The Dreamy Electro Folk of Isaac Delusion [LONG FORM INTERVIEW]

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Rain patters quietly on the windows of La Fée Verte, a cozy café on the normally raucous Rue de la Roquette a few Eiffel Towers from Bastille. It’s late afternoon, some Parisians tap away their last work emails. The beer taps open for a couple of new arrivals. 

In through the door come two new visitors to the café, Loic and Jules, a.k.a. Isaac Delusion. Their friendliness is immediate. I explain to them that we had sourced questions from their fans on Whyd. They are excited to answer, at ease with anecdotes and information, outgoing and happy. 

The following is translated from French. Tony Hymes for Whyd in bold. All photos courtesy Isaac Delusion’s Facebook Page.    

Tell us about the origin of the group, was this originally something that kind of came together, or was it something that you were really trying to make work?

Jules: We have known each other since middle school in Vincennes, and we each made music in our own ways, we decided to do something together. 

And when you say “made music,” you played the violin? 

Jules: No, neither of us has a formal musical training, but Loic played the guitar, composed music, sang. He had a folk group. And I made electronic music, at home on my computer, making little tracks.

So it was really the desire to do something musical, not really something that came from the structure of formal musical training expectation. 

Jules: In fact we never thought about releasing an album, or how we would perform on stage. The music was between us, we saw each other on Sundays, went to the cinema, and afterwards made music together. 

So what was the first moment working together?

Loic: Jules had traveled a lot, and he had just come back from Australia, and I had advanced with my music group, and I started singing, because before then I didn’t sing, I just played the guitar. I started singing in a way that was heavily influenced by the jazz greats like Chet Baker, and Jules told me, “That sounds good! I like when you sing like that, let’s try to do something with it.” At the start it was just for fun. I went to his place, we played around for a few hours, singing “yogurt” and in doing that we succeeded in creating a song! 

What did you think about this first track? Did you think, “shit, we can share this with people?” 

Jules: I still love that first song, it has very few elements, it’s very simple, but it’s something that works. It’s really a chill track. Voice, guitar, a little beat. 

The style of your music is really the music of dreams, like a pillow on a Sunday morning, pleasant. Is that because you love to sleep? Or is it the style that you like the most? Or is it just because you’re really good at producing it? 

Jules: What I like in the music is a mix of grooves, sexy rhythms, and dreaminess, the mix of these emotions is something that I like to create. 

Loic: I think it’s also just the mix that we make, Jules has ideas that develop around the things that are more groovy, hip hop, soul. And I am a bit more indie, electro, listening to a lot of Postal Service. The more we listen to this type of music the more we get towards the groovier side, or listening to Thom Yorke, things where there is rhythm but it’s still floating. 

Yeah, it’s not music that’s really well-defined, crystalline, it’s more nebulous. 

Loic: Yes, that’s it!

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In about a month, you are going to play at the Olympia. You’ve already played at some awesome venues in Paris but the Olympia is still a rather mythical place. How do you feel about that concert? 

Loic: Create magic, that’s the most important.

Jules: We are going to try to deserve it. Do something that aligns with our styles: dreamy, mystique, nebulous. Something that comes out of the water. 

Is there pressure?

Jules: Yes there is a bit of pressure, but we don’t really feel it that way. 

Loic:  There is also the thing that because it’s the Olympia, we have to make sure that we are perfect, we have to come well-dressed, but the best way to succeed at a concert is to not stress, but to think about it as only happiness. For you, and for the people that are going to come and listen to you. If you think about things like “The Beatles played here…” no, you have to be cool. The music is cool, the music is relaxed, we have to be the same. 

Jules: That’s true, and in talking about the big venues, Trianon, etc. They were concerts where there was a pressure, it’s your head on the flyer, it’s a big room, and when we feel that stress we have the impression that it doesn’t go as well. We aren’t in the pleasure of the moment. As soon as there is a bit of stress there are emotions that become parasites, and we can’t let that block us when we plan for the concert at Olympia. 

You have to remain faithful to the music, it’s already made, so stick to it. Share the happiness. 

Loic: Voilà

We have a couple of questions from your fans about your cover of Lou Reed’s “Take A Walk on the Wild Side.” Which was a Whyd track of the weekend. How did you approach this cover? Where did the idea come from?

Loic: It was a track that I always listened to, it’s a monument. It’s true that I just started to pick up my guitar and I found the chords by ear. I started singing along and my girlfriend was behind me and she said “I really like how that sounds, that’s really cool. It’s great how you sing it.” So I thought OK! And I recorded the piece in one take that evening with my son singing along in his baby talk. 

In fact that’s the second question from your fans, because people didn’t recognize your voice. 

