Up On The Rooftops Horizon: Emerging Music From Around The World

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Hello guys! Tell us about yourselves? Why did you decide to create a record label? 

Hello Whyd! I’m Yassine-Elie, the co-founder of Rooftops Horizon. I’m a 21 year old law student from Paris. I’m an old producer, always fascinated by music. 

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Hey! I’m Louis, 22, co-founder of Rootfops Horizon. I’m currently learning at Louis Vuitton to go into a career in communications. I’m also fascinated by music, I wrote for different music blogs and I’m currently part of the growing blog FraisFrais. So music is definitely my daily shit! 

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We wanted to start a music label to bring something new to the French electronic scene. We’re focusing on promoting some hidden, talented artists from around the world who deserve more followers. We can’t say we are getting caught by trends, as a lot of people we obviously love trending artists like Shlohmo, Druid Cloak, or Arnold MOD but we listen to everything, and we think that is the great way to build a music label. 

We’re trying to create a strong structure, a music label with strong partners to promote the artists we sign in the best way. 

We would also like to thank the Paris-based law firm Avocat Saint-Georges that help us with our contracts!

What is the purpose? What can we expect for this year? 

2014 is probably the year for Rooftops Horizon. We’re in touch with some great renowned artists like salute, Noï, or Clu, and some other cool guys that we would prefer to keep secret at the moment. We are really focusing on promoting some hidden artists, and we put out a “release pack” including 4-5 tracks we are not sure for the moment. And, we’re in touch with some great collectives to launch our first party. 

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Who are your artists? 

We currently have four: DJYEN, YYOIY, TIGERZ, and ADRIEN DE VALENTIN. As you can see they are not from the same country, DJ Yen is from Japan, YYIOY from Spain and the last two from France. You can also see that we are not getting caught by a kind of music, we just want to release what we love. 

We think that it’s not a great thing to only see the artists where you come from. We spotted DJ Yen a long time ago when we were at the very beginning and we were hesitant to launch the first release from a country like Japan. Will French listeners give a listen to this? There were so many questions. But today we are really proud of how diverse our releases are. 

DJ Yen: Sapporo-based producer who loves the Jersey Club and becoming increasingly famous day after day: 

YYIOY: A talented producer from Spain who has his own brand called “Shoop Clothing,” and has done some great collaborations like Pixelord and was already spotted by Earmilk. 

TIGERZ is the revelation for 2014. This unknown French dude is definitely the kind of guy we want to promote. He’s reaching a lot of followers daily and is currently our most-played artist. 

ADRIEN DE VALENTIN is someone who we’ve followed since about a year ago, and we were really surprised by the skill in his tracks, so it was natural that we had to propose to work with him! 

Did you already have any events? 

For the moment, we’re still organizing our base. We have some great proposals and we will definitely take advantage of them. As we said, we have some parties planned which we will do in partnership but we prefer to keep the details secret for the moment and not ruin the surprise! 

We wouldn’t want that! Subscribe to Rooftops Horizon on Whyd to keep up with their latest discoveries. 

Tadasu Naito Embodies The Whyd Spirit

The Whyd family is getting quite large, and as we saw from yesterday’s post, very global. There are people that have joined our community from nearly every country in the world. Today, we take a look at one of those people: Tadasu Naito

Tadasu has been with Whyd for a while, diligently sharing some awesome music (you have to check out his unique playlists). He is up to almost 750 tracks added, putting him in the top 5% of curators on Whyd. But more amazingly, he has amassed 928 subscribers, a truly impressive accomplishment and a warm reminder that this whole social network thing is starting to take effect!

Tadasu lives in Kawasaki, Japan, between Tokyo and Yokohama. He works in the IT department of a logistics company, and jams out to great music. His current favorites include: Tycho - “Awake" (a former Whyd track of the weekend); RC & Cohen - “Move" (ft. Madeon, Matthew Koma, Miriam Bryant & Zedd); Tei Shi - "Nevermind the End;” Fickle Friends - “Swim;” and Avec Sans - “Shiver.”

Looking forward to many, many more excellent tracks, thanks Tadasu!  

Victor Milchberg, Artistic Director at 3eme Bureau, Explains Music Management and Artists We Should Listen To

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Hello Victor! How are you? Can you tell us about why music has such a big importance in your life? 

Well…why is music important in my life? I could not justify it, for me it’s a reflex: between the moment when I rise and the moment when I go to sleep, I listen to music, whether it’s for my pleasure, which I’ve always done, or since 7 years ago, for my job. There is not precise reason, but there is something close to a vital need. If I don’t listen to music, because sometimes we need to take a break to avoid an overdose, I will always have something playing in my head. 

