Hello everyone - welcome back at the discotheque.
Today's post is extremely special - as we get to hear from UK based nu disco, pop and French house producer Louis La Roche - a veteran in the French house scene of the late 2000s and an extremely accomplished musician in his own right - with his work amassing tens of millions of streams and a heavy amount of incredible remixes under his belt. It is an honor to get him onto the blog!
Without further ado, I'll let him do the talking!
For those that don’t know you – who are you, and what music do you make?
I’m Brett Francis Ewels, I’m a DJ/Producer from the UK. I started my career making French Touch inspired music, which has slowly evolved into Nu Disco and Pop over the years.
What musicians, producers and artists inspire you the most in your work overall?
It changes everyday. Seriously. Inspiration can come from anywhere. A lot depends on my mood or my headspace. It’s just knowing where to pull from. If it’s a Funk song, it’s time to put on my Prince hat. If it’s an ambient song, It’s time to put on my Brian Eno hat. My ‘musical DNA’ will always lie in electronic music. The 90’s UK and French scenes shaped my childhood. I don’t even have to think about it, it’s just an influence that’s automatically there.
You’ve been making music as Louis La Roche since 2008 – what would you say has changed about making and releasing music since then?
I caught the end of the MP3 era back in 2008. Spotify was new on the scene and people were still actively buying digital music rather than streaming. Releasing music without algorithms, that’s the biggest change. Both with streaming music but also social media. Today is much harder to shout out amongst the noise. In terms of making music, I’d say my methods haven’t really changed all that much, but genre wise, I’ve definitely grown a lot. I was 17 in 2008, I’m 34 now. I’ve made House music, Nu Disco and Pop. That transition of genres has felt very organic and natural to me, and they all mix well as they share so much musically. I don’t think it’s been too much of a jump.
Building onto that, what would you say is the best of your early work?
The ‘Super Soaker EP’ from 2009 still sounds pretty good today. People often tell me my earlier works inspired Vaporwave, Future funk and the new names in Disco House so that’s cool. Another important record for me was ‘All I Had’ which was first released in December 2016. A lot changed for me after that record, so that one holds a special place in my heart.
And what would you say is the best of your recent work?
‘Colours’ from 2023 or maybe ‘SANDCASTLES’ from 2024. I’m really happy with the production of both those songs and I feel they show both sides of my palette well. The 80’s influence and the French influence. They’re both the building blocks of the Louis La Roche sound.
Bit of a random one – what’s your favourite video game?
That’s tough! Possibly Monkey Island 3. I just love how funny and wacky that game is. I love a good single player story. The Last Of Us, Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil. I recently played through the new Indiana Jones game and loved it! I’ve always been more of a console gamer than a PC gamer and online games have never really interested me all that much.
If you had to take three albums to a desert island of any genre – what would they be, and why?
Cube's ‘Can Can In The Garden’, The Avalanches' ‘Since I Left You’ and MJ’s ‘Thriller’.
They all inspired different stages of my career. My parents used to play ‘Thriller’ all the time when I was growing up. So that album really shaped my love of synths, the 80’s and that Post-Disco sound. ‘Since I Left You’ really is a lesson in sampling. The multilayers and the possibilities. It covers so much ground as an album too which is impressive. ‘Can Can In The Garden’ I only discovered about 7 years ago. it’s what inspired my ‘Admittedly’ album in 2023. The lead singer was from Sheffield in the UK but the band was from Italy. The result is a weird hybrid of the New Romantic sound that was coming out of the UK and the Italo Disco sound coming out of Italy. Perfect 80’s Pop. They should have been huge.
Okay, here’s a tough question – Roule or Crydamoure?
I wouldn’t even consider them the same. Crydamoure was always about finding a great loop and rolling with it. I’d put it in the same group as the labels Fab G was running like Riviera or Black Jack. Roule was more like a Glasgow Underground or Versatile records. Where the influence was more in Deep House and Chicago House. It was more cut up and not so simplistic. If you compare Thomas’ Trax records or Romanthony’s ‘Hold On’ to say Le Knight Club ‘Rhumba’ or The Buffalo Bunch ’Take It To The Street’ they’re so different. If I had to pick a favourite record I’d pick Crydajam ‘If You Give Me The Love I Want’. What a great record to end on! If I’m picking a label though, I’m picking Roule. Just because it’s more varied, and the highs are pretty high. MSBWY, Together, Falcons EP etc.
