MaximalMinimal

It is just midnight, and SPA’s Pets Dance EP is now available on CD and digital on Tuesday 24 February, three weeks after its vinyl release. New sensation of Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak Records, SPA responds cleverly, among other things,  to the clichés and reviews carried about him.

Maximalminimal: Hello SPA, go for those who do not know yet.

SPA: SPA started in August 2007. Initially we were two, with a common desire to make music. The instinctive and transcendental aspect of electronic music in general and the first tracks produced in particular, has naturally led to this connection music / animality. We have a time worn masks to illustrate this artistic bias, this is no longer the case. We have been two: B1 my old sidekick and co-founder of the project, who was responsible over the stage, and me who was dealing mostly with writing and production, I continued alone to focus the project on the inside to allow it to get a true meaning and a real future.

MM: At the time when you were two, I have read some reviews with you as a “spare masked duo” after the Daft Punk or even the Bloody Beetroots … what makes you unique?

SPA: A gap between musical consistency and the visual aspect of SPA has emerged. The tracks can afford to be cheap, it goes rather well with the sonic violence, and let’s say that the instinct does not always bother with perfectionism by definition, and the music remains the primary goal of the project. So the tracks are the basis. The visual appearance is expected to expand this basis. The problem with masks, particularly with animal ones, is that they focus much more attention on them than they should, at the risk of jeopardizing the music itself. I found myself at this precise situation where the visual consistancy and sound seemed less and less obvious, and where to address them I would have had to provide labor and time, which I believe should be invested in the music .

The only basis which seems relevant is the instinctive approach to music that guides the construction of my tracks. The current visual aspect is a balance between basic codes that influence it. It’s very minimalistic, just like Dumbo and Pets Dance. Dumbo has  three instruments. For visuals there is only  red, black and white, it will remain the color code because it illustrates the atmosphere of my music, violent simple direct, without  sophistication pomposity effects. I want to stay on a visual world that accompanies the music simply yet efficiently, everything from the teaser till the page is built up on elementary blocks that echo the sampling or the appearance of digital electronic music. This is for the basis, then the codes are there in the teaser to launch signals. I like the idea of being able to identify an artist with a sound, although most often it is a building of sound that identifies an artist. It is in this purpose that I produced this specific sound on the teaser, which is more guttural and organic than synthetic.

MM: Where does the idea of coupling masks of animals and Shutter Shades come from?

SPA: It’s quite anecdotal and it is one of the things I now want to avoid: associate approximation to nonsense for an outcome worthy of the crappest sci-fi movies.

MM: How did your meet with Steve Aoki and Dim Mak Records?
SPA: This happened in early 2008. Steve Aoki fell on Pets Dance while Busy P was mixing it, after Gaspard Augé had given him the track.

MM: This label has signed the most musically violent artists of the current electronic scene, do you think this condition a little more your  sound?

SPA: I pretend to believe that some labels still choose their artists because they think they will give them something more than the fact of chubbying their ranks.

Steve signed SPA because he liked the sound I guess, he heard several tracks made at different times and had to say that by extrapolating this suited him, and that it was worthwhile to try a thing together.

MM: Your EP “Pet’s Dance” is coming out now when the song is traded on the blogs for quite a while. Why wait so long?

SPA: The label has a fairly busy schedule and releasing a record is not, in my view, to take a track and swinging on a payload platform or put remixes on blogs. I’m pretty committed to vinyl, and the fact that Pets Dance is released on vinyl is a real satisfaction to me. Dumbo brings something else than Pets Dance and so do the remixes. When you add all those elements that justifies to wait a bit before releasing a record in order to fully assume it.

MM: How did you feel to get remixed by guys that have influenced and were on the scene at the very beginning (Steve Aoki & Bloody Beetroots)?

SPA: It is better to forget these stories of scenes, and concentrate on the musical continuum, which is meaningful. Then you can see the remix on different ways. I think the remixes on the single are complementary to each other and expand the scope of the record. Whether Les Petits Pilous, The Bloody Beetroots and Cécile, Steve Aoki, I think everyone loved doing that, and I thank them for that.

MM: “SPA’s music is being compared to a psycho-active substance” … This is the first impression given by your songs. Do you yourself take psychotropic substances?

SPA: This is the act of producing music that is psychoactive. You can spend days on a track that has no potential/future and do something acceptable spawn in 5 minutes, but the state in which you find yourself in both cases is not trivial, it’s pretty crazy.

MM: What material (harware / software) do you use to compose?

SPA: To compose, Live and Reason exclusively, because I do not know how to use anything else.

MM: What is your best memory live?

SPA: A set in London a year ago, we mixed in between bands and at the end the whole audience came to see us, it was pretty crazy.

MM: What are your listening to (songs, artists, …) at the moment? And what are your long time  influences?

SPA: I recently mixed with Art Whiplash, who has interesting ideas,  Royksopp, the last Oizo single “Pourriture” is very good, his best since Nazis, and finally Chateau Marmont that should soon explode. For the long time references Smith’n'Hack, Material, IF, Dopplereffekt, Zongamin  & Flesh Records, Down Low Music, Zoot Woman – Living in magazine (Paper faces remix), BWH, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Dennis Wilson, etc ….

MM: Don’t you think that the movement of saturated music and violent compressors is about to falter and that the movement comes to an end, at least in France? How do you perceive the future?

SPA: As I said earlier, this vision restricted to a scene comes a little depressing. I saturated a lot of music and remixes where the main argument is the saturation, for sure. Beside, some labels are stuck on post punk or minimal. Some copy and others create, whatever the musical genre . I prefer to judge on the basis of an art project than on the mere membership in a particular chapel. The future is necessarily exciting.

SPA thank you for responding so fully to our questions. The Pet’s Dance EP is available as of this morning at your favorite stores or download platforms.

Tracklist :

1. SPA – Pets Dance
2. SPA – Dumbo
3. SPA – Pets Dance (The Bloody Beetroots Remix)
4. SPA – Pets Dance (The Bloody Beetroots & Cecile Remix)
5. SPA – Pets Dance (Steve Aoki Remix) (Courtesy to SPA)
6. SPA – Pets Dance (Les Petits Pillous Remix)

Bonus : SPA vs Amadou et Mariam (Art Whiplash Bootleg) (Courtesy to SPA)

SPA Myspace