François Kevorkian

Disco dubmaster

Interviewed by Bill in Manhattan, October 6, 1998

The man who put the dub into disco. Frenchman François came over to New York to receive drum tuition from the city’s leading jazz men, but was soon thrust into the emerging disco scene after securing a gig at Walter Gibbons’ club Galaxy 21. François was positioned in the middle of the dancefloor, playing drums to Gibbon’s incendiary percussion-heavy disco. People recall that Gibbons played like the hip hop DJs who came later, with lightning live edits, flawlesly executed. François challenged himself to keep up; no doubt this was the perfect education for a career in remixing.

As A&R man at Prelude Records, his mixes became legendary, as he explored the sonic possibilities of the artform, incorporating ideas from Jamaican dub to create something truly unique. Later he opened the mothership of New York recording facilities, Axis Studios, in the building above what was once Studio 54.

After retiring from DJing in the 1980s, François began spinning again in the ’90s and – alongside Joe Clausell and Danny Krivit – was responsible for Body & Soul, one of the most successful parties in recent New York history. As if to confound anyone who would pigeonhole him, he can also be heard playing dark nights of tough techno, played with a soul and bounce so often missing from the genre. He still runs his label Wave Music and has a weekly party, Deep Space, in Manhattan. Interviewing François is a detailed journey through a life in dance music. Reflecting the refined structure of his mixes, he tells great stories and delivers them in elegant whole paragraphs.

Give me some biographical details.

I was born in 1954 in Odez in the South of France, very beautiful. I grew up in the suburbs of Paris. Instead of becoming a good college student I decided to do music and join bands. Just get myself involved in situations. I became frustrated with the scene in France and in 1975 I decided to quit, came to New York.

Did you have a purpose in mind when you came here?

Yeah, to play music.

What sort of bands were you into to at that stage?

Jazz-funk. I was into Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, all the electric period of jazz. They were all being made here, so I thought why why wait for the records to come. There’s not a chance in hell that if you stay in France you’re gonna get something like that going on. So I came here. I became a student of Tony Williams who was Miles Davis’ drummer, but at the time he had his own thing, Tony Williams’ Lifetime. I started playing with whatever little band I could get a gig with. Really really rough.

In the process of doing that I got a gig at this club where a DJ was playing. The DJ was Walter Gibbons. I didn’t know at the time, but it was a big club, Galaxy 21, and my job was to sit on a little dancefloor with my drums, playing along with the music the whole night. There were a lot of songs I knew, but a lot I didn’t. Through that I became involved in the whole early disco scene which was very underground at the time, very downtown, very black, Latino, and quite a bit gay, too.

However much skill and practice and how many hours per day I had to do to be a drummer, it seemed to me that the DJ’s job was very basic. And being that I quite liked the music they were playing in those clubs, I figured, well, instead of struggling so hard to be a drummer and make money, why don’t I do what these guys do and get some DJ gigs. So I just listened to the radio non-stop, 24-hours a day until I knew every possible song on WBLS. I was already starting to make audition tapes to give to club managers.

What was Walter like as a DJ?

Walter was so fierce, nobody even understood how fierce he was. Nobody saw what he was physically doing with records. He was just outrageous. He had an amazing instinct for drum breaks, creating drama with little bits of records, just like a hip hop DJ, but he was incredibly fast at cutting up records. So smooth and seamless that you couldn’t even tell that he was mixing records. You thought the version he played was actually on the record, but in fact he was taking little 10-second pieces on the vinyl with two turntables.

You know the whole thing: his selection, his mixing technique, his pace, sense of drama, sense of excitement. And he was featuring all these big drum breaks that nobody else was really using. He was really into drums. But by the time Walter had turned into that whole religion thing, he had stopped playing a whole section of music and only concentrated on songs with a message. Unfortunately, it mainly fell on deaf ears.

“  However much skill and practice I had to do to be a drummer, it seemed to me that the DJ’s job was very basic. I figured, why don’t I do what these guys do and get some DJ gigs. ”

So you started buying the records by then, too?

