for three or four hours, six hours, and it is because of these parties. He still likes to show to the people that he can build a set, a six-hour set, with the warm-up and the peak time and the ending. Nowadays, sometimes I feel it is a bit sad, because some parties you are invited to and you play two hours, one hour and 30 minutes, but part of being a DJ is to really play more than three hours because you can express yourself much more.

Gerd Janson

Do you think this makes sense at all, flying DJs around the world to places and clubs they have never been to, playing for people they have never seen before, knowing nothing about their musical education? Is it not the dream of a DJ, doing something like Laurent had done at the Rex Club, playing every Thursday to a dedicated following?

Chloé

Rex Club and Laurent Garnier was a musical identity, really together, and at one time the party became so famous he was invited everywhere all over the world because of this party. I had a residency for eight years in Paris at a place called Le Pulp and it’s helped me a lot how to understand building a warm-up. I could play differently from two o’clock or five o’clock or midnight and I think it really helped me. But I think it makes sense to go and share the music. The promoters that invite you in general know your music and know the people who are coming to the club so it should be a good combination. If it does not work, there is a problem somewhere and maybe it is not right moment.

Gerd Janson

How often does it not work for you?

Chloé

I play every weekend, Friday and Saturday in general. I go to clubs where I know the promoters. I have been everywhere, maybe alI over Europe, and all the clubs that invite me know, so I go regularly to a lot of clubs all over the world, mainly in Europe. So the more you go, and the more the crowd likes that you are here, then it is like a residency. For example, I am resident in Frankfurt at Robert Johnson, I have played there for six years every three or four months. Sometimes I don’t play for eight months, but then suddenly I am re-invited. I play sometimes at Fabric in London, too, twice a year. It is kind of a residency but it can be like every month or every two months, every six months.

Gerd Janson

Robert Johnson and Fabric are quite different, the way the clubs are. Can you describe that a little bit? What constitutes a great club in your opinion?

Chloé

In my opinion, it has nothing to do really with the country. One city is very different to one city. In one city you can have five clubs and each club has its own atmosphere and you would be in this club because the other clubs won’t fit. Robert Johnson is a very, very small club, maybe it has 200 people, OK maybe 400, and the good thing about Robert Johnson is, it is not like underground, it is in front of a river so that makes it all really nice. And the soundsystem is really nice. The owner of Robert Johnson is Ata from the label Playhouse and he took care of everything, he has a very good soundsystem and he likes to share. The party starts at 11 and it stops whenever it has to stop and there is no six o’clock, like in Paris, for example. Maybe like in Berlin, because you can stop where you want to stop. I prefer not to stop too late because I don’t like to play to the “too late” people, it is not the same music.

Gerd Janson

In Berlin, they never stop.

Chloé

In Berlin, they never stop and you have all these kind of clubs too and I think you play the music for the kind of crowd you want to play to.

Gerd Janson

Maybe we can hear something that you would play in a club to give people an idea what kind of stuff you actually play?

Chloé

OK, I have a lot of tracks, it depends if you want a warm-up or peak time.

(music: Chloé & Krikor — unknown)

Chloé

Krikor is a French producer who released some EPs on Karat Recordings, the same label as I released my first EP. And he is one of my very good friends in the electronic scene. We have a new project together that we started, because the idea was to make and share something and play live together. Usually, as a DJ, you always travel alone, you play alone, but you are with the people at the same time, and the idea was to make another project with a friend of mine, and make the travel and get something going on with someone who you have the same atmosphere [with].

Gerd Janson

People always tend to forget about that part of being a DJ, right? That you spend a lot of time at the airport and alone in a hotel room somewhere. When does it start to become tiring for you? Or is it not tiring at all and you love it all so much that it is a pleasure?

