Interview: Wax Tailor
by Robbie Ettelson
Hip-hop outside of America can be a strange animal. While most European hip-hop artists will swear up and down that their interpretation is closer to the pure form of the music in its earliest stages, before it was big business, a lot of it is just fuckin’ awful. Since my English isn’t that great to be begin with, you can imagine how poor my grasp of the French language is, so I was pleased to discover none of it on either of the Wax Tailor projects. Barging in on JC Le Saoût – the mastermind behind the project – at an ungodly hour of the morning was a little unwise, considering that many Parisian’s seem to have a general disdain for wearing trousers around the house (assuming that art-house cinema could be trusted), but everything was copasetic. JC’s music is also above-board – no danger of sleepy trip-hop styling’s here – he delivers an atmospheric package that combines the edge of ‘86 rap with the soul of ‘74, mixing film snippets with female torch singing, and even throwing some scratching into the mix to keep things interesting.
You’ve talked about being fed-up with French hip-hop. Was it stuck in a rut?
JC Le Saoût: In ‘96 in France we had a big change, because we had big radio station that began to play some rap music. We had a law that they had to promote French music with French lyrics. At this period they began to play a lot of rap music, but just French rap. And we began to have more and more and more French rap music, and like you can imagine, it began to be very low quality. 2001 was a period for me that I realized that I was maybe too old for this scene because alll day the radio plays French rap and maybe one track from Eminem or 50 Cent. I felt like it was not the hip-hop that I had in my mind from the beginning. For a long time before 2001 I was producing some abstract hip-hop tracks. I was also working with a female singer, so it was a period where I was fed-up with choosing if a project was strictly hip-hop, more turntablist or more trip-hop. So that’s when I decided to work on the Wax Tailor project.
When you were performing with your old group, you used to MC as well?
Yeah, I was an MC for ten years. From the early 90’s to 2000. In the beginning, I was writing in English. I was better in English [laughs] – but this was the beginning of French rap. In ‘88, ‘89 I was involved in rap music but we had no scene in France. We had a few rappers, but it wasn’t very interesting. The first crews like NTM, IAM – those kind of crews from the end of the eighties – they wrote really dope lyrics in French, and they’re the reason I began to write and rap in French.
What changed for you?
At the beginning of the nineties, we had a scene that was really personal. Like IAM – they had some influences in their music that you couldn’t find in US rap – but the lyrics were better than any US rap, and after that, it began to be a kind of clone of US rap. Even if it was written in French you got more and more bands writing stories like they were living in Brooklyn.
“Alien In My Belly” is a unique blend of the eerie and melodic.
Some people are making comparisons with Portishead. It’s different because in 2007, it’s my own vision of my work, producing hip-hop and mixing things. The method in the producing is nearly the same one I’ve always been using, but the difference in the production is I’ve decided to mix different things in the tracks. The moods I had about original soundtracks and all those things, and in the same way I still work like a hip-hop producer.
You’re also mixing live instruments in your beats now.
For this album I used some instruments, but samples are always the back-bone of the music. I’ve been producing for more than ten years, and I began to make music with a sampler. I never had any other kind of instrument – I don’t use any keyboards, I don’t use any VST [software instruments] or things like that. It’s a question of sound. I’m looking for texture. With this album, I allowed myself to use some instruments because there are some elements in my studio and the studio of my friend that permit me to mix both elements and keep this sound I wanted to have, but the back-bone is the sample.
Do you use hardware or software to make your beats?
I’m an old school guy, [laughs] I still use my sampler. An Ensonic ASR-
10. I’ve used it since ‘94. But at the same time, I also use some software because sometimes I have some kind of ideas I build quickly and it has some elements that can go quicker. In the end I always rebuild the track with the ASR.
Do you agree that playing more than rap music is an important part of a “hip-hop” set?
Of course. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do when I’m deejaying. For a long time, I was making DJ sets that were more straight hip-hop, and more and more I prefer to play some original influences. When I play in Paris for example, we have a lot of people that are waiting to see something. They wait in front of you like as if you were about to do something incredible. You’ve just got two turntables, and sometimes people don’t know the difference between a live show and a DJ set, because it’s the same name and the promoters sometimes don’t explain. I want people to discover the things that really influence my music. I can mix a Public Enemy track and a Billy Holiday one and things like that. It’s more and more a DJ set that’s not made for clubbing.
You also composed the score to a movie?
I composed an original soundtrack last year for a French movie that was called “Forbidden Tibet”. It was a documentary about a girl who went to China and walked for a thousand miles with just a camera. She wanted to make people realize what was going on in Tibet, because of the Chinese. It was interesting for me because of the political aspect of it, and after having people say that my music was like a movie soundtrack, actually making this original soundtrack made me realize that it’s completely different. When I make my album I’m the director, so I decide all the things you see. But making this original soundtrack has some video and the story, and even if the director said to me “Just do what you want. You’re completely free” – you’re not completely free, because you’ve got all the elements and you can’t just do anything. It was interesting, but a kind of exercise.
What is the beer of choice right now?
[laughs] I don’t drink beer! You see I’m a very serious guy – I nearly don’t drink any alcohol. I’ve got three girls with me on tour and they just ask for some vodka.
2007 Hope and Sorrow (Atmosphériques)
2006 Tales Of The Forgotten Melodies – US Version (Decon)
2005 Tales Of The Forgotten Melodies (Undercover)
2004 Lost The Way EP (Lab’Oratoire)
