Clément Perez is a French DJ and producer who’s already active for several years now. He released an impressive number of EP’s on different labels such as Tripalium Records, Gobsmacked Records, i-Traxx Recordings, Green Fetish Records ao, but he this year joined hands together with Ant-Zen to unleash his first full length album. “The Poison Tree” is a hard-danceable work featuring a perfect harmony between Techno- and Industrial music. The album features twelve heavy cuts (revealing a song together with HYPNOSKULL) plus four remixes by ANTECHAMBER, SHROUDS, CRYSTAL GEOMETRY and MONO-AMINE.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: You’re involved with electronic music for years now, but who do you consider as your personal ‘Godfathers’; those who inspired you to DJ and make your own music? And how do you see yourself as musician/producer?

Clément: I have quite a list of ‘Godfathers’; from Aphex Twin to Jeff Mills or Converter to Ed Rush. I’m listening to a lot of different stuff and for each genres I have favorites for sure. I like artists that have their own visions and keep walking their own path all along their career. A lot of them don’t even tour or do gigs in fact.

DJing is maybe another thing as I have always liked the techniques of DJing itself. For example, I really like DJs like Jeff Mills, or The DJ Producer, Manu Le Malin or Stephanovitch back in the days; artists who are able to blend a real savoir-faire (playing on 3 decks, mixing tracks very quickly) with a great sense of tracks selection to tell their own story in a party. I try to keep it that way, even if it’s a very ‘90s’ attitude.

Speaking about that, that’s also how I see myself as a musician and producer. I’m trying to keep this very ‘hardcore’ and lowkey attitude from the 90s nowadays, moving forward with my own music, using the past without trying to recreate things from the past. Pretty difficult in fact when even kids are trying mostly to make 80s or 90s music.

Q: 14ANGER has released an endless list of EP’s, but “The Poison Tree” is your first album ever, released this year by Ant-Zen. What does this album mean to you and do you think there still a future for full length releases? How do you see things evolving?

Clément: It means quite a lot, as you said I’ve done a lot of EP’s along the years and it was a challenge for me to start doing a full LP. I’ve trying to make music in a different way, keeping things simple and with less editing than usual. Also doing a ‘real’ industrial album was something I wanted to do for a long time. I’m really happy with it and even happier to be featured on Ant-Zen, which is surely the label I’ve listening to the most in my life.

I’m sure full length releases have a future, as it’s (for me), the best way to listen to something seriously, to really enter into someone’s work. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I listen to a lot of full LP and I will continue doing some in the future.

Q: You just said composing a full length was a challenge so what have been the main ideas and inspiration to compose this work? How did the writing of the songs happened and is there a different approach in writing an album or an EP?

Clément: The main idea behind the album was to focus on the relationship with nature and humans. I’ve spent a lot of time in the forests and mountains around the place where I’m living. I did that for some months, under the very hot sun of Southern France. That certainly shaped the sound of the album. I’ve worked and finished the album on a pretty short period of time, using a sound library I’ve made and using the same synths and FX to have a special sound overall. I also worked with a lot of audio samples, a bit like I was doing when I first started to produce as I was using audio trackers only. It was really different for sure to make a full album and not a Techno EP, it’s way more personal and demanding.

Q: The sound of the album is mainly dominated by a fusion between techno- and industrial music. What makes both genres complementary and how do you perceive both music styles?

Clément: Techno and Industrial are my roots, my 2 main and bigger influences. I basically can’t imagine Techno without Industrial sounds and Industrial music sometimes miss the energy of Techno. I just see the 2 styles fitting together even if the scenes were not the same. It’s less true nowadays though.

Q: You seem to like working with other artists, but especially with Dep Affect. What makes the chemistry between both of you and what did you learn and maybe discover from yourself throughout these collaborative productions? 

Clément: We started to work together 5 years ago and it  really happened naturally, fun and easy. Even if we’re living at the opposite sides of the planet (Dep Affect is Australian), we somehow have pretty close tastes in music, and a lot of common things in our backgrounds. I sure learned a lot of things working with him, and I can say exactly the same about working with Daniel Myer in RENDERED. That could be about mixing, sound design or working more on themes and arrangements – I can definitely say I’m much better in making themes and working on details now.

Q: I noticed you together with an impressive list of French electro/techno artists contributed to a statement about the danger to see electronic artists/music disappear. It’s all because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but can you give us more details and how do you as artist try to manage this situation?

Clément: I was part of the artists who signed this as it’s just hard to watch things disappearing now mainly because politicians are doing again such a bad work. The situation could be so much better right now if good things and preparations have been done. However, I have a fulltime day-job so I’m not really affected by the situation on a financial side, but I definitely miss gigs a lot. I hope things could be better soon with maybe quick tests at doors for gigs and concerts. We have to wait and see, hoping not too much people will struggle and just quit the scenes for good…

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

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“Grief, dance to death” is the rather breathtaking new videoclip of Madben with Rebeka Warrior and Manu Le Malin. The track is taken from the album “Fréquence(s)”, released last April on the label Astropolis. For the occasion the French dj and producer Madben invited the French singer Rebeka Warrior (aka Julia Lanoë from the electroclash act Sexy Sushi) and the hardcore dj Manu Le Malin.

In the video you see a soldier who wakes up on the ground, afterwards walking for weeks, months, maybe years, without a precise destination. He goes through seasons and landscapes. Then, in this world without life, the first anomalies appear when the soldier comes face to face with many concepts that found our moderns societies, represented by objects in levitation: a TV, boats, crosses, planes and weapons.

Here’s the video itself. Recommended!

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

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