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What did it mean to you what you could do with all your influences?

I discovered immediately that the most important thing for a DJ to do is to make people dance; the DJ is there for the people. At the beginning nobody knows you so you have to show everyone who you are through your music. That’s still the same today, but people come to see you now. You have to play your records but at the same time you have to tell them a story about the roots of the music you love. I like Funk and Disco, but its hard for me know because dance music is on the radio, its everywhere; its hard to keep a balance between what you want to play and what they want to hear. That is the real job of a DJ, its hard to do that. The most important thing as a DJ is to see people dance to your music.

What is your first memory of house music?

In Paris we had two scenes; we had the gays scene and we had the Hip Hop scene … I liked Garage because it was from the black music, but Hip Hop was more visual for me as a DJ; the scratching and everything. The DJ was more important. House music was there but not from the beginning for me. I started with Hip Hop, then Acid Jazz, then came Trip Hop; all music with black influence. In ’97 and ’98 I discovered new artists such as Kenny Dope and Armand Van Helden, these guys were coming from Hip Hop and House. They used to produce these different types of music at the same time in New York. I started to produce Hip Hop.

Where does your turn at ITH find you?

To do a mix compilation is really hard for me, it will be my first one. I did a ‘best of’ for the DVD, but it’s really hard to be really hip to what’s new. Records come out really early and everybody’s doing compilations with the same tracks. I had to find a good balance between my classics and all new records. ITH are really famous compilations, really big DJs have done it so it’s a really big thing to do in my career. I also did it because I have a lot of things to say in this compilation.

What new or exclusive tracks have you included in the track listing?

It’s always really hard to do exclusive tracks for a compilation, but I tried to find very rare tracks that nobody had used. I put my new single ‘Love Generation’ on it, I played that a lot this summer it was amazing. It will be the first compilation with this track. I did an exclusive remix of Martin Solveigs ‘Jealousy’ and used some very rare tracks from Masters At Work and Roger S, and also a brand new track from Julian Jabre. I like French producers so I try to include a lot of them in my compilations.

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