As the current lockdown is strongly affecting our lives in Paris, we are no longer able to continue the shipments of our first two releases. These last weeks were tough but rich as we kept on digging uncovered gems and discovering emerging artists.  Then, we wanted to help you being patient while stuck at home with our “Lockdown Paradise edits".

In this edits series, we’ll post 4 tracks edited by artists we are supporting and who accepted to share their latest works with you. We’ll provide the tracks and some small interviews so you’ll also understand their artistic approach and background.

Few months ago, we came across Souldade’s Soundcloud and we got caught by his super nice edit of “Penelope” by Rodrigue.

As our next vinyl release got delayed because of the lockdown in France, we contacted Simon, the DJ and collector behind Souldade, and decided together to promote one of his newest edits on our channel to display his editing skills. Two weeks ago, he sent us this excellent “Ain’t Like Reggae” edit that we are now sharing with you. We took the opportunity to ask him few questions about his background and this edit.

Hello Souldade, how are you? What are you up to these days?

Hello MTT! I’m doing pretty good in my native South of France; nothing left to do but exercising outdoor, spending hours digging through the web (and incidentally doing some remote work)!

I think the upside of this quarantine is that DJs and selectors around the world get much more time to focus on their musical activities, and so do I. I regularly visit my peers’ great YouTube channels or SoundCloud profiles to give a listen to their latest mixes or uploads; I browse many other YT channels or Discogs pages to find new stuff to play (or edit); I even watch documentaries about the story of the genres I love – by the way I recommend the “Paris c’est l’Afrique” old docu series, recently uploaded on Pan African Music YT channel!

In brief, many projects come to my mind right now, hopefully I have time to start materializing them, and I look forward to going further when I’m back in Paris!

Can you tell us how you became a record collector? When did you start DJing?

Vidal Benjamin explains it better than I do in an interview he gave to Record Magazine: “I discovered that all those house music tracks (…) were made out of disco samples. I thought isn’t it more interesting to discover the music of the origins, the disco (…)?” Besides house, I would only listen to American hip-hop as a young basketball player, and I started opening to black music when I discovered that many rap instrumentals would sample older soul, jazz or funk tracks.

So very naturally I joined the French “Chineurs des Origines” (CDO) in 2016, one of La Chinerie’s Facebook groups where members share overlooked tracks with the community. I eventually became admin, and my friendship with the whole team was born back then: Julien, to whom I’m particularly thankful for introducing me as an admin, Rémi, Norman and Simon, who are doing a truly outstanding work with their collective Bayetë, Baptiste, Jeanne, Elise and Hugo.

Both CDO and Make It Deep, which I also had the chance to join for a while, took selecting and DJing to another level for me. After putting all my musical activities aside as I started as a strategy consultant and saw my free time shrink, the passion eventually became to strong and I decided to breathe new life into my hobby, by launching my YouTube channel and upgrading my SoundCloud page, as an attempt to pass on to people the same emotions I can feel when I hear or dance to a track for the first time.

How did you come releasing edits ? Where do you find the material and what’s your creative process ?

Initially, I never thought I would release edits, only sometimes you get too frustrated when you start listening to a song you’ve just discovered, you are loving it, but at some point the magic breaks because of cheesy vocals or strange instrumental gimmicks!

This happened to me when I discovered “Penelope” at Dizonord. I bought the record anyway, ripped it and edited it by removing the parts I didn’t like and looping some other, really danceable parts.

Whatever the edit, I think my creative process remains unchanged and sticks to this philosophy, with 2 other principles I happen to work according to: I never add anything to the original rips (except stronger kick if necessary for example) for fear of denaturing it, and I try to work with all the available versions of the track (club mix, instrumental, dub…) to get the most out of it.

Can you tell us a bit about this edit you made ? What made this tune special for you ?

So I proceeded according to this philosophy with “Ain’t Like Reggae”, which is an edit of an undefinable reggae-not-reggae cover of “Dreadlock Holiday”, originally performed by the Manchester-based pop-rock band 10cc: I merged parts both from this 12-minute-long cover on the A side and its dub version on the flip side.

I think the catchiness of the track comes from this English pop tradition, and this more electronic cover makes it even more atypical, with a frantic rhythm and especially those amazing synth gimmicks. On top of that, I really wanted to showcase these guitar variations and this remarkable rap verse.

Eventually, we get this heady edit around 105 BPM, to build tension on the moist dancefloors

Thank you Simon !

Follow Souldade:
www.facebook.com/souldade.dj
https://soundcloud.com/simon-de-forni
www.youtube.com/channel/UCcVEs2b07MgM0Rxff4oyXag

Mail : mister.t.records[@]gmail.com