In the mid-90s, Europe was experiencing a fantastic moment. The fall of "communism" in Germany and a consequent economic upturn gave us one of the best times of our era.
The reason was, of course, and as always, a major cultural evolution. After decades of white-collar supremacy in the 70s, the time had finally come for the counter-culture to shine brightly on the Western world.
The '80s gave us the basis for access to creation like never before, and advances in digital audio, with the start of recording to this format at the expense of tape, gave rise to twenty glorious years of creation.
We've seen the fruits of the hard work of the previous generation of independent creators, who had virtually nothing and succeeded in changing codes and forcing popular admiration.
To ensure that today we are able to create and perform music without depending on a whole host of people and expensive equipment, these people went over their limits, and I can't thank enough the icons of New York, Chicago, Detroit, Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Lille, London and Manchester for giving us this unique legacy.
End to end, hundreds of passionate and resilient people brought the various evolutions to the greatest number of people and shared them without expecting anything in return.
Many of them have never enjoyed great success or even gained any kind of media recognition.
They are simply anonymous, yet it is they who have given us the most. And it is to them that I dedicate this written work.
Many of them have chosen their own paths in today's creative world, and have flourished even more despite the lack of media coverage. I'm so happy for them. Many others have disappeared prematurely, or no longer have the chance to be in our ears, and I miss them daily.
If I tell you about Ralf Hildenbeutel, Mathias Hoffman, Johnny Klimek, Klaus Jankuhn, Steve Osborne, Andy Grey, it's extremely unlikely that you'll know exactly who I'm talking about. This is a non-exhaustive list of artists who nevertheless left their mark on the same era I'm talking about. Some may have changed direction, and in a future chapter I'll look at the reasons why.
Fortunately, there were a few exceptions, such as Mijk van Dijk, Oliver Lieb, Pascal FEOS, Humate and Cosmic Baby, to name just a few I can think of directly, whose music is an integral part of my own culture, and no doubt yours too. The one I wanted to share.
Many Frenchmen I've been in contact with in the past, such as Greg de Windt, Philippe van Mullem, Emmanuel Top and Bruno Sanchioni, are also extremely talented artists who haven't always had the popularity they deserve, despite the sometimes surreal sales of their titles. Fortunately, all these people were able to build a career, but not all of them were lucky enough to be able, like me, to maintain it. Here too, there are things to tell.
Art, at all levels of the social ladder, is also a career, which neither abuse nor technological change has the right to destroy. Why not? Because if we don't have the right, the time or the means to leave a trace of our life on earth, there will come a time when future generations will have no history. It may sound grandiose to think so, but I wonder what my culture would be like if Zola, Sartre, Mozart, Beethoven or Bach hadn't had the right to make a living from their art. We only live for the present, without thinking about the consequences of some of our choices.
1995 will remain a pivotal year for me. The year that saw the birth of a host of club classics, driven by their creators in search of an image and recognition, and who, for the most part, achieved the fame their work deserved. It was also the year that saw the emergence of some very avant-garde music. The culmination of an unusually prosperous artistic period. The year before everything changed and became what we know today: a scene full of artists with a very strong image, but whose substance is often reduced to its minimum, smooth and unanchored, or stolen from the work of others, some of whom I've mentioned above.
1995 was the year when electronic culture gave a huge middle finger to white-collar industries, symbolizing total independence from the so-called mainstream business. We thought we'd gotten rid forever of what we hated: hypocrisy, politics, intolerance, racism, swindling, or the law of the strongest, things that made way for tolerance, peace, inclusion, love, values, respect.
1995 was the year I discovered the ease with which I could create with very little equipment. My passion for new technologies applied to creation did the rest and set the course for my career. With no samplers, drum machines, mixers or effects by hand, and just two sound boxes linked to a computer, I was able to create tracks as I heard them, something almost unthinkable at the time.
I was signed to a label at the end of 1996, shortly before my 19th birthday, on the basis of this same work. I was already very late in the game, and lacked both technical and cultural baggage. Worst of all, I was naive and gullible. It took me another 10 years to find my own sound.