Yeah, I only had 30 or 40 but I had enough to make a really good tape. Eventually, I got to stand-in for the DJ at a club called Experiment 4, and his name was Jellybean. He called in sick one day and I was the only person they knew who could possibly do the music and so they said, ‘Well, why don’t you do it?’ So of course I did. From then on I got more gigs at that club, as well as trying to audition at other clubs.

While this was going on I had gotten a situation where I was taking care of someone’s house and they had a reel-to-reel tape deck. I started teaching myself how to edit, using scissors and scotch tape. I started making acetates, and dubplates of my own edits. The first one I made was called ‘Happy Song’ [by Rare Earth] which was just a copy of what Walter used to do live with it. I had made all these little dubplates which were concentrated energy; it was difficult for a DJ to do all these fancy moves all the time all night so my dubplates were really a kind of greatest hits formula. Nobody had these dubplates; they were mine, but later on the guy that was making them ended up wanting to let other DJs have them, because he could see they were a really hot item.

Then I got a job at the Chase Gallery which, by this time, had rented out the Flamingo during the summer of 1977, because when Fire Island starts on Memorial Day the whole white gay population migrates, so the Flamingo closed for the summer. We had this incredible club and just around the corner from us was Nicky Siano’s Gallery. From there I decided to audition for a big disco just opening called New York New York. And I got the job doing the main Saturday night party.

Was that one of the Studio 54 rivals?

Well, yeah. It was made by the same people that did Le Jardin, John Addison. It was not really per se a rival when they built it, but it became so because they were obviously vying for the same crowd. I ended up doing sometimes five or six nights a week. It was just a way to make money. I was happy just being able to play records and make money at it rather than a ‘straight’ job. However, the problem was that it was more the straight, Saturday Night Fever circuit. But while all this was happening, we all discovered the Garage, where they were then having ‘construction’ parties.

When was the first time you were at the Loft?

Either late 1977 or early ’78. The first time I ever went to the Loft was when it was on Prince Street. I never went to the Broadway one. I did not know any of the crowd that hung there, like Steve D’Acquisto, Michael Cappello, those people. I really don’t consider myself one of those early guys in that sense. Because I was not there. In that sense, I came after the big bang had already occurred in New York.

What was your impression of the Loft the first time you went?

It was so magical, so incredible. However much the Garage was impressive, because of its size and the system and because Larry was so fierce, the Loft had a more delicate quality about it. If you went to the Loft I think you felt that, I better not bother this person because he’s having a good time, or he’s busy dancing. The Loft was not the kind of place where you’d go to find a date or something. You would feel so awkward. You’d just be there to feel part of the group, to be there with people. Everybody was so into the music and they’d be calling the names of the records, screaming. You could hear people’s voices at any time because the music was much lower. It was something more deep and spiritual, touching you not just through the body, but the mind, too. He was also playing stuff that nobody else played.

Such as?

Well, David always had records that he was the only one playing. That was maybe a bit later down the line, but he was always championing Eddy Grant. David was playing Eddy Grant for years before other people caught on to it, including Larry. ‘Living On The Frontline’, ‘Walking On Sunshine’, ‘Nobody’s Got Time’, those were David records that you only heard at the Loft. Until a year or two later, when we were like, ‘This stuff is incredible.’ Although ‘Nobody’s Got Time’ and ‘Time Warp’ became huge Garage records, I don’t think ‘Living On The Frontline’ ever did. ‘Macho City’ [by Steve Miller Band] you had to hear at the Loft to understand.

There was a real evolution to the way David played. In the earlier part I remember David playing things were a lot more mainstream, or experimental, or rock. In the later part I think he defined the style as being the more spacey, trippy, movie kind of records. I remember hearing the Bee Gees’ ‘More Than A Woman’ where, I think, it had a special meaning. It was not the same record that was being played on dancefloors uptown. He would play all the big records, whether it was ‘Love Is The Message’ [by MFSB], but he played it in his own way, which was from beginning to end without mixing. I saw him when he was still mixing. It was really funny, he had little speakers – he didn’t use the headphones – and from the turntables, you could heard him cueing up, ktcheh, ktcheh. He would never really mix on beat; he had no interest whatsoever. The Loft was a place unto itself, you really had the sense immediately, that this was a place so special.