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3eme Bureau represents artists (known and unknown) in France. What do you do there exactly? 

3eme Bureau represents lesser known artists more than anything else, but all have signed as artists in development. 

I am the artistic director, which means that I take care of the executive production of albums from artists that have signed a contract (which means that we produce it, to distinguish between those that have a license). The executive production consists of managing the budget of the production. 

The artistic direction consists of choosing artists that we are going to sign (talent scouting is a big part) to help the artist find a director who will help them to make their album when it’s necessary, to help them in the choice of tracks to record, and to accompany them in their creative process. 

Pony Pony Run Run, Orelsan, these are some big names, what does 3eme Bureau do differently between your big artists and your smaller ones?

There really ins’t a difference between that which we do for the small or big artists, we work with them in the same way, it’s just the middle men that change sometimes (it’s not necessarily the same radio stations who play them, the same media that talk about them, the same TV shows that invite them…).

What are you expecting in 2014? Are you looking for new talent? Or other things? 

For 2014, we are really excited about the album of Natas Loves You, hoping that it will reach the largest audience possible. It’s a disc that the group recorded last year with Chris Zane, the director of albums from Passion Pit, Holly Ghosts! etc…

And I’m expecting a lot from our artists who are going to work on their next albums, like the one from Joe Bel that we recently signed. And I hope to continue to find amazing tracks to continue to build our catalogue. 

Subscribe to Victor on Whyd to keep up with his latest favorite tracks! 

The Editor of DumDum.fr Talks Music Journalism, Garage Rock, and Taking Music Head On

The DumDum.fr team, that’s Anthony top left

Hello Anthony! Can you tell us about when you realized the importance of music in your life? 

It came rather late, as a teenager, I was really obsessed with soccer and girls among other things. Like all kids I liked music, but I developed a few different obsessions towards the end of my adolescence. When you grow up in the suburbs, far from concert venues and hype, you can’t fall into the scene out of luck. For me, it was garage rock, most notably the Black Lips, that I discovered thanks to their cover of a Dutronc track “Hippie Hippie Hourra.” An absolute headbanger. So I started to be interested in garage rock, the “Nuggets” compilations, those types of things. It was from that moment, more or less, that music would assume a capital importance for me. 

You are the Editor of DumDum. What is the objective of DumDum, and who are your readers?

We never really know too much about who are readers are. We get a good response from Facebook, Twitter, but I tend to think that the majority are always silent. These are questions that I prefer to not ask myself. As for the objective of DumDum, it’s to show music from a different angle, to try to go further. The project has matured greatly since we launched it. We made some novice mistakes, most notably editorial. Today, with our daily articles, we try to take music head on. And with out annexes, we try to take a step back, to tell stories, and talk about people. Because music, in the end, lets us say a lot about life and the world we live in. 

Why did you become a music journalist? Are you passionate about music or writing? Or the two? 

Well, as I said before, it’s kind of crazy in my head. I studied at a journalism school, initially to become a sports journalist, I love soccer. But I quickly realized that I was heading straight into a wall: I picture myself at stadiums with my microphone trying to grab the stupid comments of football players. Therefore I directed myself rather naturally towards music and culture magazines. I started at Technikart, then the excellent magazine VoxPop that doesn’t exist anymore. Afterwards, it became a job, even if I don’t write exclusively about music. And fortunately elsewhere. 

You also contribute to other publications, like Snatch and Rolling Stone, is music journalism different from the web to print? 

Online music journalism and print aren’t very different along the lines of supports. On one hand, it’s a shame, I think that print magazines will stop doing news updates and talking about top singles. That makes sense: people don’t get their doses of discoveries from a paper magazine. They pay 5 euros to read long-form subjects, and deep interviews, things that we don’t find as much online. Looking back, that which I’ve written for DumDum or Rolling Stone I create in the same way. We have a tendency to think that an online magazine takes less work, that everything must be short, but in the end, I think that’s short-sighted: long-form has existed online for a long time, and it’s taking a more and more important place there. Looking at the stats from DumDum shows this, some of our long articles get a lot more clicks than the short little updates. 

Subscribe to DumDum on Whyd to stay up to date with their latest discoveries! 

NEW ALBUM: “Reversible” by InShape, Out Today (INTERVIEW)

On the cobbled streets of Rue L’Olive here in Paris we meet the electro rock duo InShape, two up-and-coming artists who have been collaborating for the past few years. The latest result of their labor is the new album “Reversible" which is out today! 

Learn about their history, collaboration and composition process and what they appreciate about their new album in our French interview, organized by the lovely girls at We Do Music

And take at least one listen to their single “Clarity” to understand what their unique style entails: 

Let Process Take You Into The Depths Of Your Mind

Yo! Can you fill us in a little bit about your backstory? Who are you and where are you from? 

