“We live in a very special time and there’s going to be a strong mutation in the way that people buy and listen to the music in the very near future.”   – Martin Solveig .

Play Martin Solveig’s new single “Everybody” (from his second artist album Hedonist) for someone who doesn’t know anything about dance music and chances are they won’t know they’re listening to dance music. In fact, they’ll probably play air guitar. The power of this track, and increasingly of Solveig himself as a composer and producer, is in the familiarity of the elements. Solveig brings familiar rock ‘n roll sounds (a la Ram Jam’s “Black Betty”) together with classic Disco elements, while making these sounds accessible to contemporary listeners.

While the title of Solveig’s latest album conjures up images of excess and indulgence often heard in reference to summers in Ibiza or Disco’s soap opera of Studio 54, it really comes down to the idea of finding pleasure in a diverse musical landscape. “For me it was a little bit the idea of pleasure,” he explains. “I decided to propose something without a lot of boundaries and limits. I worked on mainly ten tracks and I tried to push each idea to the maximum. They’re each different from one another. “

“It’s a kind of new disco, new funk with a little bit of House, more than a strictly house and dance album. I kept the same spirit, bringing contemporary elements together with old school Funk, Hip-Hop and R&B. Simon [ Dunmore , of Defected Records] describes it as contemporary funk album, which gives a good idea of what the album sounds like as a whole.”

Solveig certainly seems interested in diversifying his musical portfolio, and not limiting himself, or his listeners, to one narrowly defined style or sound. Indeed, the Africanism sound that Solveig found himself associated with can quickly become boring and monotonous. In Solveig’s case, it seems to have acted as a springboard to other styles and sounds. Even his 2004 Africanism mix-CD combined the hypnotic percussive, tribal house grooves and chants with the jazzier side of dance music and 70s disco-glam-rock, in a way that perfectly captured the experience of losing yourself in the music only to find yourself once again.

Solveig spent 2003 and 2004 enjoying the success of his white-hot club and radio destroying single “Rockin’ Music,” a neo-disco-funk composition featuring the Justin-Timberlake-meets-Michael-Jackson vocals of Jay Seabag. Solveig continued to show his diversity in sound, following with the classic-Soul-steeped “I’m a Good Man” featuring legendary blues vocalist Lee Fields (who also appears on Hedonist’s “Everybody”).

Solveig, whose first musical exploits were as a grade school choirboy, has always valued the diversity that has defined his career. Most important to him is bridging and connecting the many, often opposing, influences in his life as a DJ and producer. “I very often get inspiration for my production work from my impressions as a DJ,” he explains. “I started to get into production by doing edits of house and disco cuts when I was 19 or 20 years old. I really liked the idea of taking a track that is not exactly adapted to a dance floor and changing it a bit or editing it so that I could play it during my set. That was the big connection. I design my tracks to play during my sets. I make music first for myself to play, and if it suits other people that’s great too.”

Solveig continues to strive for diversity, branching out to other styles and sounds, some of which were showcased as early as his 2002 artist album Sur La Terre. “Through my songwriting and music production, I started to have interest in different kinds of music, so now I’m starting to produce Funk and R&B more seriously,” he reveals. “I’ve learned how to make and produce those types of songs through my DJing. This may be the final step for me, to become a real music producer and maybe work for a singer. I’ve taken a lot of pleasure it those other styles, it’s almost like a holiday job.”

After a busy summer of bringing his music to the people at clubs and festivals around the world, Solveig plans to take some much-needed time to relax and recharge his creative spirit. “I’ve been working very hard for the last three years, and not taking vacations,” he says, “so I think I will need a nice break to let the originality and creativity come back, to get some new ideas and listen to some other stuff.”

Solveig’s strong passion often translates into a whirlwind of creativity in the studio. Because of this breakneck pace, Solveig starts out by singing each of the individual parts and ideas, simply to get them out of his head and into audio form. “For me it’s very easy to sing what I hear in my head,” he explains. “I sing all the parts with the microphone first, even the bass, everything that can be monophonic, even the sax parts or rhythmic elements. I just overlap all the loops and tracks, and build a demo that would be enough for a musician or vocalist to recreate the idea. It’s a very quick process, I have to work quickly and if I get stuck on an idea I leave it for a bit of time, or sometimes forever.”

France has become a world-renowned hotbed for House music with an arsenal of DJs and Producers who span the spectrum from deep, jazzy House (Julien Jabre, Franck Roger, DJ Deep) to Disco (Dimitri From Paris) to full-on Big Room club beats (Bob Sinclair, David Guetta and Daft Punk). While France may be making the world dance with its quality House records, Solveig is quick to point out that House still struggles underground in France , as it does in many other places.

“The situation in France is a bit catastrophic for electronic music and specifically House,” Solveig explains, pointing to the effects of a general economic slump. With less money available to the entertainment industry, Solveig explains, “it leads to quite a strong crisis for the industry which is now very afraid for its future and afraid to take risks artistically and musically. They go with what will be easiest to promote.”

Clearly this is a situation that anyone anywhere in the world can understand; with ever-evolving technology (and attitudes towards those technologies) reshaping the experience of the music consumer.

“We live in a very special time and there’s going to be a strong mutation in the way that people buy and listen to the music in the very near future,” predicts Solveig. “Those times are always quite interesting as they change the rules. So maybe we can hope that this will be a good thing. I think that the system, as it is now, doesn’t give much of a chance to everyone. Maybe all these changes in the way that music consumers consider the music will change the supremacy of radio stations, record companies and all the deals they seem to have together.”

“No one is a prophet in their own country,” Solveig concedes, “and not all of us are very popular in France .” He does, however, see big things in store for two French producers with new tracks out for the summer. “Julien Jabre has a new one called ‘Swimming Places’ which is a perfect track for the summer, evoking the imagery of the sun and everything. We also have a nice surprise on the Bob Sinclair side of things. He has a track called ‘Love Generation’ which is a very special song and could probably be a big hit for Ibiza . My other personal favorite of the moment is a very pop tune produced by my heroes The Neptunes, the new Gwen Stefani tune ‘Holla Back Girl.’ It’s one of the best Chad [Hugo] and Pharrell [Williams] pieces.” “I know it’s it’s kind of funny,” he admits, “but the beats are amazingly phat. I actually play the original in my set which is surprising, because it’s not the tempo that people expect, but people like it and it is very effective.”

Words by Alex R. Mayer for JJazproJect.com

Martin Solveig’s single “Everybody” is now available for your hedonistic pleasure.
More information is available at www.martinsolveig.com and www.defected.com

JJazproject would like to sincerely thank Toni Tamborine at Defected Records for arranging the interview and Martin Solveig for taking the time to speak with us.