 |
|
..dDamage |
“We
shoot Uffie, we shoot Feadz, we shoot them all”,
says Fred, one half of French electronica outfit
dDamage. “We don’t give a fuck about
all them, we’re poor people, we’re gypsies,
they are not struggling, we are.”
Forget what you think you know about the Parisian
music scene. The polished labels and jet setting
DJs gracing our shores are merely the veneer. Scratch
at the underbelly and you’ll find a dirty,
ugly, ten-foot monster that spits in your face and
tells you to fuck off at any given opportunity.
Brothers JB and Fred are veterans of the French
underground and are already onto their third album.
Starting out in 2000, they released records mainly
on Japanese and Austrian labels with a hard-house
outlook. “My brother and I really felt disconnected
from the French scene, it’s getting taken
over by rich people all doing that post Daft Punk
thing”, says JB.
The two take inspiration from across the spectrum,
including Mudhoney, Sparklehorse, Ultramagnetic
MC’s, even Prince. It’s this sort of
eclecticism that shapes the dDamage sound and its
roots in early hip hop. “We don’t make
‘classic’ hip hop in that sense, but
it’s that freedom, the experiment, the ‘don’t
give a fuck’ attitude that we love.”
Using thudding base more commonly associated with
Young Jeezy and Public Enemy, they throw distorted
synths, churning guitar riffs and furious samples
on top to produce a coarse techno-infused chaos.
Having already worked with French hip hop artists
TTC, Stacs Of Stamina and American MC, MF Doom,
the two have made their mark on European and American
dance floors, but are virtually unheard of in Paris.
“That’s how we wanna be, free, we got
people in New York, Canada, Germany, Japan, we’re
more known internationally than we are at home.”
Their creative expression has pulled them out of
the mainstream fodder emerging from Paris, re-positioning
themselves at the sharp end of music across the
world. From SizzerB in Vancouver to the graffiti
scene in Iran. The lack of a pigeon-hole big enough
to encompass this type of originality, doesn’t
sit comfortably with the mainstream. “When
I was 17, I was a straight stick up kid, we used
to shoot people in the legs, we struggled, people
today don’t know the struggle,” says
Fred. Those rough beginnings in the infamous French
suburbs are written clearly into the dDamage sound.
Masculine beats tussle with spiked synths for superiority
in their 2004 release, Radio Ape. While ‘Pressure’
EP is a straight nod to the Parisian ghetto –
confused, erratic, and full of aggression towards
the wider world.
“We don’t know where the scene is going,
but fuck that, we’re doing our own thing,
guns, drugs, money, rock, techno, electro, this
is us.”
dDamage’s third album ‘Shimmy Shimmy
Blade’ is out now on Tsunami-Addiction.
Words by Matt Hussey |
| VISIT:
http://www.myspace.com/ddamage |
 |
|
|
|