Yo! I am Remy (Auymer is my artist name) from the south of France, Marseille, and I have been based in London for four years now. I was working in shops and started to produce and play music there in my hometown and it’s here, in one of the most interesting cities in the world that I met Alice, half French and half Brazilian and also our graphic designer Federico. This city was for all of us a way to expand our interest for electronic music. 

London is a city that is world famous for its music, the standard is really high. What are you bringing to the scene today? 

Process is a new project that we launched in May 2013. After exploring London’s clubs, bars, and private parties, we got amazed and inspired a lot, but we realized that the average entry price was quite high and that the spirit was often quite business oriented. Although we went to so many great venues, with brilliant atmosphere and proper sound systems, we always felt there were quite a lot of standards, and the first one was the high price. We soon realized there was one type of party you couldn’t really find and that was free (or cheap) entry, good vibes, intimate venue, just for the love of music. The normal story in London if you want to put up an event and get to have a “name” in the scene, you need to book a pretty famous DJ to attract people and it helps to have a big venue, already quite known. However, we didn’t want to think this way. 

Instead, we wanted something where people discover new music and new talent. From the beginning we thought that with minimized funds and some contacts, you could organize a party that would make people happy and create the right vibe, without necessarily having an already settled DJ. We thought of having more of a party for everyone, that people wouldn’t need to pay much to have a great night and that everyone could contribute, by telling their friends, playing, proposing ideas, etc… 

We got exactly what we wanted at our first event when we gathered around 100 deep vibe lovers in our intimate venue in East London and hell yeah it was such a great night! So I guess Process is just adding some fresh air to the scene, with no pressure to be successful or competitive in the industry; more of an alternative night with fresh and deep beats in a warm atmosphere… Just a night for fun, about music and great people! 

Tell us about your obsession with deep music. Who should come to your events? 

We are really into all those kinds of post apocalyptic, dark, cerebral, acid, minimalist, and deep electronic music so it goes from deep house to dub to techno. And we keep on expanding our knowledge of it and musical culture here in the UK. It’s a type of music that could not be understood at first if you are not really into this. It might seem harsh and scary but it takes some interest to actually catch the little thing that makes you understand why artists such as Lucy, Tom Dicciccio, Rrose, or Polar Inertia (to name a few) are making this type of music; to understand what they are trying to say and get across. You will then understand the spirits that they put behind their machines. 

What we love the most is to see every time where they are driving us to another dimension that was unknown for us. I am pretty sure that the range of frequencies they use in their productions, which can be really love or really high, creates something in our body and brain. And this is what we want to do with Process, make people aware that this type of music can be really festive, energetic. I try to do a kind of step by step when I play at Process, going from different types of electronic music to drive the crowd to this dark, cerebral, and post apocalyptic dimension. 

It’s taking the crowd through a journey, and what is great about Process is that it is a diverse crowd; people there like many different types of electronic music, and the challenge is to get all of them to follow. And until now, all of them did! Indeed you don’t need to know everything about techno to go crazy on some deep beats, it’s all about explaining where I am trying to get you, and having you follow me! 

When is the next event and what else can we look forward to in 2014? 

The next will be in early 2014, still in one of our intimate venues with the same atmosphere! Then we have a couple of projects in mind, like a series of “open podcasts” in which everyone is invited to be a part of by sending his mix. Also, we have some collaboration in mind, with some like-minded friends to create always a better party and bring quality music. 2014 will be an inspiring year for us, no doubt about that! 

Subscribe to Process London on Whyd, and make sure to check out both Process London's and Auymer Music's Facebook pages! 

Promoting Artists? Talk To We Do Music

You are an artist promotion agency. What do you do for artists that they normally can’t do for themselves?

We are a promotion agency specializing in the web, a big nuance! We bring our assistance to artists, and most importantly, that which deals with their web presence: how to use different tools (from the website to a newsletter and also flashing partnership banners), web promotion (you can think of us as cyber press attachés), but also viral communication and social media. 

To sum up, the web is our game field, our medium of diffusion and the finality of our actions. 

Each artist has a different relationship with the web: sometimes, they are completely autonomous with their networks, mastering the abilities of diffusion tools and communicating effectively with the public. 

That’s in a perfect world, where there is a professional entourage like a manager or project manager from a label who is very invested in these questions. But almost always, and even with confirmed artists, signed to a label and very prolific on the web, we discuss strategy together: when, how and where to communicate? What about viral ideas? Which material? What are the strong points here? etc. 

The web has changed everything for musicians, do you see the web in a positive or negative light for the promotion of artists? 