Loic: That was because my son, who has started to speak little words, was going “bah, bah, bah” and at the beginning I wanted to remove it. But I shared it with Jules and a few other friends and they said no! Keep it! 

Jules: It’s going to be difficult for the royalty payments…:)

After how well that cover worked out, do you plan on doing more of them? Maybe in the same style?

Loic: You know, with the Lou Reed cover, I thought it was a little presumptuous to take on a huge track like that. So I think the best way to approach a cover is to make it simple. Try to build something that works on top of the song that’s already been created, respecting it. 

Is that the same idea with remixes? Because you remixed La Fille aux Cheveux de Soie by Fránçois and the Atlas Mountains. Or is that something different?

Jules: To make a remix is to do something different, to leave the realm of the song for something different. It’s not the same as a cover. 

And do you continue to make remixes? There are demands now from fans to release new music. Do you feel like you have to release things?

Jules: No, not really. We’re going to release a new single very soon, that’s just a little track so that we continue to write and release music. We still do a few remixes, not a ton, but yes a few. We’ve got a new one coming out soon. You can’t disappear for too long. 

Loic: I think that the evolution of music is a path. It’s starting to become like a free-for-all, as soon as artists have ideas they communicate all the time, they release EPs, albums, there aren’t rules anymore. I think for us we try to stay in the cycle of creativity, always with new ideas but not necessarily thinking about the marketing behind it. 

Jules: And as soon as we do a track we can always find things wrong with it so we have to push it out otherwise it will never be released! 

Loic: I’m a huge fan of Sufjan Stevens, in terms of productivity the guy is incredible, he’s always releasing stuff and I appreciate his generosity. 

Last question. When you’re not making music, what do you do for fun? 

Jules: We love the cinema. 

Loick: Yesterday we went to see Whiplash, it was incredible. 

After Being Separated From His Homeland By War, Batida Finds His Link Back To Angolan Afrobeat [LONG FORM INTERVIEW]

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In a small restaurant tucked behind République, the Melotron radio is stationed. There are tables, small and square, and the typical chairs that stud brasseries across this country. Colorful macaroons wait atop the bar. The kitchen is still cleaning the remnants from the lunch hour. Team Melotron is setting up the gopro to stream the upcoming set. Featured today: Batida, an Angolan-Portuguese musician whose energy is as apparent in his music as it is in his manner. 

Few interviews flow so naturally. He starts talking, a running stream of autobiographical information, Angolan history, and of course, music: both the music he makes and the music he loves. We start at the very beginning.

Tony Hymes for Whyd in bold, all photos property of Whyd.  

I grew up in Lisbon, but I’m from Angola. Because of the war my family went to Portugal or Brazil. The war was supposed to last a few years, but it started before I was born, and it ended 30 years after. That marks my growth. It’s reflected in how I deal with everything. You are in a different place, but the people around you all came from Angola. You keep listening to all of these stories, the music, the food, it’s all different at home vs. everywhere else. So it’s kind of growing into different realities. When you get to a teenage age you want to be involved in the place you are, you don’t connect with your parents stories anymore, now your friends are from here. Why should you keep listening to their old music when people are listening to new music?

When the war ended I had the chance to go back to Angola, almost in the same year and then I could understand a lot of things that I had in me that I was trying to avoid, or overlook, but it was impossible, certain sounds of guitars melodies, still today if I’m not aware it makes me creep. 

It’s like your mother’s music, something you dont want to listen to it, but after all this time I’m happy to listen to this music. 

Did you recognize a lot of it when you went back? 

Yeah, certain songs are historical, when you are a kid you don’t get the lyrics. A pop record from the 70s I listened to a lot as a kid, the lyrics were about going back, tomorrow we will go back. This is one of the most listened to songs at my house, I thought it was fun, Brazilian style from Angola, and one of the artists was a friend of the family. But now when I listen to the track I can understand what it’s takling about, going back to specific situations that people relate to. It’s very human, talks about very specific things. It has to do with the warmth of people, the look in the eye, the fact that people touch a lot, the hugs, social dancing. 

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Does that warmth get into your latest album?

Definitely I try to get close to the people I work with, I try not to work with people that I don’t know only if I’m as close in other terms like with Fránçois and the Atlas Mountains. I didn’t know them but I got so involved with the record that when I finished the song I felt it was something special, and I met them afterwards, and played with them, and it made sense since they are so sweet, especially Fránçois. 

For the first track I found this old afro beat from Angola. When people think of afro beat they dont think of Angola. They think of Nigeria and I heard this vinyl from the 70s, an afro beat without drums, but it is afro beat. And I felt so happy because its something I’ve been tracing back to the 70s in Luanda, when it was a modern, cosmopolitan city, aiming for social and culture revolution, you can find a lot of modern things that I feel proud of there. 

