After releasing one of the most mind-blowing and time-stopping releases of 2005 with his long awaited debut ‘Ok Cowboy’ and a whole host of highly-applauded live shows, Vitalic is set to bring the live experience along to Australia to rock the Big Day Out, Boiler Room style. ITM’s Semone Maksimovic caught up with a very fresh in the country Pascal Arbez, as he shook off the last effects of jetlag. She found that bringing up equipment and programs with the man opens a never-ending can of worms.
He’s been hailed as one of the finest techno producers of our time with the release of his debut effort with the Poney EP, fusing the most unthought-about sounds together in a schizophrenic cocktail of sounds that manage to both set dancefloors ablaze or double as the perfect stoner music to relax when tuned into at home. He weaves an intricate tapestry to become the soundtrack to our moods and life, without breaking so much as a sweat. So it’s scary to think that there was a chance we never would have been exposed to this leading light in electronic music, had he lost against the six-month ultimatum he gave himself all those years ago.
“When I started, I was still a student and it was more of a hobby for me, then when I finished my studies, I was touring a bit and raising my profile. So I thought I’d see if I had a chance of succeeding a bit more, so I gave myself six months to see what would happen if I were to focus only on music” reflects a cheerfully laidback Pascal.
Luckily in that six months, he was determined enough to get to work on his limited musical equipment and piece together what was to become the landmark Poney EP and not just to sit back and wait for the industry to find him. The EP was picked up and released instantly by Gigalo, with the release doing better than Pascal could ever have expected, leading to a never-ending list of tour dates that left him no time to find and work a proper job, and so his future was set, the wager had been won over by his creative output afterall, we can thankfully breathe a heavy sigh of relief. “I studied music as a kid, so I always had a strong interest in music, then when dance music emerged I thought it was interesting and new and exciting, so I knew I wanted to do something new with dance music and keep it alive and fresh.”
His early years saw him drawn to artists like Jean Michel Jarre and super producer, composer Giorgio Moroder, then later on his tastes evolved to New Beat, which was mainly coming from artists and DJs in Belgium at the time. “It was very repetitive, slow and a bit stupid too, but very basic and easy to get into, it was exactly what I was after.” He later graduated to the sounds of Laurent Garnier and what the first generation of techno DJs were making and releasing, finally deciding to take the plunge himself back in 1995. With typically humble artist beginnings from a limited budget and basic and not always reliable set-up.
“I started out using very basic synthesizers and a cheap computer which was given to me and a cheap sampler. It was very basic, but at that time I was into minimal-istic music anyway, so it was okay, it did what I wanted it to do – of course you can’t sound like Janet Jackson with a studio that is only worth 500 Euros” laughs Pascal of his early days. “Now when I look back on that time, I don’t regret it at all, cause at that time the computers weren’t about to act as synthesizers. So you had to buy each machine for what it was you wanted to do, which was a good way to learn how to program everything and know how to get the results you’re after.”
Since those days, his set up has remained relatively the same, but just changed in quality and instead of having to fake a mini-moog sound with a 200 Euro synth, he’s invested in a mini-moog for a more authentic sound. “I also swear by Logic for everything, in the past I used MPC which wasn’t very reliable, so since I started working with Logic, I haven’t had any regrets. I don’t use that many plug-ins for synthesizing, cause I have a real synthesizer and I’ve found it’s more convenient and faster to program with a real synthesizer. So for recording I mainly use compressors or delays and reverbs, but no modulizing synthesizer” Pascal happily explains “I’ve just upgraded to Logic 7, just before I came out to Australia, cause I have to produce some tracks during my stay and I think this is going to be all I need.”
With many artists nowadays starting to make the change from using any hardware, to strictly just software, is it likely this is an ideal Pascal is ever likely to subscribe to in future, even with the decline of hardware and it’s increasingly expensive parts? “No, I can’t see myself doing this, even though a lot of people are these days. I still think that you have to mix both of them. I used to use MPC for my live shows and it wasn’t very reliable, because the zip driver wouldn’t always work cause the cable was too fragile and the sub-bass button would turn by itself -so it became really complicated and unreliable. Then I moved to Ableton Live and I was able to prepare a new live set in just five-days, so I’ve been working happily with it since then. I didn’t like it in the beginning, cause it was not MIDI, but now it’s MIDI, I think it’s perfect for live.”
Spending the majority of his nights on the live circuit since the highly acclaimed release of ‘Ok Cowboy’ it seems that he’s honed a well-rounded live set consisting of well-selected tracks from the record, a fine selection of new tracks to be road-tested and of course those faves that only ever come out when he plays live. “I played at a lot of festivals which were all amazing in different ways, so the set has proved to work on the festival crowds. The only real problem I’ve had over the last few months has been when airlines aren’t so soft with my fragile equipment. So hopefully it all makes it around the country with me in one piece” he laughs as he crosses his fingers.
‘Ok Cowboy’ is available now through Creative Vibes. Make sure you don’t miss out on your chance to catch Vitalic on his return, as he continues to travel the country as part of the national Big Day Out tour, thrilling and chilling Australian audiences around the nation, spreading the live magic.
Thu Jan 26 – Big Day Out, Sydney
Sun Jan 29 – Big Day Out, Melbourne
Fri Feb 3 – Big Day Out, Adelaide
Sun Feb 5 – Big Day Out, Perth