Chloé

It starts to be tiring when I play too much. If I play too much, when I go back home, I don’t have any more energy to pick up the phone, to see my friends or do normal things. I just want to go to bed and spend quiet time, to take more energy. Sometimes it’s very tiring when I play too much. One time I was playing too much and was playing Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and each day you are in this city and this country, and then the next day you have to leave the hotel room to take your plane and you see only hotels, airports, cars, taxis and clubs and there is a repetition. The great part is the moment when you are with the public, but you have all this around it and you have to find a balance in between this moment and you want to give the maximum energy. I remember at that time I started to be really tired and I didn’t even want to go and have dinner with the promoters before the party. I think it’s a bit sad when you go to a party and don’t want to be with the promoters who invited you at least. I started to make it a bit more quiet, so I usually try not to take too many bookings. For example, if I play three times a week, the next week I try to play once. Sometimes I don’t take weekends. I see all my plans and try to keep my energy. Also, because I produce, I need to be at home to produce and have time to produce. It’s important to find time also to produce, especially nowadays as all the DJs these days, the main ones, are producing and I think it is very important to also produce and be invited as a DJ. It’s very important to find this balance.

Gerd Janson

You are doing these records these days to have a business card, so to speak?

Chloé

Yes, in a way it’s the truth. Nowadays, everyone can DJ. I remember when I was 14, my dream was to have a guitar so I had a guitar and it wasn’t so expensive. Today a person of like 13 or 14 years old wants to be a DJ and so it is not the same economy because the parents have to pay for it and it’s really, really expensive. I remember in Paris when I was younger, the people who had the first turntables and samplers, because you had to buy samplers to make music, you had to buy a synthesizer, you couldn’t make music just with your computer. It was the people who were rich and had money and so it was not possible for a lot of the young people. It was not this electronic music as well, it was not so famous.

Gerd Janson

In Paris, at least?

Chloé

I guess, everywhere. In Germany, I think, it was much bigger, of course, that was a big time also in Germany.

Gerd Janson

Do you think this democratization process is a good thing then, to make the production means available to everyone?

Chloé

When I was younger I remember I really could not understand why this music was not more famous. I was really frustrated not to find this music on CDs. I was really frustrated that this music was seen in very negative ways. I was really part of this person that wanted to show to the people that this music was more than just… I don’t know, that there was something special going on. Meeting with other people was totally different and also the DJ, what he was expressing, that was totally different from a rock group or just general music. Then it became famous and always when something becomes famous, at one point you are very happy, but on the other side the whole marketing took it its own way. I think it happens the same maybe for rock & roll, then marketing speaks more than the artists. It’s good if you have marketing and you can express yourself, but if marketing makes you think you have to do this and this to work, then it kills artistic things, I think. Again you have to the find this balance to make it your own way.

Gerd Janson

And you always knew that you wanted to make music back then? You just mentioned when you were very young and stumbled across that kind of electronic music, it was clear to you that you want to do it yourself?

Chloé

Actually, I never planned really to become a DJ, it just happened. When I was younger anyway I was really into music and my mother was always listening to music, putting on her music really loud. I was always complaining when I was younger because the music was too loud. My mother was partying all the time and she used to be also a DJ. She is English, actually, as you can tell from my accent — I am kidding. She used to DJ in some clubs, but she was more a disc jockey than a DJ, she was playing more like Motown things. My father had this big collection of classical stuff, and also things like Pink Floyd and the Beatles, and I was always listening to it. And he was always playing guitar. That is the reason why I started to play guitar. I grew up with music, then I bought my guitar and I started to make music and then I discovered electronic music. At that time also I had a group with another person and we were doing tracks on a four-track mixer. We didn’t have the materials really to make music. And then when I discovered the technology of how to make electronic music, I used it with my guitar to make it sound a bit better than the four-track mixer.

Gerd Janson

But you don’t have anything of that time with you, stuff you did back then?

Chloé

I think it’s not possible anyway to listen to it, the sound is too crappy and it’s really, really silly. We didn’t think too much about the music, we were trying to find some noises and making noises, and in a way, if I make you listen to it, I don’t have it anyway, but it is really silly music.

Gerd Janson

Do you have something like the music you were listening to back then from your mother and father, that you still listen to now, that is still important to you?

