SebastiAn - One Man Remix Army
Move aside Justice, Ed Banger mate SebastiAn is releasing an album of remixes and with an artist album in the works, about to take over the world. 3D’s Carlisle Rogers spoke with the Parisian.
About all anybody knows of SebastiAn, née Sebastian Akchoté, is that they don’t seem to know much about him. Sure, he’s remixed everybody who is anybody in dance music and beyond, from Daft Punk to The Rapture, from The Kills to Bloc Party, and they’re all represented on his latest release, a kind of greatest hits of SebastiAn’s remix career, titled simply Remixes, but he is still a minor enigma within a world of chest-waxing DJs and endless photo shoots. Actually, it’s a bit refreshing.
His dirty take on reworking other people’s songs, instantly recognisable, has helped to firmly ensconce names like The Rakes and Klaxons on dancefloors all over Europe, but talking to him on the phone about the new compilation is reminiscent of speaking to Mickey Mouse if he was dubbed into French sometime in the ’20s.
“I wanted something that would finish that piece of my work,” he says of the compilation. “It was a way to put something between the albums. It was just fun to make an album like that. It was not all my remixes, just a selection, but a small part of what I made before. If you like a track, it’s not a very good idea to make it better. The best idea is to just change the mood of the original song. I don’t try to improve it, I just try to make it different.
“I think people are bored with the noise in the tradition of rock n roll in electronic music. If the people are bored, it will change very quickly. I don’t know if it’s changing yet, but for now it looks quite stable. Maybe we need to jump on it again.”
With a new album on the way, SebastiAn says he has stopped working on everything else but the album, to enable him to finish it for a release next year. “The only thing I haven’t stopped doing is a few productions,” he admits. “I’ve done a few for Uffie and Peaches, but stopped most of the work on remixes. Peaches asked me to make one or two songs. I met Peaches a year ago at the Miami Winter Music Conference. She told me she wanted to make a new album and we spent a very funny night together talking about music and getting drunk. She invited me to come help her make her album as a friend.
“I can’t say when the album is going to be done, but I have all the tracks ready. I’m in the processing of finishing it. It will be a little different from what I’ve done in the past, but not so far out. It’s hard to explain, explaining music is hard. There is a lot of different stuff, but it’s still compact. It doesn’t explode into a bunch of different styles, but at the same time I have a few different points of view on this album. It’s dancefloor, but a different way to see it.”
WHO: SebastiAn
WHAT: Remixes through Ed Banger / Shock
WHEN: Out now
MORE: myspace.com/0sebastian0