What were your impressions of the Garage when you went? Was this the first time you’d seen Larry play?

The first time was in the backroom at the ‘construction’ parties.

But you knew about him already?

No. I was so new to all of this. I was literally propelled into the scene overnight. When you did get to see Larry, especially in the early days, the music was so mad. So intense. He obviously studied from David and Nicky, so he had his pile of Nicky records, he had his pile of David records. He really took from them all these good ideas, and I think really the Garage was just an over-sized version of the Loft. He basically copied the Loft’s sound system and made it much bigger, much more powerful. He understood everything about what these places did, but very quickly took it beyond all that into his own domain. I think what Larry did was nothing short of absolutely astounding.

He started to influence people. The Garage became so strong that it became a focal point, and everything started revolving around it. It created gravity, became a planet, and it had other planets gravitating around. There’s nothing else that will remotely compare to what the Garage was. Being that it was downtown, black, Latin gay club, a lot of people never even knew it existed. Because that culture, especially in the late seventies, was not really admitting that such things would exist. After Saturday Night Fever and the disco backlash, well let’s forget about disco, now it’s punk; let’s go to our little nyahh nyahh nyahh guitars and suburban white dreams. But the Garage was forging ahead with a cultural evolution that was so ahead of its time that those people didn’t get it. Most people that went there sort of got it, but I remember some people hating the Garage and thinking it was really a bad club.

Why do you think they thought that?

Because it was too much. It was an assault on their senses. It was a kind of tribalistic ritual, that I don’t think they could relate to it. They’d never been prepared. If they’d been watching Bob Newhart or Johnny Carson or whatever else they’d been spoon-fed, as Americans, it did not prepare them for that experience.

Do you think it might be to do with a club like that expecting them to invest their intellect into it?

No, I think that it’s more that, for you to enjoy these clubs, you have let yourself go to a basic level where you can be free. And not cling on to any preconceived notions. You just have to accept it and see how beautiful the dance is. A lot of people are not ready to do that. They go to a club to be seen, show off their clothes, find a date, get drunk.

You have to remember that a lot of these people that were with the DJs were picking the records. No offence to David, but there were a whole crew of people like Steve D’Acquisto and others, who were really record pickers for David. I’m not privy to how that would happen, but I could see when I went to the Loft that they were showing him, you know, ‘Play this. Here’s a new record. This is good.’ And of course, David was the opposite. After he trusted you, if you brought him a record he would not even listen to it, he would just put it on. So next time if you were gonna bring a record to David, you got so scared. Because if you brought a bad record to the Loft, he would play it. And you would be so embarrassed because everybody knew that it was your record. So nobody would ever dream of bringing a bad record to the Loft. In all fairness, I have to say David DePino told Larry a lot of times, or Judy Weinstein, told Larry what to play. Because they were probably sometimes more up on records than he was. Certainly Judy Weinstein, having the pool, was uniquely placed to get access to music before anybody else got it, including Larry. She would hear about things before they were even made.

Tell me how you got into production with Musique?

I didn’t have access to two turntables and a mixer. I had access to one turntable and a tape machine. Because of my musical background, I was always into experimenting, doing a lot of my drum recording with microphones, tape delays and special effects, flanging, phasers etc.

Was this is at home?

Yeah. Then I started doing those edits. I would bring my crazy scotch-taped edits reel to this place called Sunshine Sound, a mastering place, which was in the same building as Strictly Rhythm used to be in. Sunshine Sound was a place where all the DJs would go to get their acetates cut. Bring a tape in mono, and Frank Tremarco, the owner, to make an acetate for $10. This was in 1976.

And were these acetates of people’s own edits?