The image that most people have of African cities is mostly crime, messy, or they aim for the ethnic or exotic look, it’s not something that’s very well promoted: sophistication. A city is a city, new things happen, a new synthesis happens, and in Angola specifically there is a new energy, the fact that the city was more modern, more modern even than Lisbon, makes me inspired. Like pretending to go back before the war started, how would you do it differently? Let’s go back and do it the right way, one people one nation, but there were lots of things that were missed, especially in music.

Instead of embracing the influences, the ruling parties nominated Simba as the national music, and lots of people were killed. I like to go back and find that moment, so I found that record, I played around with some beats, and I got to know the author of the sample. I am very happy when I am able to hug the sample, to play that song for a person, and to see their reaction, if it’s something he can feel passionate about too. 

Mataditi heard the first seconds and he said I thought there is a technical problem, and I said it was like that, and he made a strange face, and the music starts and he starts dancing, and he calls his wife and she comes and starts dancing, and they start laughing with each other, happy that something new was created with his music. 

When I was a kid and my family would get together, I would get all the kids and put on shows with choreography and I’ve done that for 20 years, it was something passionate about that. When I see a small child I pay a lot of attention because I think that most of our personality and character are already there, your ambition, the most important things are there. Then sometimes life pulls you in different ways. It happened like that for me, I was not growing up in my context, I was a bit mixed. But I’m happy it happened that way because I can relate to people in Lisbon, in Luanda, in Paris. So it’s great. Sometimes I feel like I have the ability to translate everyone to everyone. That’s what I try to do naturally. 

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I think your music appeals more widely than music that’s more focused on a specific genre. You have this big world sound, to take the “batida,” which is Brazilian Portuguse for the drink meaning “shake,” it’s a big world sound, does that come from the name batida?

The name has to do with this imaginary growing up, hearing about adults talking about something else, that you don’t connect to, you can’t know what they are talking about so you imagine. It’s like when it’s winter and rains, but in a place where when it rains it’s fantastic, and people don’t know what that means. There is a dark side of that too before the independence. 

The planet is not on the same level around the world, but you have a lot of apartheids still going, and people just over look it. It’s related to those memories, but it’s also that batida is the name that everyone gives to a compilation. People’s favorite mixes that are sold on the street. You would put your own track on the batidas to get to the masses. Musicians going to curators and saying, “put me on the next pirate tape!” 

I said if I did something it would be to showcase others, and also if no label appears I will do it anyway. That was the main inspiration for the beginning of the project. It started as a radio show, let’s make a track, let’s promote artists. But then it evolved to music. I used the same software, Ableton Live, to make the radio show and I make music with it. 

I used to make radio shows since I was 16 and that was what has occupied my life. My stepfather was a jazz musician. I listened to music everyday, people playing bass in the living room. But since my relationship wtih him was not positive I stayed away from music, but eventually I couldn’t stay away. 

I started experimenting mixing things, sounds, then mixing tracks, and eventually there was a track Bazooka that came out of those experiments and the feedback was so great that maybe the way would be showcasing music of others or provoking producers with my other attempts to do things in a different way. 

I relate a lot to that more organic approach. Organic is a very strange word, but people said organic is like, an egg. When I say organic it’s more about looking for the life inside of that record or person. I could trace that in some productions but the majority was going after the world to conquer it, something that will never happen. 

Has the reception been notably different in Angola than Europe? How do Angolans view you? As a native son or foreign? 

I was worried about that actually, I show these tracks to friends and the biggest compliments I have were from the people where this music was produced and they didn’t believe me that I made the track, and I had to show them, and in the end they say “wow this guy actually did it!” And I feel organically related with everyone, to the place I was born, it’s not an album I made, this is something that only an Angolan could have made. Angolans pick out these little moments and it’s a bit sad because it sounds nationalistic but I like that I can push some of their buttons and relate personally to them. I like to do that in Angola, but I like to do that in Paris too, it’s about bringing people together, not separating people. 

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What are your expectations from your latest album? Is this a step in the process of making more albums? 

I have a couple of other things I’m working on. I never thought to make just one album. I thought about doing two albums then do radio or documentaries, but the way that I’m able to do everything, docs, dances, radio, producing videos, I’m not just making records I’m doing everything.

I’m not subtracting but I’m adding forms of expression, so for me that’s fine, if I could keep doing everything that’s fine. For me everything is related, communicated, and in terms of music its about the rhythm and bringing people together to dance. 

And developing as a person, I’m not focused on commercial success, but the focus is to keep it going naturally, and in a way that’s possible, real, heartfelt. 

Do you have other hobbies? 

Helping other artists, helping on video shoots, photo shoots, to be involved but not on a professional level.

And the sea, I need to be near the sea.  

Buy Batida’s latest album on iTunes!