Chloé

It is still very important to me, of course. Sometimes, when I write my mother she likes it that I put on some music, and if I don’t have music she is really complaining, “You are not funny, you don’t have music.” I say, “Yes, I have music, but I’m not going to make you listen now.” And if I don’t have Motown records or if I don’t have some tracks she likes, she doesn’t want to listen to music.

Gerd Janson

So she doesn’t like the stuff you are doing now?

Chloé

She likes my music and she is quite proud of my music. When I make music, I make her listen and I think she has a good point of view. If she likes it in general I think it is like, “OK, I think I am on a good way.”

Gerd Janson

She is your quality control?

Chloé

I think so, for me.

Gerd Janson

What is her favorite track of yours that you did?

Chloé

I think it is a track off my album, maybe I can play it, the track is called “The Door.”

(music: Chloé – “The Door”)

So this is really the example of the fact that I use the guitar, the instrument I was using before electronic music, and then using the electronic things to make music as if you had a whole band.

Gerd Janson

And your voice as well, that was your voice, so you weren’t too interested in making just a club album or something like that?

Chloé

I produced also some club tracks, but my production it was always a bit different from my DJing, because when you DJ, of course, you can play this kind of track in a warm-up, in the beginning, but in general it doesn’t make sense to play it in the middle of a party. I think in production you have more space to express yourself and make whatever you want. On the album I wanted to make the expression of what I play and also what I produce and try and find an in-between. I think you can be very slow and have no beats, but you still can find the same energy as in the club. This is what I really like and what I try to create in general by finding the sounds. I think I am really into searching for textures. Also, using the voice like an instrument, and I never put the voice up front like a real song. Of course, I use it a bit like that, but it’s never too much.

Gerd Janson

Lyrics aren’t important? Like, when you say just use a voice as an instrument?

Chloé

I’m not a writer, I usually don’t write lyrics really but there are some lyrics that come quite often so I try and create a story. I try to anyway.

Gerd Janson

And you mentioned Pulp, the club where you started to play, and if I’m not mistaken, it was with Jennifer Cardini and Fany, I don’t actually know how you pronounce her name in French, you shared this residency and perhaps it is something you can talk a little bit about, this kind of scene in Paris and how important it was for the city?

Chloé

This club was existing for quite a long time and it wasn’t very interesting for the electronic scene because it was during the day mainly, dancing for old people. On Wednesday, it was rock parties, Saturdays it was a club just for girls, and we thought there was something missing so I started to play there on Fridays and it was parties for gay, but it was gay-friendly. From zero to three o’clock it was generalist music, but the real generalist music, and then at three o’clock when I started to play, half of the club was leaving and half of the club was staying and there was a part of the people staying that didn’t like the music because it was new for them. So it was a very important residency, especially to create something for the public, and at three o’clock it was a time where people are really into the music so you can play whatever you want. Then slowly, we started to have Fridays, really from the beginning to the end, and that is how we started to then go all night and do the warm-up and then the party started to become famous. So we had the Thursday and then we started to invite international DJs.

Gerd Janson

Like who was important for you then?

Chloé

For example we brought over some artists from Kompakt, for example. They were the first to bring me to Germany, maybe in 2000. I was playing in Germany, these artists, we invited them to Pulp because nobody was really interested in this music then. There was a record shop called Catapult in Paris and they were promoting this kind of music, like records from Germany and minimal music. Catapult were always organizing parties at Rex Club and were inviting people too. But it was really slowly, it was a work in progress in finding people like that. It was free entrance, too, so that was kind of new for Paris to have an international DJ in a small club with a free entrance and that also helped for the success of the night, I think.

Gerd Janson

People like to come if they don’t have to pay.

Chloé

Always.

Gerd Janson

And do you have a track from that time that was very important to you that you always played or which reminds you of that time?

Chloé

It’s a bit difficult to listen to just one track to say, “OK, this is representative of the club.” There was this track that maybe a lot of us were playing because even the people who didn’t like electronic music liked this kind of track that you will probably recognize, acid.

(music: Winx – “Don’t Laugh”)

Very classic, but that’s one of the tracks that was quite easy to play for girls that didn’t like electronic music and it’s still a track that I think is very important to electronic dance culture or house music.

