In preperation for fabric birthday on the weekend we have dOP! Unfortunate for me they are playing at Fabric at midday on Saturday which is when Im likely to still be on my way to the club! But thanks to fabric we have free music and an interview from the dOP themselves..
¨The dOP boys have had a characteristically wild summer. Still reeling from their recently released, highly acclaimed debut album, the band have a bank full of memories of live sets played at some of the most renowned clubs in the world – Pacha in Ibiza, Le Rex in Paris and our very own Farringdon disco to name but a few. Undoubtedly an ideal trio to invite to our colossal birthday bash, the French party professionals will be storming our Room One stage this weekend to give us a sensory overload of what orchestral electronic music can be.
It’s the bands unaffected, emotive take on live house music that excites - a multi-faceted sound finely tuned by the trio’s years of experimentation with jazz, reggae, hip-hop and rock & roll. What with JAW’s (the band’s lead vocalist’s) honeyed, soulful tones coming to the fore accompanied by the alcohol fuelled beat and musical arrangement controllers Clem and Damien, a dOP set famously epitomizes “liveness.”
Lucky for you lot, the dOP trio are just as generous as they are talented. Upon catching up with the boys for a quick chat about their upcoming fabric performance and the warranted success of their latest release, Greatest Hits, they’ve offered us a free download from the album and it’s an absolute boom ting if we do say so ourselves...¨ Sophie Thomas
Congratulations on the recent release of your debut album, Greatest Hits! How has it been received?
Thank you very much. We’ve had a lot of lovely feedback since September. We are touring a lot, playing in the best clubs and parties around the world. People send us a lot of good reactions everywhere. We are having an amazing time. Plus a lot of media are supporting us. People can feel that we love what we do.
The tracks share a somewhat earthly cinematic quality. Where did you draw inspiration for the album, much of its content seems mostly based on visuals and intangible imagery?
We thought about every track like little stories. Even though we sing mostly in English, we have a very French way of building the songs. We are very inspired by French singers like Serge Gainsbourg, Alain Bashung and Jacques Brel from Belgium. This filmic feeling has been reinforced by the arrangements of Emmanuel D'orlando. He writes for cinema, and he’s worked with artists like Sebastien Tellier. He has brought some very cinematic harmonies and instrumentations to the record. He took the album one step further in this direction.
Thanks for the free download of the recently released ‘1 Gram’! There seems to be a bitter-sweet juxtaposition between the self-assured, determined quality of the musical arrangement and JAW’s vulnerable vocal persona – how do you go about bringing together a track like this? What comes first?
This version is the third version of the track at least. Maybe we started it about 2 years ago. It took us a long time to finalize it. But JAW's vocal is the original one, we never did it again. To begin, I think the first idea was a groove - Clem started it a long time ago - and then came JAW's lyrics. When Emmanuel added the orchestra, this feeling was even stronger; it was not an easy feat with the two different energies the track exudes.
Do you enjoy playing at here?
We love to play for fabric like most artists in this scene. It’s great to play for fabric people, their very warm welcome, the club’s great sound, great crowd, afterhours, hotel etc. All the conditions are there to make an amazing weekend. It will be the third time we’ve played at fabric, and it will be for the birthday, with a line-up that dreams are made of; including a lot of friends. So we are very excited for sure, we’ll come with some new music to play for the fabric crowd.
What do you look forward to when you travel to London?
Knowing that we will be very tired the week after! JAW is even leaving before us, to get prepared! Last year we started to feel good playing in London, before it was a hard experience. Playing in shit places… And hanging with the fabric crew and the lo*kee people gave us great inspiration. The UK has a musical culture that’s totally different to ours. We’re starting to discover disco and some other English music we didn't know before. Now it's such a pleasure to come back to London; afterhours at Judy and Derren's places, the influence of Carsten Kleman on our musical culture, the list goes on. London is for many reasons a very forward thinking place and has been for many years.
After countless live performances, how do you manage to capture the feeling of spontaneity that is so inherent in your sets?
Improvisation; it pays to be free when you play. We try not to repeat ourselves too much. Ok, we often play the same tracks, but our lives are built in a way that means that every time the performance will be different. We try to steer clear of planning. It would be annoying for us to prepare in this way. We also sometimes play longer sets, with many different energies; spontaneity is the only way to achieve these things. Of course, this is not possible everywhere.
We also try to add new music as much as we can. Playing a lot also gives you skills, and with these we feel more and more free in our performance.
Would you recommend other electronic artists to embrace the performative quality of your sets, especially in the current climate in which new producers are popping up with such frequency?
For sure, we are in a very creative moment for electronic music. Bands like Caribou or Nôze are excellent and unique, Matias Aguyao and the Innervisions crew also. There are so many good DJs pushing great and versatile music today, it's more and more open.
Don’t you ever get tired of all this partying?
Like everybody, we get tired sometimes. But when the music starts, the feeling fades...
See you Sunday at 00h!