Sometimes, yeah. But he would also sell the best ones. There was one called ‘Hollywood Medley’ that was very famous at the time; it was like a cut-up of that year’s greatest hits. Like ‘Stars On 45’ [in fact, Stars On 45 just copied those medleys]. Anyway, for whatever reason, he caught on to my stuff. From the first time I brought in that ‘Happy Song’ he was like, ‘Wow! This is cool.’ I started doing more of my little edits and he approached me and asked me whether we could make a deal: ‘I want to have your stuff; I want to make it available to other DJs, but I’ll pay you every time I sell an acetate.’ Of course this was not very legal, but it was on such a small scale, it was more to disseminate and propagate the music. So there were certain things I did which became very popular.

Such as?

‘Happy Song’, which is now a bootleg. I did ‘Do What You Wanna Do’ by T-Connection; ‘Erucu’ by Jermaine Jackson, which is an early Walter Gibbons tune. After that, Frank started getting more friendly and he asked me, ‘You know, there’s this record that’s really good that a lot of DJs are asking me about. Why don’t you take the record and make an edit of it?’ That was Cymande’s ‘Bra’. So I did a very early edit of ‘Bra’ which was very basic. Repeated the break three times. That was it.

All these little things were helping me to get into the component parts of the music. I started doing quite elaborate medleys where I would overlay things on top of each other. Almost like pre-sampling. I was working at New York New York non-stop at that stage, and I got to meet these people at Prelude because we were doing the rounds of record labels. I was with this guy Rene Hewitt, and Prelude had just moved into this office and they wanted to play us a couple of tapes. They asked Rene for his comments, then they asked me for mine. ‘Thank you very much. Okay, Rene, you can leave, but could you stay?’ And on the spot, they offered me a position doing A&R.

“  My first record becomes a huge hit. They put me in the studio night and day. It would not end. Two or three records a week. It became like an assembly line. ”

Who were the people you met?

Marv Schlachter and Stan Hoffman. I started the following week and they put me in the studio to do this record they needed remixing. It was busting out in the New York marketplace: ‘In The Bush’. It was my first experience in a proper recording studio, so I would go in the studio, do a listening session and take a tape home of the individual tracks that were on the multi-track. And I would listen to each individual track and make a song map, so by the time I came back to the studio I would know exactly what was on each track.

When I went back in I was with this engineer, Bob Blank, who was quite a talent. He would get all the sounds, then I would tell him what I wanted. So we did a whole pass with different sections and then cut it together to make it work. The record just blew out. I mean, it exploded. Anywhere you would go in the summer of ’78, they were playing that fucking record. I brought it to the Garage and Larry loved it. He would not stop playing it. It went gold.

So my first record becomes a huge hit. They put me in the studio night and day. It would not end. I got to pick whatever I wanted. I ended up doing a lot of records for Prelude. Two or three records a week on average. It became like an assembly line. I went to France and started signing records of my own. Things I have to take credit for would be ‘Disco Circus’ by Martin Circus and I signed this other thing that Tee Scott and Larry used to play forever, called ‘Body Music’ by the Strikers. The problem was you could not get that record. There were only 100 copies made on Cesaree Records up in Harlem somewhere. You could not get a copy of it.

So for six months that record was getting played at Better Days and the Garage and nobody knew nothing. I finally made a connection with the people that had the record. So I brought it to Marvin and said, ‘You’ve gotta sign this.’ And by that time I was really close to Larry so I asked him to come in the studio with me and we did the mix together.

You said in an interview once that Funk Masters was a very influential record for you.

The Champagne Records gold cover remix. That was the first record I heard that used dub techniqes that was not a dub reggae record. I had not been exposed to King Tubby at the time. But when I heard a dance music thing with all those big reverbs, those stops, those crazy effects where a piano comes in, cuts off and decays. To me that was a revelation. Oh, you can do that?