Gerd Janson

It somehow captures that crazy feeling at eight o’clock in the morning, right? Or six o’clock? You said “playing for girls,” so is it different to play a gay party than playing at a mixed party?

Chloé

Actually, it is just that in Paris especially, as I was saying, in the beginning the main parties with electronic music were because of the gay culture and the gay parties. So the first parties I was invited to [were those] and that is why I was resident of Pulp. Also, I was playing at other gay parties and I’m still playing sometimes in Paris at gay parties, and I think they are usually really funny and fun parties. It’s always gay-friendly, really open. It’s true that it’s less serious than going to Rex Club, for example, listening to a DJ. Also, the Rex Club has a really huge soundsystem, especially after this year. They changed everything and it has speakers everywhere, maybe it’s a bit more like Fabric in London, it’s realy the culture of the sound, the quality sound. OK, it is not the same kind of music you would play at a gay party. The sound is more crappy so it’s really different. In Pulp they prefer to put money, for example, into the lights instead of money into the monitors, so we were these kind of DJs who grew up with this kind of thing. We can go and play in the kind of parties like Rex Club, but also, we can play on soundsystems that are more crappy, so you always try and be careful with what you play. There are some tracks that are not good on some soundsystems and are better with another soundsystem.

Gerd Janson

If the soundsystem is crap, it doesn’t matter as long as the party is fun? Because if you were eight years playing in Pulp and the soundsystem wasn’t great that can be frustrating as well.

Chloé

Yes, I think it can be frustrating if nobody cared, but the fact that people are so happy that you come and play. If I have the technical things that I asked for, then I can play. Sometimes I refuse if the soundsystem is really, really crappy because that stresses me and then, if you’re stressed, you can’t share your music, really.

Gerd Janson

What technical things do you require these days?

Chloé

I usually ask for a Pioneer, this kind of Pioneer [gesturing at the CD-J in front of her], a CD player. I have my records and I have my Serato system and so I play Serato and I control it with CDs and also my vinyl, but I have to say I play mainly with my Serato. I have to say the whole system has changed and slowly imposed that we have to play this way. In Paris, for example, all the good record shops closed because nobody was coming any more. Slowly, the kids that were basically the people who were helping promote this music changed into Serato or Traktor. I used to receive a lot of the vinyls and now I receive downloads so I play what I receive and it is downloads. When I like a track I just ask if I can have a WAV, not an mp3, and then I continue to play with CDs. I am used to having tracks on CD, so it’s just like the same thing.

Gerd Janson

But you’re not one of those people who are very sad about this whole DJ thing more and more transforming into a digital kind of era?

Chloé

Of course I would love and prefer to play on vinyl, but I would miss a lot of tracks and a lot of new artists. I would miss a lot of good things because in Paris we don’t have any more good record shops. If I am in Berlin or Frankfurt, I go in the record shops, but in Paris it’s a big city but there’s no more good record shops. As a DJ you want to play the best, so you search and you have much more possibility through trying to find things on the net. Of course, sometimes it is a bit tiring because during the week you are in the house and you check emails, you make music, I’d use my computer, and I play on the weekend and use myself Serato, and sometimes it is a bit boring this way.

Gerd Janson

You are in front of the computer 24/7?

Chloé

Now it becomes like a real instrument, but at the same time it gives so much possibility, and I think it is really good for the new generation coming that they can have and play music and make music with software and for less money. A lot of people can express themselves, and I think it’s very important that you can express yourself.

Gerd Janson

And getting back to your album, there are also two tracks on there that you have actually done for a whole other project, for a conservatory. Maybe you can talk a little bit and explain what you are doing, which is like a research kind of project?

Chloé

I was for four years in the Paris Conservatoire and it was very interesting. It actually was an electro-acoustic class, so the idea was to help you make an electro-acoustic track. So during the whole year you had to think about making a project like this, so it was quite a new experience to make the track in one year, which is quite a long time. I was there for four years so I made four tracks.

Gerd Janson

Why does it take so long, a whole year?