More than positive!! It is mostly for that that we have specialized in the web. From the point of view of diffusion, all our actions have secondary effects, and information circulates very quickly. When a journalist finds something they love, there is no delay to talk about it with us or waiting to publish something in print. We can also mount very inventive operations, without limiting the type of content. 

What’s more, the web can also be a real jungle for novices, with its own codes, webzine trendsetters: one must know how to navigate and know musical preferences of journalists, and know which social tools correspond best with regards to the artists. 

Tell us about a success story with one of your artists:

We don’t really have a magic story like that, web promotion is really more of a long battle, full of little victories, a group that you take farther and a juicy press release about the project that’s running.

But a nice recent story was our meeting with the Chinese group Nova Heart: we discovered them at a show completely by accident at the Mama Event. We immediately loved their project, and we discussed at length with the group and their manager to convince them that they absolutely had to develop their project in French territory.

Then we saw them again, completely by accident, six months later at the other end of the world at the Sakifo festival on Reunion Island which we worked on: the alchemy worked again, the sea and flavored rums even more. We finally were able to launch something together, and we released a completely underground EP in France and the project finished among the last of the Transmusicales de Rennes: their new album is coming in 2014, and it is going to be even bigger!

Are there clients that you don’t accept to work with? (Because the style is not yours, the artist seems like an idiot, etc…)

We Do Music has existed almost five years and when we look back, we see that we’ve worked on a good number of projects. And it’s important to note that with each new album we put our image on the line, and our credibility with journalists, therefore we must be — above all — convinced by the music that we are charged with defending. It’s the bare minimum!

Then, before we say yes, we ask groups to come take a coffee with us, and we must see that we match up on a human level too. Sometimes, we like a project that is very young, unknown to the world, but we take the bet and help them develop. Those are the most exciting projects, everything is to be done! 

Make sure to subscribe to We Do Music on Whyd, Like We Do Music on Facebook and follow them on Twitter!

Paris Funkmaster & 22Tracks Curator DJ Soulist Video Interview

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Perched atop Montmartre off of a private street stands the Hotel Particulier. Surrounded by gardens, tables, and proud cocks who strut around (of the chicken variety), it is here that we meet DJ Soulist, one of Paris’s most established DJs, responsible for the event What The Funk which has been running for over 10 years. 

Inside the Hotel is a room where Tony’s bowtie is finally not out of place: stuffed fowl, fireplace, giant stag, all the elements of haut culture. Enjoy with a tumbler of bourbon.  

Big thanks to the team at Hotel Particulier and of course Masscut for making this all possible! 

DJ Soulist: The Whyd Interview from Tony Hymes on Vimeo.

From The GroundSounds Up: Culture From LA And Beyond

GroundSounds is rapidly emerging as a popular destination for culture heads: what’s the average reader/viewer/listener of GroundSounds like?

The average reader/viewer/listener of GroundSounds varies, however most are avid music listeners who love to discover new musicians, bands, and artists. Our readers come to GroundSounds to read about emerging trends, watch exclusive video interviews, and musical performances. If you’re a creative mind looking for inspiration, come to GroundSounds. 

Jon, how did your background in entertainment media lead you to where you are today, and what are you doing differently than everyone else? 

If it wasn’t for my media background I wouldn’t know how to run and operate GroundSounds efficiently and effectively. I have gained a lot of skills working for various media outlets, as well as many industry contacts that have helped my journey along the way. GroundSounds video content definitely helps to separate us from the bunch, not many music blogs are on red carpets getting exclusive info, and the ones that are tend to focus on talking to already established acts, while we are focusing on the “little guys,” the musicians or bands that everyone tends to skip over. I feel that our attention to up-and-coming musicians as well as emerging artists is definitely giving us an edge. GroundSounds is also operated out of pure passion, this is not a job - I think this aspect has a profound impact on what we are becoming, it is coming from a very pure and genuine state of being. 

Tell us about the team: who is the best at chess, who knows about the most obscure bands, and who do your readers like the most? 

The team is amazing, GroundSounds would not be possible without the team! As far as chess is concerned I’m not certain, however when it comes to finding diamonds in the rough (amazing obscure bands) Brendon Goldwasser definitely gives the team a run for their money. However, I should add that Jake Craney isn’t too bad either! Big shout outs to the rest of the team Danielle Turner, Tahsan Scott, Tim Gadient, Ryan Cornelius, Emily Vargas, Bigg A.D., Tessie Navarro, Jolie Doggett - each and everyone of them bring so much to the table. 

LA is famous for two motifs in music: sun and angst. Which one will rule in 2014? Are musicians feeling positive or jaded? 

While it is extremely easy to become jaded in LA, we don’t have time for that! We keep things moving with positivity and a bright outlook, as do many musicians and bands, we hope they keep it that way!