Immediately, I started searching out those sounds. Then I started going in the studio and playing with tape delays and all kinds of crazy regeneration effects. You can hear the result of that – and some heavy-duty editing – with D-Train’s ‘You’re The One For Me (Reprise)’, the short one that was only on the album. Because people already knew the original version, when I played that it was like insane. People would go mad at the energy of it. There was that element of wildness that I really think I picked up from Larry. I think I was the first person to play Funk Masters at the Garage and when the remix came out after we’d been playing the original for a while, to me, it was really was mind-blowing. It opened me up to this whole reggae, dub thing.

“  In early 1990 I decided become a DJ again, so I would call people and say, ‘Hey, can I come and DJ at your party?’ ”

At that time I also got to play in this club AM-PM which was a very very crappy dirty after-hours club which went from three in the morning until 10 or 11. It was all illegal. John Belushi would be there all the time. Billy Idol would be lying on the floor half-drunk. I had to play ska, punk, reggae, disco, electro, whatever. They wanted to hear the Go-Go’s mixed with Bob Marley and James Brown. They didn’t want to hear a lot of anything. I was not too much into the punk, but I had to play it. It also opened me up to a whole bunch of other records besides the Funk Masters, that had a real different attitude. There were certain dubs that starting coming out in the early ’80s, British, rocky kind of bands. Who was it that did a remake of ‘Shack Up’?

A Certain Ratio.

Well, those were the bands that I’m talking about. British bands that had a certain punky sound, but were really just recycled disco. The British were obviously much more aware of that dub reggae thing, because there were all these reggae engineers working there. So sometimes some of them would do a B-side version that would have the heavy effects. Then I became aware of Jah Wobble, Public Image. Suddenly, I had all these points of reference that gave me ideas to go into the studio and do things that were a lot more experimental. I started going outside of the mainstream; it gave me very rich matter to draw from. Of course, there’s a matter of conscious choice that I’d rather work on an Arthur Russell track than some commercial thing.

By 1982, I’d started taking a lot of freelance things, although sometimes I couldn’t get credit for it, because Prelude were starting to get increasingly unhappy with the fact that I was doing these records. I did Yazoo’s ‘Situation’, which was a mega-hit here and I did ‘Go Bang’ [by Dinosaur L] so it got to the point where it was like, ‘Look François, it’s okay, but it’s cutting into the things we’re asking you to do.’ So some of them I had to do anonymously. I helped Larry do the edit on ‘Is It All Over My Face?’ [by Loose Joints], but I never got the credit for it.

Did the outside remixes come as a result of your name credits on Prelude releases?

You’ve gotta understand that I had the most number ones on the dance chart in 1982: D-Train, Dinosaur L, Strikers, Sharon Redd, Yazoo etc. Everybody in the world was trying to get me. I would suddenly start getting calls from London. Prelude got kind of pissed off when one day CBS, our UK licensee, came up with an album that said François K’s Best Mixes.

Do you not think that that was fairly significant though, the fact that the label had noticed that it was your mixes that were the selling point?

Honestly, I don’t think it would’ve made any difference to how big a hit D-Train would’ve had. Maybe I helped some. Maybe in the clubs, some of the versions I did like, say, that special dub I did of ‘Keep On’. That was very much a defining thing where a lot of people copied that stripped down style. But overall, I would like to feel that I’m not so much a part of it.

How do you think house changed things?

Machines. That was the end of live playing. The most significant thing to me about house, you didn’t have live musicians any more. You had people programming boxes. So it had a sound of its own. When it came out it was so special, so raw. Primitive, yet very compelling. It was the start of that refining process where, instead of music having all these flourishes, you just had raw, to-the-bone, simplistic, dancefloor-only oriented music. The people that made house music weren’t interested in anything other than having the maximum amount of impact on the dancefloor. Retrospectively, I think the more significant thing than house was Detroit.

Why?

Because what was really interesting about Detroit was that they really vibed on all these Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode, early electronic records. And they made it into a sound that was more abstract. Maybe I shouldn’t say it’s more important. Historically, you might say it has more far reaching implications.

Was that because they were isolated and less driven by the dancefloor?