Chloé

I had a teacher that was very interesting, he’s an electro-acoustic composer from Argentina, whose name is Octavio Lopez and he was really into helping us, pushing us between the concrete music and the electro-acoustic. We had to work with instruments, we had to work with professional instrumentalists, so the first year I worked with a contrabassists, and it takes you a long time because you have to learn how contrabass plays, what are the different possibilities, the classical possibilities and then the contemporary possibilities. Then you record with him some sounds, from basic sounds to more different sounds that he can make. Then you put in your session and the idea is to make a track with the texture of the contrabass. All this sound was taken from the contrabass and I was using a lot of different software, like every kind of possibility I could use and you could not recognize that it was made with the contrabass. And then the contrabass at the end, and you write on the contrabass and he plays on your track, and it has to be in one piece. So it’s really electro-acoustic, really in between. On my album I just took 20 seconds or 15 seconds of two pieces I did, which makes interludes in my album. So I can, for example, make you listen to an extract.

Gerd Janson

How long are the extracts in their original form?

Chloé

They are 15 minutes, but the interesting thing is that you can make whatever you want. Even if you make two minutes, it is a concept and so it is interesting to them. But in one year it does not make sense, so in general it’s between 10 and 15 minutes, but it can be 30 minutes. Finding the textures and playing them, it’s not at all synthesized music, it’s only textures that you edit from one millisecond to one second. It is not just like playing a synthesizer, for example. So this is an extract, a really short one. [plays extract] So this was made only with the contrabass, you could hear the chord of the cello hitting, for example, and there is another one, also a short interlude I put on my album, and the first sound is a flute. [plays extract] And so at the end of the year each year the conservatoire presents the piece. as they say.

Gerd Janson

And you get a degree?

Chloé

No, it’s just a project and it’s a really personal project, just to help you make it. You are in the room and there are 80 speakers all over the place and you have a mixer, but not a normal mixer, it’s an inverse mixer, so you control all the speakers and you specialize your piece. Each speaker has its own [character]. There are some speakers that have more bass, some are more clear. So you make the sound come from here and go to there. You specialize it, and this helped me a lot in my electronic composition. That was very inspiring and pushed me more to compose and find textures, and I really liked it in this way. I don’t pretend to say, “OK, now I do contemporary pieces,” it’s just for me a new tool. I just try to take my interest into it and add it to my compositions.

Gerd Janson

I was just about to ask you what attracted you to this more conceptual way of making music, instead of just having this normal club track that has 16 bars in the beginning and in the end to mix in and out?

Chloé

I think it is very inspiring. It is what you were saying earlier, sometimes it can be repetitive, the DJ life, and I tried to always find something new and something a bit different to make it more exciting. I’m always searching and going from one side to another. That was very interesting for me to do that. I did it for four years. For maybe two and a half years I was 100 percent into this and was listening to many contemporary tracks, concrete music, starting to go somewhere else. Then, at one point, I was like, “OK, this is too much, I am a bit fed up with it. It’s interesting, but OK, I know how it is.” If you DJ, you DJ a lot and a lot and at one point it is too much, then it is a balance.

Gerd Janson

And what do you think about the current state of electronic music, if you want to use that term? You mentioned minimal a few minutes ago, and it is almost like a curse word nowadays, no one wants to be minimal but everyone is, or something like that.

Chloé

It’s always more helpful maybe to some people who don’t know what you are doing to put a tag on it, so I can understand this way. I know, for example, my album at the shop, there are some shops that didn’t know in which category to put it. “Shall we put it in folk music or shall we put it in electronic music?” And finally they put it in electronic music because I am more well-known there and I use electronic sounds. I don’t know, I can make folk tracks with the help of this system, an electronic system, so I think it’s a bit boring sometimes. People like to always tag like this but I believe if people are interested in your music, they know what you are doing anyway.

Gerd Janson

You wouldn’t describe your music as minimal then?

Chloé

It can be minimal, but not only. Sometimes, the more minimal it is, the more house you want to play, and you make people dance and so in one sense I can play minimal, but you have really nice house tracks that are minimal. It can be everywhere.