If you had the opportunity to work with four artists on a collaborative EP – who would they be?
I’m very lucky to have worked with a lot of my heroes already! Mylo, Darren Hayes, Patrick Alavi, there’s even songs that never saw the light of day which were collaborations. I did a song with Fatboy Slim that never came out and a song with Candi Staton. There’s names I’d love to work with but for me it’s all about being organic. It has it not feel forced. I’d rather it happen naturally rather than create a wish-list or anything like that. I know that’s a very ‘non answer’ haha, but I only put something out if I’m 100% happy with it. The only song I’ve retroactively ‘erased’ from my discography is the single ‘My Turn’ that I did with Yann Destal of Modjo. I love Yann, and I love what he did on the song, I just wasn’t happy with what I did. I rushed it out and I really shouldn’t have. Play Paul told me that he’d help out with the lyrics, but at the time I felt like it didn’t need it. Paul was right, I was wrong.
What DAW do you use to make music?
FL Studio and Ableton. FL is great for MIDI programming and Ableton is great with audio and warping. There’s still this online discourse when it comes to DAW’s, which is find so boring. It’s never been about the tools you use, it’s about what makes you feel the most comfortable. I just don’t get the bias, there shouldn’t be competition. I’ve been using FL since FL6 and Ableton since Ableton 5. For me it’s all about speed. I need to get the idea I have in my head out as quickly as possible. Some of my best songs were created in a day.
Building onto that – what physical hardware do you use – and what are some your favourite bits of kit?
These days I’m pretty much 90% in the box. Everything except vocals, guitar and bass is virtual. However there’s a few bits and pieces in the studio that sometimes make it on records but it’s rare. My Juno 60 still provides a lot of inspiration but honestly, the software versions these days are near identical. The hardware is much more noisy and that’s something I don’t really care for. I’d rather something be clean sounding, that I can add noise to if I need it. Rather than have noise embedded in the sound that I can’t remove. My MS20 is also so much fun to mess around on. The filters are just so unique, there’s nothing else quite like it.
Your new remix of “Easy Lover” by Miley Cyrus is awesome – can you tell us a bit of the production process behind that remix?
A lot of upward compression haha. Most of the song consists of chopped up parts of the original song. I added a bunch of overdubs, guitars, strings, drums and the vocoder at the end. The aggression comes from the saturation and the upward compression. Everything is slammed in parallel. I really liked the original song, I just felt it wasn’t as hard hitting as it could be. I think that with some of the remixes I do, my approach is a ‘re-producing’ and less of a remix. It just depends on the song and what’s needed. It’s nice to go completely left-field and do a remix that changes the original drastically but it just depends on if it needs it. When I sit down to do a remix, the first question is always ‘what do I like?’
So I delete what stems I don’t like and keep what I do like. That dictates the direction of the remix and how much work is needed. Sometimes it’s a lot of work, sometimes it’s not. I’d say this one was somewhere in the middle.
In the description of that remix, you mentioned that it sounds a bit like the stuff from the late 2000s blog house era (it does!) – who are your favourite artists from that era of house music?
Being a Bloghouse artist myself I’d actually say a lot of my influence of that era comes from artists just before the Bloghouse days. Zoot Woman, Metro Area, DFA, Soulwax, Mylo, Simian Mobile Disco, Cut Copy, Jackson & His Computer Band and Playgroup. If we’re talking actual Bloghouse then you can’t deny the dominance that the Ed Rec Crew, Siriusmo, Herve, Crookers, Boys Noize and MSTRKRFT all had on the scene.
It’s strange because I was so young when the Bloghouse stuff happened, so I didn’t really fit in. A lot of those guys are now in their 40’s and 50’s. A lot don’t even release music anymore. I’m still in my 30’s and I feel like I still have more to say before calling it quits.
Another random one – what’s your favourite food?
