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When DJ Falcon appeared as the seventh instalment of the Daft Punk Creators video series last year you can imagine a few eyebrows were raised.
Who, you might have wondered, was this amiable looking French bloke who followed in the footsteps on legends such as Giorgio Moroder and Nile Rodgers among the Daft Punk collaborators?
It’s a good question. Falcon – aka Stéphane Quême – introduces himself as the video as the childhood best friend of Pedro Winter, Daft Punk’s erstwhile manager. He’s also been the Daft Punk tour photographer, worked in Virgin Records A&R department and is cousin to Alan Braxe (Alain Quême).
But Falcon isn’t just the best connected man in French house. He’s also a producer of rare quality, with just five solo tracks to his name, a handful of remixes and three collaborations, each one bursting with brilliance.
Those collaborators? None other than Daft Punk (on Random Access Memories’ blazing final track Contact (of which more later)) and DP’s Thomas Bangalter, who he worked with as Together, for two unimpeachable Roulé 12 inches.
That’s a track record of rare, unblemished quality. But it is also one that is surprisingly complicated.
His one solo release, for example, was on Roulé records and is therefore pretty hard to buy these days, plus there is some confusion about exactly what tracks Falcon has been involved with, as well as the matter of a 10-year gap between records. (There’s also another DJ Falcon, who appears to make gabba but we won’t worry about him).
And so, with Falcon firmly back in action in 2014, we present a guide to his essential releases and a little bit of French house history.
DJ Falcon – Hello My Name is DJ Falcon (Roulé 1999)
Falcon once claimed to have made 1999’s Hello My Name is DJ Falcon – a four-track EP that is his only solo work to be released – merely as a way of testing out a new sampler. If this is true, then the EP stands as a sickening example of effortless quality.
Hello…. features four tracks: First, Honeymoon, Untitled and Unplugged. And at one point or other they have all vied for contention as my favourite.
First is a filter disco cut up of the kind that was hugely popular in the late 90s. As such, there’s very little clever about it at all, comprising essentially a load of samples from the Special Disco Re-Mix of Jimmy “Bo” Horne’s Spank and some filters. But – as with much of the best of Daft Punk’s music – First’s sheer simplicity is its charm, with each element perfectly suited for the occasion.
Honeymoon is more of the same, sampling in this case Serious Intention’s Serious and Natalia Cole’s Stand By. But it features not just one of the most genuinely uplifting moments in filter house history – when the strings and vocals build to an orgiastic climax around the two-minute mark – but also one of the funniest break downs, when the song is interrupted by the familiar noise of mobile phone interference on three minutes, sending unaware listeners scurrying for their phones. It shouldn’t work, maybe, but it really does, providing a moment of genuine surprise and shift in tone.
Untitled is more of the same – if by “the same” you mean world-beating filter house – with the welcome addition of a heavy, nigh-on distorted kick drum and strident, rushing strings.
But Unplugged is, at least for the moment, the stand-out track, if only for its evergreen simplicity, which pairs an addictive, rolling guitar line (from Lipps, Inc’s The One) with a lush house backing, which sounds a lot like someone noodling melodically on guitar while enjoying an outdoor house party at the height of summer. Nothing could be simpler, you might think. But it just works.
Unplugged, incidentally, was later sampled by DB Boulevard on Believe, a follow up to their Phoenix-sampling global hit Point of View. It was rubbish and did nothing. But it would not be the last time someone else would profit form Falcon’s work…
Cassius – La Mouche (DJ Falcon Played Live remix) (Virgin 1999)
There is some confusion around Falcon’s classic remixes of Cassius’s La Mouche, with the two tracks floating around under a number of names, which combine Metal, Played Live and DJ Falcon in various guises. In fact, a promotional CD I’ve found on Discogs includes both an 8.58 DJ Falcon Metal Mix Edit and a 9.01 Played Live by DJ Falcon mix.
There are, certainly, two Falcon remixes of the song, albeit with not a great deal of difference. This one is tougher and choppier with an intro that resembles Thomas Bangalter’s remix of Roy Davis Jr.’s Rock Shock. At a guess, I’d call it the Metal Mix. It actually sounds a great like a re-edit of this original remix, which we’ll call the Played Live mix.
Whatever the case, Falcon’s takes on the track are brilliant, transforming a fun if unremarkable original into a house tour de force, courtesy of a dumb-as-rocks filtered metal riff and percussion that seems to pop like corn. As with many great remixes, Falcon’s two takes make the song sound like it really should have done in the first place.