Yeah, it’s possible. I play fewer Detroit records than I play early house. There’s always a couple of old house records in my crates. I don’t have that many Detroit. But I think that over the course of time, I think it perhaps had a more profound influence on some of the European things. I’m not sure. Commercially, it might be that house is much more successful, because it’s spawned all these genres. Also in Europe it’s done incredibly well on a pop level. Let me re-phrase that, I think they were equally significant.

How did that alter your approach to studio work?

It didn’t really. I quit DJing in 1983. I was producing rock bands like Midnight Oil or working with Mick Jagger. Doing things that had a lot more to do with pop and R&B than to do with hardcore dance music. What did I do that year? 1986 or ’87? I mixed ‘Solid’ which was Ashford and Simpson’s biggest hit ever. I was working on Kraftwerk’s new album. I didn’t have a lot of connections with that stuff. I was more into making music. I had sort of graduated from being a dance remixer to being an at-large kind of guy. I was very aware of ‘Jack Your Body’ [by Steve Silk Hurley] and ‘House Music Anthem’ [by Marshall Jefferson]. I was still going out a lot. I went skating every week in Central Park, where they had the sound systems. I was going to the Garage still.

As far as being in the studio, I can’t say that I really wanted to copy Chicago house. I was excited to work on a Mick Jagger record because Herbie Hancock and Jeff Beck and Sly & Robbie were playing on it. That, to me, was a lot more meaningful. Working with Kraftwerk was something that was very satisfying. That’s where my head was at.

When you eventually started doing house, it was still different, but very you.

What happened was I started DJing again in early 1990. I decided to become a DJ again, so I would call people and say, ‘Hey, can I come and DJ at your party?’ I started trying to get DJ gigs because I just missed it so much. From there it became a lot more apparent that because I was spending so much time in the clubs it was changing what sound I had when I was in the studio working on records. Quite honestly though, in the early ’90s, I didn’t get much work at all, mixing or anything at all.

What I was really into in the early ’90s was the more experimental end of things: Deee-Lite, LFO, A Guy Called Gerald. The truth is, most of what I was into and doing was not getting signed. But I had Axis Studios which, at its peak, was a major facility with 20 employees. So I said, ‘Fuck it, I’ll put it out on my own.’ Since nobody wanted to release what I liked, I figured I might as well just put it out myself. Also, not only for my own things, but out there listening to things that were really good and not getting signed. I thought it was the right time to start a label. We really haven’t had a lot of releases, but we seem to have had a good reaction so far.

With the fragmentation of dance music in the ’90s, where do you think that has left DJing as an artform? Is it too easy now?

Well, it’s a different vibe. It used to be that we had landscapes, with little hills and gentle valleys, and now they’ve just taken a bulldozer and made everything flat. Perhaps for the short run that flat landscape suits certain people, because they might have boring lives and desires and listen to very boring music because nobody’s inspiring them to have that diversity and that rich textural contrast. I feel that most people have completely misunderstood and taken the easy path to making records. They’re never really trying to get in touch with the magical aspect of making music.

How did Body & Soul start?

We started this party in July of 1996. This Englishman John Davis, who was doing a couple of Sunday afternoon parties in London, came over to the States and wanted to do something here. He went to this club Vinyl and they steered him towards using me as the quote unquote main DJ. I told him that if we were going to be doing something then basically I had to be musical director. If it wasn’t going to be like that then I really wasn’t interested because I had been kicking around the idea of doing a Sunday party myself. So he hired me and then his funding and partnership fell apart in the next week, as we were starting the party. So he asked me if I wanted to be his partner for us to continue the party. I thought that was a reasonable thing to do.

“  An important part of what those early DJs were doing is mixing a lot of things that were not made to be together. ”

On the music part, I wanted to explore the possibility of a team effort, where you could be drawing on the talents of various people to present an afternoon’s worth of music that was really special. I just decided to call the two people I felt were the most talented people I could think of for doing that in a team context. Meaning that it’s not about this guy plays for an hour, that guy plays for an hour. We are actually playing together as a team, at the same time. So we can very easily be in each other’s way, but so far it hasn’t been like that. We’ve managed to find a harmonious way to work together.

