Bob
Sinclar's fourth album, "Western Dream", will be released July 11, 2006
by Yellow Productions Recording/Tommy Boy Entertainment. The eagerly
anticipated collection contains the worldwide hit single "Love
Generation," featuring vocals by Gary Pine of reggae legends The
Wailers.
Until only a few years ago, when you thought of global dance music hotbeds, you thought of New York, London, Chicago, and so on, but Paris?
Hardly. Sure, there were French disco stars in the 1970s-- Eurodisco
auteur Cerrone, Village People creator Jacques Morali, and
Parisian-turned New Yorker Francois Kevorkian. But, in general, French
music has never been known for being very groovy. In the late-1990s,
though, that began to change when waves of fresh and funky club tracks
started exploding out of the City of Lights. Dubbed "Le French Touch" by the UK music press, this new sound, inspired by (and freely sampling from) soul and disco as well as early New York and Chicago house, soon made Paris
the new dance music mecca and the city's young DJs and producers global
club superstars. First came Dimitri From Paris and Daft Punk. Then, in
1998, the worldwide smash "Gym Tonic" dropped on an unsuspecting world,
featuring kitschy vocals sampled from a Jane Fonda workout tape and
credited to Bob Sinclar, a shadowy figure said to be variously a "spy,
jewel thief, Riviera playboy, mercenary, high-class gigolo, sunglass
model, and hardcore porn star."
Despite the huge fuss that
ensued over this international man of mystery, it turned out that Bob
Sinclar was simply an assumed identity of one Chris Lefriant, who
adopted the name and persona of a character in an old French spy film.
And Lefriant was hardly a newcomer to the scene, either; in fact, he
had been at the forefront of French dance music of all kinds since the
early 90s, from acid jazz and hip-hop to the disco-flavored house music
for which Bob Sinclar quickly became famous worldwide.
Raised
in Le Marais, a bohemian and gay neighborhood of central Paris, Chris
cut his nightlife teeth at legendary 80s discos like Le Palace.
Although he had initially aimed to become a tennis pro, he was inspired
to pursue record-spinning after hearing DJs cutting up hip-hop, funk,
and soul (a new phenomenon in Paris
at that time) in the late 80s. After making a name for himself playing
hip-hop, acid jazz, and R&B (as Chris "The French Kiss"), he set up
a record label, Yellow Productions, and began recording his own music
as part of much-respected acid jazz and trip-hop combos The
Reminiscence Quartet and The Mighty Bop.
Round about 1997, after
hearing the hip-hop/house hybrids coming from New York producers like
Kenny Dope and Armand Van Helden, Chris turned his hand to uptempo,
four-on-the-floor sounds. "The first time I did a [house] track, it was
amazing," Chris recalls, because he "saw the power" it had on the
dancefloor. Then, in 1998, came Bob Sinclar and "Gym Tonic," rocketing
him to international clubland prominence.
Paradise,
the debut Bob Sinclar album, followed shortly after. Packed with
dancefloor bombs like "The Ghetto" and "Ultimate Funk" in addition, of
course, to "Gym Tonic," Paradise
proved that there was much more to Bob Sinclar than just a novelty
track about calisthenics. His second album, "Champs Elyses", was
released two years later and showed Chris' production chops and musical
palette developing beyond the track-oriented, "filtered disco" sound
with which the "French Touch" had become synonymous. "Got to Be Free"
featured legendary early-80s disco singer
James D-Train Williams, while "Ich Rocke" worked the sort of
80s-flavored electro vibe that would soon take dance music by storm.
The
increasingly prolific Chris also kept busy with several other projects
in addition to the Bob Sinclar albums, co-producing and compiling the
Africanism compilations of percussion-heavy African-, Carbbean-, and
Latin-flavored tracks by various French producers; and producing and
co-writing Cabaret, the debut album by Brazilian samba singer
Salome de Bahia, for his Yellow Productions label. What's more, in 2001
Chris released Cerrone By Bob Sinclar, an homage to the godfather of
symphonic Franco-disco. Part mix CD, part remix project, Cerrone By Bob
Sinclar, was put the world on notice that, after 25 years, there was
finally an heir to the French dance music crown.
With the
third Bob Sinclar album, titled simply III, in 2003, Chris upped his
game again, this time moving further away from the sample-and-loop
production approach and concentrating even more on proper songwriting,
real instrumentation, and lush orchestral arrangements that Cerrone
would be proud of. "These days everybody's buying a sampler and doing a
track," Chris says. "There's a lot of shit around, and we don't have
any classics. I've tried to bring that back, to refer to the 70s and
80s with live musicians rather than samples." In fact, for III Chris
brought in none other than Alain Wisniak, the legendary engineer and
co-writer of Cerrone's biggest hits, as co-producer. The result was a
musically mature collection with all of the string-soaked luxury and
impeccable composition of Cerrone's epic masterpieces, but also the
modern electronic sheen of 21st century club music. Ranging from
soaring vocal anthems like "The Beat Goes On" and "Kiss My Eyes" to
electro-disco workouts such as "Nature Boy" and "Europa," the album
embodied the same skilled mlange of cutting-edge production and classic
songcraft that made Cerrone's work the stuff of dancefloor legend.
After
reaching the top of the heap in the world of dance music, Chris is now
moving beyond the confines of clubland and into the larger musical
universe. He recently produced Salome De Bahia's second album, "Brasil," as well as "Antigua," the sophomore release by Parisian bossa nova duo Tom & Joy. He's also signed an exlusive US distribution deal with storied New York label Tommy Boy Entertainment (so far, Tommy Boy has released Africanism III, Brasil, and Antigua
in the States). And he has reinvented Bob Sinclar yet again, this time
as a producer of catchy, feel-good, rhythmic pop. Indeed, although
"Love Generation," the new single off his forthcoming album "Western
Dream", still pumps more than enough to satisfy dancefloors worldwide,
the song's instantly catchy melody, lyrics, and soaring vocal (by none
other than Gary Pine, lead singer
of the mighty Wailers (yes, as in Bob Marley) give it across-the-board
appeal. "Love Generation" is only the first taste of the next chapter
in the ever-evolving story of Bob Sinclar. Joining Chris on this
journey is, once again, Alain Wisniak. "Love Generation" is already a
smash all over Europe; in addition to selling 120,000 copies in its
first two weeks of release, it was Pete Tong's pick of the week on the
BBC's Radio 1 and has been featured as the theme music for French TV's
"Pop Idol" (the French version of "American Idol") and in an Italian
mobile phone commercial. Chris Lefriant and Bob Sinclar, it seems, are
both at the peak of their powers.
