The godfather of disco-house, Dimitri From Paris conquered the world a decade back with his mix album Night at the Playboy Mansion. Now, he’s releasing a double album, Get Down with the Philly Sound, that explores the roots of disco. Next Wednesday, he’s playing ROOMbeijing for free. Ahead of the highly anticipated Beijing debut, we caught up with the disco maestro, who spoke to us about tuxedos, the art of the remix and, of course, the essence of disco.

Click play to listen to the interview, or read a selection from the interview below:

Interview

What are you working on these days?

Just a couple of tracks. I’ve just finished a new compilation that’s been out a few days actually, called Get Down with the Philly Sound. So I’m doing promotion for that. And also I have a new song that hasn’t come out yet. It’s being promoted right now. It’ll come out in the next three weeks. But it’s called “Rock This Town,” and I’m working on a follow-up to it. Then, I'm also co-producing a few songs for this band, Los Amigos Invisibles, which is a Venezuelan band from New York, kind of Latino rock band. Actually we had a Grammy, for the last album.

Nice. Tell me a little bit about Get Down with the Philly Sound. What inspired you to go out and create the double album?

Well, the music inspired me. It’s something that I discovered ... It’s funny, because disco is something that I used to hate when I was a teenager because I didn’t like what I heard on the radio and it was always too cheesy and corny for me. And then I discovered other disco records that were more like ... you know, they were not meant for the white people market, they were more for the black people market, made by black people. And it was totally different. It was more funky, it was actually less corny.

It turned out that a lot of it came from the same place, which was this studio in Philadelphia. And I started collecting this music. It started around '76, and the more I went deep in it I realized it’s always the same people making it. Finally I wanted to put that together to let people know that it was just this family of people in a studio like in Philadelphia, the same way Motown did with soul, those guys did it with disco, and it wasn’t a very well-known fact.

People knew the songs, they knew a few artists like the O’Jays or Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, but they didn’t have this idea that it all came down from the same scene/cd (?) and the same people. So because I love the music so much, I wanted to share that information – put the music together and maybe update a new track for the DJs and myself. This is really, you know, the driving force between me DJing for almost 30 years now, it’s just to share the music that I like with other people. So it’s a continuation of that sort of like general spirit of what I do.

How did you decide which tracks would make it on the album and which ones wouldn’t?

You only have so much space, so it’s really a personal selection. There’s a cd with original songs and another cd with songs that we worked, whether we re-mixed or re-edited. And I chose the ones that I would like to work on because there was songs that initially never were never given this sort of like “DJ treatment.” They were never remixed or extended. And one of the beautiful things in Philadelphia is there’s a lot of music to be heard and there’s much more than what you hear on the album version. If you get the actual original parts to extend them, you get to hear more music. And those songs were never worked that way. So I chose the ones that for me always deserved to have longer versions, the ones who deserved to have more music to be heard. And from then on, from what was available, from the songs we could actually get the original parts. Some have been lost, some are still there, so from those I made my choice. I only wanted to do things that weren’t done in the first place. A lot of these songs were remixed in the '70s, but the ones I picked up, they were never touched.

As a producer, when you’re listening to these tracks, is there anything that really stands out to you? Anything where you say, wow, how did they get that sound back then?

Really, it’s the people. What really stands out is each individual musician. It’s amazing that those guys, they got together in the same room and played together like a band on a stage. And a lot of the records you hear [now], I mean everyone does his part - comes in, does the drums, leaves. Then the bass player comes in, does the bass, leaves. And it kind of doesn’t have the same sort of communion. And what you hear on these songs is the magic of those guys – those five, six guys together in the same room – seriously having it. And they’re into it and everything that’s been recorded is the best that could ever [be] made. I mean, I knew that they were doing the song over and over until they got it right; sometimes it took them two passes, sometimes it would take them two days to do it. But it is right, and they’re gelling together, and that’s really what amazes me the most, especially in a time when all the music is done with computers and stuff. You don’t have that sort of magic it’s like a breath of life, and it’s really special to me.

When you’re doing a remix, how do you maintain that kind of energy in the original track — while your using a computer to expand on the ideas there?

Well, it’s a good question, but the computer is only a tool. You can do pretty much whatever you want and put whatever audio in the computer and use the computer as – it’s like an mp3 player pretty much, the computer. Whatever music you put in there, it’s able to repeat it and replay it, so if you generate electronic sounds with it, it’s going to sound electronic. If you keep the original audio that was recorded 30 years ago – actually, almost 40 now – from those songs, it will just reproduce it the same way, so it’s all [up] to the producer to make it sound the way he wants. It’s not because it’s a computer that it’s got to sound electronic. So what I did was just use what was on the page and didn’t input anything new in there because it just didn’t need it. I just extended the parts, took some of the vocals out, and then repeated the parts so we could hear more of the music, and then put the vocals back in. But it’s all the recordings that were done back in that studio in Philadelphia. I just rearranged them, that’s all I did. So this way the raw material has been untouched.

I noticed all of your press pics recently, you’re wearing a tuxedo, looking very dapper. What attracts you to the tuxedo?

It just looks good! [laughs] I mean, there are really bad-looking tuxedos, don’t get me wrong. It’s actually a difficult thing to pick, and it’s difficult to find good ones, and I’m always on the hunt for good tuxedos; they don’t come by very easily. But I think if you get the right tux and it really looks good on you, so – I don’t know, I like it, you know. I guess it’s the memory of watching those things on TV, people at the Cannes Festival and when I was a kid, the James Bond movies when he was hiding cocktails from the casinos, I thought he always looked very good. So I guess it imprinted on my brain forever, and I’ve been stuck with the tuxedo bug since.

If you were going to sell the crowd here in Beijing on disco, what would you tell them? How would you describe the essence of disco?

I think the essence of disco for me is the ultimate dance music, because it’s very happy and it’s got that kind of organic feeling. You know, we’re human beings, I think we can relate to things that are organic much more than to electronic things. It’s kind of like there’s a fusion between our bodies and the music when both are organic. Whereas with electronic sounds - they’re loud, they’re punchy, they’ve got this powerful drive to them, but I always found them somewhat foreign, so I try to stick more to the organic type of sound. You know, people now are eating organic food and this and that, but I’ve always been into acoustic sounds more than electronic, because let’s face it, one is real, one is fake. So I’ve got to have the real one, and that’s what I’m trying to communicate to people.

I feel that really everywhere I’ve played, people have a natural tendency to react well to disco because it’s just pure dance music.

DETAILS

What: Dimitri From Paris

Where: ROOMbeijing

When: Wednesday, July 14, 10pm

How Much: Free entry - but seating is limited so get there early (well before 10pm).