Dimitri from Paris’ Sacrebleu — or French Touch versus French House
What is French Touch? Is it French house music built around filters and samples? Or is it music made by a certain generation of French artists in the late 1990s, loosely based around a kind of Parisian cool? That, mon ami Hamlet, is the question.
This debate was recently re-opened by a Guardian article about the 20 greatest French Touch tracks, hooked around the 25th anniversary of Cassius’ debut album, which found furious readers arguing in the comments over whether Sébastien Tellier’s La Ritournelle should have been included in the list.
There is no definitive answer, of course. The term French Touch was first used in 1987 for a Parisian house night and British journalist Martin James popularised it in the mid 1990s, after using it in a review of the first Super Discount album, while never really defining the term.
But, as someone who lived in Paris from 1997 to 1998 — absolute prime French Touch time — my memory is that French Touch was generally used in the second, wider way, rather than strictly for house music. DJ Cam, Air and Kid Loco were all considered French Touch acts, after all, and none of them made house.
And so too was Dimitri From Paris, whose 1996 debut album Sacrebleu may well be the ultimate French Touch not French House album. Dimitri these days is best known as a DJ (and occasional producer) of immaculately coiffeured disco house but Sacrebleu was far more eclectic, an explosion of kitsch but surprisingly profound lounge, bossa nova, jazz and soundtrack music. Suffice to say that had Stereolab not already nabbed the name Space Age Bachelor Pad Music for their 1993 EP, it would have fit Sacrebleu like a chef’s hat.
The album — much of which was originally made for a fashion show — is also incredibly French. In an interview with Muzik magazine in 1996 Dimitri said that Sacrebleu was supposed to be “a play on everybody’s stereotyped ideas about Parisians… like a musical version of Inspector Clouseau or Pepé Le Pew” [the sex pest skunk], which goes some way to explaining a track like Sacré Français (which roughly translates as “oh you French people!”), or Le Moogy Reggae, a kind of easy-listening / reggae / house / lounge number that no one but a French producer would get away with. Suffice to say that, when I arrived in Paris in 1997, bursting with Francophile enthusiasm, Sacrebleu was the first album I bought and it made me feel a lot better at being so far away from my Manchester home.
For all its playful artifice, this exaggerated idea of Frenchness sold very well. Sacrebleu shifted 300,000 copies worldwide and was voted album of the year for 1996 by Mixmag. These days, though, it is largely forgotten, a result, I would say, of not being available on streaming — a fate also suffered by Kid Loco’s brilliant remix collection Jesus Life for Children Under 12 Inches — or fitting into easy generic boxes.
Sure, there are touches of house music to Sacrebleu — witness Dirty Larry, the first single to be released from the album and the gorgeously elastic Free Ton Style. But this is far outweighed by some fantastically odd combinations of music.
Une Very Stylish Fille is like someone had set out to make the very lightest dance music possible, with its bossa nova swing and barely there percussion; Un World Mysteriouse is hip hop, if hip hop had been invented by the French fashion houses of the 1950s; Nothing to Lose is Air’s Moon Safari via Twin Peaks’ Bang Bang Bar; and so on, the album hanging together thanks to Dimitri’s masterful production touches and ear for a melody.
It’s funny too, from the xylophone Marseillaise on Epilogue, to the suave-voiced “Vous dansez Mademoiselle?” (“Would you like to dance, Mademoiselle?”) hook on Sacré Français, which is met by the sharp-lipped response “Je ne suis pas celle que vous croyez” (“I’m not who you think I am”). (Well, it made me laugh anyway.) Sacrebleu is light hearted; but it is never throw away, its brilliantly varied production labyrinthine in a way that makes me think of The Avalanches’ sample patchwork.
Of course, if you accept that Sacrebleu is French Touch then all your problems of genre disappear. And I think it merits the title for the way the album exposes the wider influences at the heart of French music, beyond house and disco. Because, yes, French people love house and disco. But they also have a deep and often rather nerdish affection for Brazilian music, soundtracks, funk, jazz and a lot more that gets left by the wayside in examining the limited palette of filter house.
And that is a shame. Because these wider influences definitely were found in the French house music of the early 90s that initially made a name for itself internatonally, like Motorbass’s kaleidoscopic Pansoul, St Germain’s jazz-inflected Boulevard and the first Superdiscount album. But the rise of the easily digested filter house sound nudged these kind of records aside in favour of, say, Cassius’ more basic 1999 album (which I LOVE, don’t get me wrong) and the much imitated sound of the Crydamoure label.
I would argue that Sacrebleu, for all that it isn’t a straight house record, has far more in common with Pansoul’s lush soundscapes or St Germain’s deep jazz grooves than, say, Modjo’s matter-of-fact house on Lady (Hear Me Tonight). And that, for me, makes it French Touch par excellence.
No one — as far as I know — ever really took up the mantle of Sacrebleu. Air’s Moon Safari, released two years later, has some of its lush, loungey appeal but — Sexy Boy aside — little of its tongue-in-cheek humour or exaggerated Gallic swagger, while The Avalanches’ sampladelic explosion had a similarly rich and varied texture but eschewed bossa nova and French jazz in favour of Australian party sounds.
Dimitri himself took several years before returning to the Sacrebleu sound on his second album Cruising Attitude, a record with touches of lounge and jazz that maybe took itself a little too seriously. However by 2003, when that album was released, dance music had changed, the harsh theatricality of electroclash was all the rage, and no one had much time for Dimitri’s nonchalant lounge grooves.
And so Dimitri swiftly retreating back to house and disco, where he has been dwelling ever since. He has made some great records and exquisite remixes in the intervening years — check out his string-rush mix of The Jackson 5’s I Want You Back or his album of Chic remixes for a lesson in the remixer’s art. But his role as one of the most important acts in the French Touch has been lost in the unseemly crush of attention around Daft Punk, leaving the world of dance music a far poorer and infinitely less stylish place.
PS Dimitri’s Erodiscotique series with DJ Rocca also comes highly recommended, although I do wish he would give the endless Playboy references a flipping break.