In essence, we try to provide people with a safe and low-key environment where you could come on a Sunday afternoon and have a party with your friends. More like a family vibe. As far as the music, we want it to be very eclectic and I chose to get Joe Claussell and Danny Krivit as my buddies and we haven’t really changed much since we started. The only thing that’s changed is from 40 people the first week we started, we now have a big living room; a crowded living room at that. Over the time that the party has existed I think it’s started to form its own little culture and now we’re providing the soundtrack for a scene that has evolved on its own. Danny, Joe and myself are providing a backdrop for the people who come every week to really express themselves.

The reason I got into this Body & Soul thing is because I wanted to expose people to a variety of music, some of which you would call house, some of which not. And make them peacefully co-exist, and bring a crowd that appreciate that variety. I think there’s a whole element of that’s lost out there of how grand a party can be. What drama and what can really happen when somebody plays music that is not just a succession of beats, or a collection of this week’s new releases, but is actually an inspired reading; it’s a message, it’s a telling. I can just forget that those things have been. I don’t know what your take on it is, but I see today however big that house culture is getting on a commercial level internationally, it’s also become very bland, predictable and having very little to do with the original spirit.

I’m fighting to show people right now that you can have a vast variety of music, the majority of the flavour may be this or that, but we put enough of a variety of things that it will create different things. When you go back to the early roots of what those people, those pioneers like David Mancuso, where there was a message, where there was a conscious purpose to playing songs together.

Where is that Garage today? At least in New York. Where is it in London? I feel an important part of what those early DJs were doing is mixing a lot of things that were not made to be together. That was the magic of what they were doing. They were able to pick all these quirky little pop records. All these funny B-side instrumentals. All those early electronic experiments. And all those rock records that really didn’t even know they were funky. The DJs put these things together and made it into something that was like creating a new world.

I specifically remember an incident at the Garage when Larry decided to play a movie at the end of the night. He played Altered States. What’re you gonnna do? There’s 2,500 people there and you suddenly play Altered States. That’s the kind of freedom that I think people need to know exists.

It’s interesting that, some of these places like the Loft and the Garage, or some of the people, Like David Mancuso and Walter Gibbons, are becoming icons. And people who never even knew them or saw them, are suddenly admiring them. Obviously there is a significance to all this. It’s taken a very long time for some of this to surface, but you can see how strong, dense and rich it was, because it’s finally getting understood.

© DJhistory.com

FRANÇOIS K SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

MUSIQUE – In The Bush (remixer)

SHARON REDD – Can You Handle It? (remixer)

D-TRAIN – You’re The One For Me (Reprise) (remixer)

RAFAEL CAMERON – Boogie’s Gonna Get Ya (Instrumental) (remixer)

THE STRIKERS – Body Music (remixer)

GUY CUEVAS – Obssession (remixer)

JAH WOBBLE, THE EDGE, HOLGER CZUKAY – Snake Charmer (co-writer/producer)

D-TRAIN – D-Train (Dub) (remixer)

YAZOO – Situation (remixer)

WIDE BOY AWAKE – Set Fighter (producer)

WUF TICKET – The Key (remixer)

KRAFTWERK – Tour De France (remixer)

ASHFORD & SIMPSON – Solid (remixer)

FLASH & THE PAN – Midnight Man (remixer)

DINOSAUR L – Go Bang #5 (remixer)

TERENCE TRENT D’ARBY – Wishing Well (remixer)

FRANÇOIS K – FK-EP (producer)

FLOPPY SOUNDS – Ultrasong (remixer)

MALAWI ROCKS FT. DIHANNE MOORE – Something To Smile About (François K Dub) (remixer)

HERBEST MOON – Blow Your Body (remixer)

RECOMMENDED LISTENING

Various – Prelude’s Greatest Hits (vinyl only)

François K – Essential Mix (DJ mix) (CD only)

Various – Deep Space NYC Vol. 1 (DJ mix) (CD only)

François K – Masterpiece (DJ mix) (CD only)