Gerd Janson

How often does your gender play a role in what you are doing? You started at a time when it was still a curiosity that a woman is a DJ and they had stupid terms like “DJane” and stuff like that.

Chloé

It’s funny because in France we say “DJette.” I didn’t realize until after because my second name is Jane and I was like, “How did they know?” I think it is nice in English, in French when you put “-ette” in front of the word it is a diminutive. So it is diminutive, I am not like fighting to say I want feminine words for my category, but it is true that at the beginning I was quite surprised to see how some people were looking as if they were in the zoo. It was a bit annoying. Of course, we’re in a world where gender is very important, but it was maybe more difficult ten years ago than how it is today. There are some women here in the room and I think maybe ten years ago, if you put the same room, I am not sure there would be the same quantity. I know that there were a few years ago some girls coming to me saying that, “I started to DJ because I could see it was possible for me to start to DJ.” On the one hand I was not understanding it, but on the other I was like, “Oh, this is cool,” because it gives the idea to some other people first, and other women.

Gerd Janson

But you do it with your ears and your head and your hands not your private parts anyway?

Chloé

That is why I could not understand also.

Gerd Janson

There was also this thing called The Dysfunctional Family, you and Ivan Smagghe, that somehow aimed at that topic?

Chloé

The Dysfunctional Family, the funny thing about this was this club at Pulp, there was lots of different styles of music on each day. We liked this idea of promoting one club and it was many different identities and we think it is the same in the music. You were saying about minimal, but it is not [about] the style. OK, you can say you play this style or this style, but it is more about the personality. We did this compilation called The Dysfunctional Family because we thought, “OK, let’s do a compilation.” It is not like a real DJ mix, it is just a continuity of different tracks and they are like pop, folk tracks in between big electronic tracks and then something else more disco. But it’s just our own vision and it is music we like. We did this cover where Ivan is shaved and more like a female and it is all about this identity and gender stuff.

Gerd Janson

Do you have something from that compilation with you?

Chloé

It is really different tracks, maybe I have one I have to see. [pause as she searches on computer]

(music: Jason Edwards – “Codeine / (Tiger Timing Remix)”)

Gerd Janson

So what track was this?

Chloé

So this is not the original because I couldn’t find it, but this is Jason Edwards, he is an American songwriter so it is usually more folk. But this is a remix of “Tiger Timing” and it was released on the label Kill the DJ, the label we have with Ivan Smagghe and two other people who were working at Pulp.

Gerd Janson

Why is it called Kill the DJ?

Chloé

That was first the name of the party at Pulp. It was a time where in general house music was more house-y, more positive vibes, and we were playing more dark music and more sounds from Germany. Maybe it was a bit more cold, and a lot of parties in France were named like, for example, there is still a very big party called Respect, and I think it was to counterbalance with this kind of idea to make it a bit different. When we started the party, I think it was a new generation and a new idea of making parties with a new style of music, new artists, new ways of promoting music. So maybe that was the general idea.

Gerd Janson

The other side of the coin then, so to speak, if Respect is more I guess the American house kind of thing, right?

Chloé

Actually, yes, it is true that it was a big time for American labels, and American artists in the ‘90s. And then slowly it geographically changed and it went more in Europe. It was the beginning of that time, slowly it was changing.

Gerd Janson

And with your new album now you started to play live, right?

Chloé

It was a long time I was thinking to play live.

Gerd Janson

With the guitar?

Chloé

No, I could not imagine making a live [performance] of 100-percent guitar and singing. I am a DJ first and I might produce at home and the idea of making a live [set] with a guitar in front of people, and being in front totally, that was totally the other side. Maybe it was too new, maybe it was not the whole idea of what I was making. As I was saying before, my music is more, for example, if I use my voice it’s really mixed with the whole instrument. I am more an instrument so it took me a while to make a live [set] for this reason because I couldn’t really see an example of someone typical, who isn’t really in the DJ and live, making a totally different style of music. I wanted to find an in-between, so I finally found an in-between and I took some sounds from tracks I already did, and I played them on some beats, but it’s more slow than my DJ sets and upper than my album, so it’s a real in between.