I’m a big fan of Mediterranean food. Charcoaled meats, fresh vegetables, olives, flatbreads and hummus. Lately I’ve been really diving into pickled and fermented foods more. I love cooking. I cook most days and I find it super relaxing. There’s a lot of parallels between foods and creating music. I have a theory that if you’re a good cook, you could be a good musician and vice versa. Probably bullshit but in my head it makes sense.
You’ve been able to play in many cities – what’s been your favourite place when touring?
The most intimate shows have been in France or Italy. The kind of shows where you can almost rub shoulders with the crowds. Low ceilings, tiny rooms, that kind of thing. My favourite city is without a doubt Seoul. I just love the people and the vibe. It’s the perfect balance between new and old, western and eastern cultures, urban and rural living. Australia has the coolest musicians though. Each time I’ve been, I’ve felt like the fellow artists at the show just outdid me on the cool scale haha.
Can you tell us a bit of the backstory behind the music videos for The Wall and Gimme Gimme?
They were both directed by Hettie Griffiths and Rob Jarvis. The songs were supposed to be from an album that was never released called ‘Hello You’. One of the girls in the ‘Gimme Gimme’ video is wearing a T-shirt with the albums artwork on. This was my first time working with Hettie and Rob, they returned to do the music videos for ‘Kaboom’ and ‘Funk Trunk Skunk’. With all the videos, I just left them to it. I didn’t want to get in the way of whatever their creative vision was. It wasn’t until ‘Sleepless Nights’ that I started to direct my music videos myself.
You’re very heavily inspired by 70s disco culture – can you name some of your favourite jams from that era?
Honestly I’d say I’m more of a fan of the ‘post-disco’ sound. 1981-1984 in particular is a magical time. So many of my favourite records are from that specific time period. It’s the funkiness of real players, drum machines and synths. Things were still loose because midi wasn’t really around yet, so things weren’t too ‘perfect’. Anything by Leroy Burgess, Paul Lawrence, Hubert Eaves III, Rod Temperton, Larry Levan, Leon Sylvers III. Look intro their songwriting and production work, it’s incredible.
CDs or vinyl?
Vinyl, though I still have a bunch of CD’s that I can’t part with. I’ve always collected vinyl due to sampling. You can’t beat going into a record store, digging through a bunch of vinyl and finding some real gems that have been lost to time. Some of the most obscure vinyl records I’ve sampled have came from record stores. I could spend hours in a good record store, quite easily! These days so much stuff is on YouTube but every now and then I find a hidden gem in a record store that hasn’t found its way online just yet.
Do you want to give any tips to any aspiring producers just starting out?
I’d say two main things that will instantly make you a better producer. The first thing I’d say is to dig deeper into influence. Let’s say someone is a huge Skrillex fan, and they want to make music like him. Look into his influence, who inspired him? When you find out those artists, listen to them, study them, understand them. Then see what else they produced, what labels they were signed to, what other musicians they worked with. What I’m getting at is that when you understand the bigger picture, that’s when you learn the building blocks. The recipe. If you just listen to Skrillex and nothing more, you won’t learn anything.
The second bit of advice I’d say is learn some basic theory or at the very least train your ear to know what chords sound good and which don’t. Speaking from a French Touch background. There’s this bias towards samples. That the sample does all the work and it’s all in how you chop it. It was never about that. The best songs in the genre all had great chords and great theory. ‘So Much Love To Give’ isn’t just drums and a sample, neither is ‘Music Sounds Better With You’, Braxe and Falkes ‘Intro’, Lifelike and Menaces ‘Discopolis’ etc. The sample is a small piece of the puzzle. It’s the basslines and the chords that make those records what they are.
Do you want to give any shoutouts to anyone?
Just a shoutout to the people who’ve stuck with me along my journey. I feel very grateful and proud that there’s been multiple peaks in my career, I couldn’t really ask for anything better. That’s all down to a supportive fanbase, and I don’t take that for granted.
There you have it, everyone!
You can find Louis La Roche on all good music services (Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube, etc - Linked below are his Spotify and YouTube pages!)
I want to personally thank Louis for taking the time to answer my questions and agreeing to appear on At The Discotheque - it's been an absolute honor.
Go and support the guy - and keep enjoying your stay at the discotheque.
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