Together – Together (Roulé 2000)
One year later, however, came the track that would seal Falcon’s reputation: the imaginatively named Together by Together.
It Falcon’s solo work had exhibited a knack for the minimal, then it was his work with Thomas Bangalter as Together that would push this to its very limits. Only two Together tracks were ever released – Together and So Much Love To Give – but both would become major club hits, with the latter track even hitting the charts courtesy of a lousy remake by Freeloaders.
Both tracks were similar too, each essentially pushing a sample (or two samples in the case of Together) to their logical limit in a way that really shouldn’t work but does. Both are brilliant but it is the earlier track I prefer, thanks to its magical combination of driving bass synth riff – the kind of riff you’ll be singing along to for days – and yearning vocals (from Sweet Sensation’s Sincerely Yours). It is house music reduced to its very elements, as if chiselled out of rock until nothing extraneous remains or could remain.
Daft Punk would go on to include Together as part of their Alive 2007 tour and album, the track appearing as part of a thrilling mix of Human After All, One More Time and Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You.
In fact, Together often makes me wonder what would have happened to Daft Punk has Thomas Bangalter first met up with Falcon rather than Guy-Manuel. It is no exaggeration to say that Together’s best songs rival Daft Punk’s. But they are very different: more minimal and primed for the dance floor and hugely influential in their own way. They are Daft Punk in another, tidier, more stylish life and all the more fascinating for it.
So why didn’t Together make any more music? Well, it’s not quite that simple: there was talk of an album that came to nothing but the duo did continue to collaborate. One of these collaborations, in fact, would go on to become Random Access Memories’ epic album closer Contact some ten years later, when Daft Punk would re-work a Falcon and Bangalter demo, adding live drums and Nasa samples.
Contact is great, certainly, but I can’t help preferring the dramatic power of the original (you can hear it in a 2002 DJ set from Bangalter, Falcon and Cassius here), which features – in typical Together style – little more than a sample from The Sherbs’ We Ride Tonight, looped and messed around with, plus some thunderous drums. It’s brilliantly simple and you can only imagine the reaction had it come out at the time.
The other track often credited to Together – Call On Me, eventually released by Eric Prydz – is more controversial, as these WhoSampled comments attest.
Certainly, there’s no denying the track has the classic Together hallmarks: one insanely addictive sample looped ad infinitum, while a side-chained kick drum batters away in the background. DJ Falcon also played the track a great deal in his DJ sets of the early 2000s before the Prydz track was released in 2004.
But did he write it? It depends on who you believe. There are (unsubstantiated) claims that Falcon and Bangalter wrote the track and a) thought it too similar to their earlier work to release or b) didn’t want to clear the sample.
Under these theories, Prydz was allegedly set to remix Call On Me but ended up making his own version when Bangalter and Falcon decided not to release their original, hooking up with Ministry of Sound for the release.
Sitting on what was obviously a major hit might sound insane but Bangalter and Falcon have history, not licensing So Much Love to Give to a major for a wider release and allowing Freeloaders to take the track to the top of the charts.
Bangalter also apparently refused to give Gym Tonic (the track he made for Bob Sinclar) a wider release, again allowing a soundalike cover – Space Dust’s Gym and Tonic – to clear up commercially.
Of course, an alternative theory has it that Prydz made the track – possibly following the Together model – then gave it to Falcon to play out, with the confusion resulting from there.
Or both acts could have stumbled across the sample at the same time. We may never know but I’m inclined to give the track to Prydz, not the least because it has started to annoy the hell out of me.
Alan Braxe with The Spimes – Time Machine (DJ Falcon remix) (Scion 2013)
For 10 long years there was silence from DJ Falcon as he concentrated on his photography and DJing. And then, in 2012, he returned, transforming Justice’s New Lands into a slice of effortless disco and taking Alex Gopher’s Hello Inc for a stroll in laidback electro.
The pick of the new remixes, however, was the one that saw Falcon back firmly on home territory, taking on cousin Alan Braxe’s collaboration with The Spimes, Time Machine (part of a free EP on Scion).
The – actually rather brilliant – original sounds a bit like Elton John jamming with Air, all Valium-ed to the nines Seventies bliss, which is lighter than air. Falcon, however, takes tings down a dirtier root, applying a hint of scuzz which perverts the song, then loops the results into infinity, much like 2002 – 11 had never happened.
Falcon is now said to be working on an album with Braxe. If it is half as good as this remix, then 2014 could be the year of the Falcon.