Gerd Janson

What is your favorite way of doing it then? You also said once that you started different and changed it later.

Chloé

When I did my first live [performance], I was in front of my computer. It was not sequenced, but I knew what I was going to play and at what moment it was going to happen. I really prepared it, you know when you are really stressed you really prepare carefully to make sure nothing is lost and you don’t have to think too much when you play live. So the first live [set] I did like this. For me, it was really new because it was really more downtempo and the people were not dancing as when I play as a DJ, so the feeling with the people, the perception of the people, was very different. But I did not like being with a laptop like that and knowing exactly what I was playing, so I really had to rethink my live [set] and so I really understood how my live [set] was going to be. Suddenly, I realized the mixer had to be in front of me, like when I DJ, and the computer on another side and then I started to bring some other stuff, like a Roland 707 for the beats. I have an effects machine for all kinds of delays, I have the Kaoss Pad 2 for all types of effects and a few synthesizers and other stuff like this, and now it is much more fun. So I changed everything in my computer and I am more free to play whatever I want and take more risks like when I DJ, because when I DJ I don’t know exactly what I’m going to play. I feel much better that way with just a few things on my computer. I feel better like that.

Gerd Janson

So it’s really live then.

Chloé

It’s more live but still it’s not an instrument I am using, so I have to prepare sounds before anyway. I can loop voices and use my voice as an instrument, for example. My Kaoss Pad 2, if I play with my voice and I use my Kaoss Pad and it makes a sound and according to how I do it on my microphone, the sound changes a bit and it makes new sounds, so yeah, it’s quite interesting when you’re performing live. It is more exciting than just pushing play.

Gerd Janson

I would like to open it out now for a few questions. If you have any, that is...

Audience Member

How do you lay out your live set mainly? Is it in Ableton?

Chloé

Yes, I use Ableton Live. I don’t use the side where you can arrange, I use the side with the clips. So, for example, on one track I have only two levels where it can work together, but then I can change from one clip to another clip to another clip, and this is more exciting I think than just doing all these things exactly, because it can be very different from one experience to another. Even if I think before how I will start, it is only when you are here can you know what you are trying. For the room and the atmosphere. For example, this weekend I was playing at a festival, this is the first year I performed live but I played at a few festivals and I have to say it was very stressful because I don’t play so many live sets. For example, this weekend I played in France at a festival called N.A.M.E., a festival in the North of France. The next day I played in the South of France and the two atmospheres were totally different, it was really different. In the North I felt I had to play more dubby, more bass, not too much high-frequency, and in the South it was the opposite, I felt I could play more high frequencies. So that was funny, you know?

Audience Member

You said you were the resident at this club for eight years. Do you ever have this problem like the same audience, are you having problems with this, wasn’t it boring sometimes?

Chloé

You mean when I was playing there? I think it was at the beginning a bit boring in a way, really at the beginning, because the people did not know your music, didn’t like this style, didn’t like you so much because you were cutting what they were wanting. So in the beginning it was a bit hard, I have to say, but at the same time it was a good education to see how the people like your music. Of course, in the beginning there was some people coming and yelling at me like, “What are you doing? Go away, I want the normal DJ.” So this is a good education because now wherever I go, if something like that happens, and thank god it does not happen any more, but it can, then in a way I don’t care. You take care of your sensibility. It’s very important not to care too much because it can interfere with your artistic expression.

Audience Member

You said you are performing very often three times a week so how do you sort it out with your selection? Do you get bored of your selections? How do you sort it out?

Chloé

I never play the same set from one party to another. I am trying not to play the same set anyway because it can be very different from one club to another, that’s what I was saying. For example, this weekend, you can only know what you’re playing just at the time you are entering the club, the time the club is open. Usually, I go to the same clubs and I know what kind of atmosphere it is going to be but never play the same set. I think it is more exciting anyway, even for the people.

Gerd Janson

Any more questions? Then I will say thank you very much, Chloé.