The definitive French house DJ, Dimitri from Paris is about to embark on his fourth consecutive New Years Eve tour of Australia. After the resounding success of his A Night at the Playboy Mansion mix CD, it seems local audiences just can’t get enough of his trademark funky and soulful house style. Currently busy at work on a new artist album, Dimitri took a few moments to chat with ITM’s i_have_ADD about his astounding success Down Under.

As his name rather obviously suggests, Dimitri is now a Parisian through and through, although he was born in Greece to Turkish parents. Having grown up in France, Dimitri was attracted to music from an early age, “About 20 years ago I used to play what people would call ‘dance music’, be it rap or soul or whatever. I would spend a lot of money on records because I really liked music, and so I started experimenting, doing my own mixes at home. I sent demos to radio stations and got hired to do a show around ‘85/’86 and that was basically where it all started.” Beginning his career at Radio 7, Dimitri soon moved on to NRG, one of France’s largest FM broadcasters. He hosted their Saturday night show for 12 years, and in the process introduced house music to a wider French audience, “Some producers heard me on the radio and asked me to go into the studio and do some remixes of French artists. Through remixing I started to produce my own material and put out my first 12” around ‘91, which led me to doing music for fashion shows. A lot of the music I’d made was featured on my first album Sacrebleu.” And the rest, as they say, is pretty much history.

After the success of his first album Dimitri devised the Playboy Mansion series, so far releasing two CDs (A Night at in 2000 and Return To in 2002). Intriguingly, of all destinations around the globe Australia has been one of the markets to really take a shine to Dimitri’s unique Playboy series, “The Playboy Mansion CD went Gold in Australia, so it would seem that a lot of people know and like the music! Audience’s usually expect to hear something along the lines of the CD, which is good because it’s exactly what I play. I always get a very warm reaction when I play in Australia and every time I go back I look forward to that great vibe.” I asked Dimitri if he had been taken aback by the success of his music, especially somewhere so far from home, “You never really expect success, it’s always a surprise. It was even a bigger surprise on that particular album because the music I had selected wasn’t exactly commercial, so it did surprise me that people really embraced the sound, especially in places I had never been to before like Australia.” Bearing in mind Dimitri’s funky style and local popularity, I was interested to hear if Australian audiences reacted to his performances any differently to our European counterparts, “People react to music the same way globally in general, but in Australia there is something about that CD which people seem to really like, so every time I play a song off the album they go completely nuts!”

Having such a distinct sound, I was interested to hear who Dimitri cited as musical influences. Not surprisingly, his list takes in a lot of legendary producers from the disco era, but interestingly he also names soundtrack and pop music composers as inspirations, “I’m not so much influenced by one particular person, or even a group of people. I like music that is strong harmonically and rhythmically, such as composers from the soundtrack field like John Barry or pop producers like Burt Bacharach. I also like contemporary dance music producers such as Masters at Work, people who try to incorporate acoustic elements into dance music. I really like blending traditional song arrangements with less traditional rhythmic arrangements.” Dimitri’s diverse productions have seen him categorised as everything from lounge, to house, to electro and disco. But whatever the genre, there is one thing Dimitri is sure to note. He is an entertainer, and an eccentric one at that.

Dimitri from Paris tour dates:

December 31st, Family, Brisbane
January 1st, Fuzzy Field Day, Sydney
January 6th, C-Moog, Byron Bay