Vitalic

Do you know Vitalic? Already many do. To those who love his music, his unique sound, he’s the pleasure provider: the ultimate rush, the greatest high, the invincible metal disco warrior. With his debut four-song ‘Poney EP’, first released in late 2001, Vitalic tore through dancefloors across the world like the Wagner of rave. An original and fearless new talent, it was clear from the start that Pascal Arbez, the Frenchman behind Vitalic, was not just another dance producer, but a visionary artist whose extraordinary music never fails to move you. Now he’s ready to release his long-awaited debut album, ’OK Cowboy’. To say it’s a major record for electronic music would be an understatement. The tens of thousands gleefully seduced by ‘La Rock 01’ and ‘You Prefer Cocaine’ and the two ‘Poney’s – together, the finest techno EP of the 21st century – have waited patiently for ‘OK Cowboy’. Pascal modestly describes the album as a mix of “dance music, experimental, organs and French music.” If he’d wanted to rake it in, of course, he’d have spent the last few years knocking out ‘La Rock 02’ and ‘03’ and ‘Poney Part 649’. “Everyone told me I had to do that but I can’t, I just can’t. Those tracks are in the past” he exclaims.

Pascal took three years, on and off, to produce the album in his house in the French countryside. He makes music only when he feels like it, when he’s got something to say or wants to try something new. But he clocks in to his home studio every weekday before lunch and tinkers with his synthesizers for a few hours. When he’s not making music in his home studio he runs his own record label, Citizen Records. “In the week I’m like a normal person working in Siemens or British Airways, it’s a regular life,” he says. “At the weekend it’s totally different.” Pascal looks forward to the weekend because this is
when he plays live as Vitalic, when he parties. He receives so many gig requests that, if he desired, he could perform every night of the year in a different town or city or country. But he likes his shows to be special and, living as he does in the sticks, he has to travel for hours to each destination. So he doesn’t play if he doesn’t want to and he doesn’t DJ, either. If you’ve ever witnessed Vitalic live you’ll know why he’s so popular. It’s an awesome, euphoric, overwhelming experience, the ultimate example of man and machine in perfect harmony.

Just before Christmas, Vitalic recorded what was to be one of the last ever Peel Session, commissioned by John before his death. Pascal often refers to Vitalic in the third person, as if it’s a role he assumes. “Being Vitalic allows me to do exactly what I want to do, like partying too much,” he smiles. “Vitalic is the other side of me. As Vitalic I allow myself to do the music I really want without paying attention to what other people expect.” Vitalic is a Russian first name, and Russian is Pascal’s second language. He studied it at school and university, and his first musical alias, Dima, is also Russian. There was a time when he liked fans and media to think he was Ukrainian and he fabricated a suitably misleading biography, which only intrigued people further. He’s 28, but knows he looks older, and, when he thinks about it, is quite content with his life at the moment. He is not showy or flash and can’t fake enthusiasm or tolerate sycophancy. A selection of musicians Pascal admires: Daft Punk, Sparks, Crash Course In Science, Valerie Dore, Giorgio Moroder, The White Stripes, Belgian composer Wim Mertens, Fad Gadget. He’s not a big record buyer and doesn’t know the names of lots of his favorite tracks. His first
love, when he started making music as a teenager, was Belgian new beat.

His initial sporadic releases as Dima came out in 1996 and ’97 on the local Choice label. These were brutal techno affairs which few outside France’s underground dance scene were particularly aware of. Within that scene he became good friends with Michel Amato, aka The Hacker, and befriended Amato’s Goodlife label crew in Grenoble. The Hacker suggested he send his new tracks to DJ Hell in Munich, which he did. Then Hell’s International Deejay Gigolos label released Pascal’s ‘Poney EP’ just as Fischerspooner fever and electroclash madness broke and it became one of their biggest-selling 12-inch, played as a searing peaktime anthem by everyone from Aphex Twin to Richie Hawtin to Erol Alkan to 2ManyDJs toLaurent Garnier to Tiga… honestly, the list is impressive and endless.

‘La Rock 01’ swiftly become a quick-fix club cliché. But it’s still dynamite. Which is why Pascal included it on ‘OK Cowboy’ along with the two ‘Poney’s, as “a reference to the past”. Pascal wrote the lyrics of the Poney’s tracks from the perspective of a down-trodden funfare pony that spends its miserable existence parading around an enclosure ridden by happy children. The kids are thrilled, but the pony, decorated with gaudy tassles and deafened by whirling carousel muzak, is so sad.

From this ‘EP’ fans discovered Pascal’s past as Dima, and could hear how his sound, distinctive and magical even then, developed over a series of stunning remixes for French artists such as Elegia, Demon Vs. Heartbreaker, The Hacker and Bolz Bolz. With these, Pascal all but discarded the original recording in order to produce a superior version. As Vitalic, Pascal has remixed – or radically improved – tracks by Slam, Manu Le Malin, Basement Jaxx, Bjork and cross-dressing techno diva Lady B. Because every act now craves that priceless Vitalic touch, he turns down offers of remixes on a daily basis.

Since the ‘Poney EP’ there have been collaborations: with The Hacker a cover of Detroit techno standard ‘Shari Vari’; with local producer DJ Tonio; and, most notably, with New York singer and songwriter Linda Lamb, as The Silures, whose rousing goth-tinged ‘All You Can Eat EP’ from 2003 was the first time Pascal had worked with a vocalist. Pascal works a lot with Brigitte as well. She’s a versatile speech synthesis program and will do anything he tells her to. That’s her voice all over ‘OK Cowboy’. Then there’s Dario, the subject of ‘My Friend Dario’, Pascal’s naughty alter ego who drinks when he drives and parties way too much. All the instruments Pascal uses are fake, in the sense that he meticulously generates everything from a synthesizer. So if it sounds like a guitar on ‘La Rock 01’ or ‘New Man’ or ‘My Friend Dario’, it isn’t. Nor is it a Moog organ on ‘Wooo’ or an accordion on ‘Polkamatic’. Incredibly, the drum rolls on ‘Valletta Fanfares’ are faked too. Even his sound man was convinced the drums were sampled. The only thing Pascal can’t fake is the emotion that galvanizes his remarkable music. He is a master of melody. And with ‘OK Cowboy’ he has truly surpassed himself.
Piers Martin.