Music
This is the story of French Touch 20 years on
It's 20 years since Stardust's world-conquering single Music Sounds Better With You took the sound of French house – otherwise known as French Touch – to the rest of the world.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then French Touch was one hell of a smooth-talking sound.
Wearing its glitterball-loving inspiration on its sleeves, mid-to-late '90s French house music was a scene that embraced disco, P-funk, Jackin’ and just about every other element worth purloining from '70s and '80s American dance music. By grafting it onto techno and house tempos, and adding distinctive filter and phase effects, and a unique Gallic style – the "French touch" – the scene was so much more than an aural homage to the early days of dance music.
In the '90s, while London was deep into acid house, Parisians were, at first, getting their jollies out of space disco, a style that Philippe Zdar from Motorbass (alongside Étienne de Crécy) and Cassius, and many more like-minded souls, were getting increasingly fed up with.
Watch A Brief History Of… French Touch in the player above.
Adding the French touch
© John Smisson
“We didn’t want to hear that kind of French music,” Zdar has said in the past. “In the early days, we were into techno.”
Zdar and those in the know were instead seeking out illegal raves, soundtracked by the harder sounds of Detroit techno and garage house. This same crew of ravers began to listen to the same shows on underground radio stations, and coalesce around the record shops in Paris' Bastille district, particularly BPM and Rough Trade.
These future DJs and producers would watch one another to see what records they were buying, while starting the conversations that would lead to new club nights and the genesis of a small but influential Parisian house scene.
With its key nights (held semi-officially in different Paris buildings) shut down by police, this nascent scene needed a new HQ. As if by chance, Paris gay club Queen needed a promoter to fill their vacant Wednesday night slot. Et voila! In October, 1996, underground radio DJs Jerome Viger-Kohler and David Blot, plus party instigator Frédéric Agostini, threw the first of their many, legendary Respect parties.
“Daft Punk played the first party,” Viger-Kohler explained. “They played for us six times – every time there was a key moment, they were there for it.”
Harder, better, faster, stronger
© John Smisson
Respect became the focal point for the French Touch scene (the name of which was first coined by music writer Martin James). With hype around Daft Punk building, international attention was lavished on Respect and its DJing affiliates. The club ended up touring the world, while acts including Cassius, Étienne de Crécy and Bob Sinclar – plus other artists, such as Air and Phoenix, who took different electronic paths – were swept up by major labels.
By the summer of 1998, French Touch had delivered two worldwide hits: Cassius’s 1999 and Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You – a dancefloor-filling monster created by a man with more than enough success on his plate already, Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter.
After years of doing their own thing to a small but hip crowd, “suddenly, everyone was trying to be Daft Punk or Cassius or Air," said Zdar. Twenty years on and Music Sounds Better With You is receiving the reissue treatment given to all certified classics these days, with the Bangalter track, produced by Alan Braxe and featuring the vocals of Benjamin Diamond, being specially remastered.
French Touch reached its commercial pinnacle with Daft Punk's massive-selling debut album Homework – a global hit that made the robotic duo the biggest-selling French act since Jean-Michel Jarre. French Touch continued to leave its fingerprints on the charts into the early '00s, too.
But by 2005 the sound had all but been appropriated by mainstream artists, including pop's ultimate magpie Madonna. And for the people who were there at the start, and who had kept the party going for all those years, the golden age had passed.
“I remember going to a record store, listening to 200 records, and all of them were shit,” Zdar has said. “French Touch became a recipe, and it got too easy – just like punk.”
The salad days may have gone but French Touch left a lasting impression. Daft Punk are riding high again, and are one of the most sought-after live acts on the planet; Justice still offer their thrillingly scuzzed-up version of French Touch; labels such as Ed Banger and Antinote are keeping French party sounds evolving; and a new generation of acts including OKO DJ and his rave-promoting Bruits De La Passion collective, Rinse France regular Miley Serious, and Zaltan and D.K. are reinvigorating Paris' underground club scene.
From Daft Punk to Justice, the French Touch baton has been passed
© John Smisson