INTERVIEW: Joakim
We had a quick chat to French producer Joakim in the short days before he releases his latest LP Tropics Of Love
JOAKIM is probably one of the most interesting and inventive producers. With a large catalogue of music that mixes together a variety of genres, the Frenchman has created a very strong sound that many people could pick straight away.
Tracks like 'Wrong Blood' and 'In The Cave' caught our attention at first but now with his new LP Tropics Of Love about to be released, a new wave of tracks are beginning to surface.
'Bring Your Love', a collaboration between JOAKIM and LUKE JENNER of THE RAPTURE, surfaced very recently and so we had a chat to the producer about how he creates his music and how Tropics Of Love came to be.
Being a producer from France who dabbles in disco a lot, do you hear the phrase "french-disco" used a lot?
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Not really no. With other artists in France, yeah.
Do you listen to them a lot?
Yeah, Paris is really small, basically everyone knows each other. I don't think there's many musicians in Paris that I don't know, it's just little. Especially since [the last] three or four years the scene is more tight, even though there are still these families, it's just more tight with lots of connections.
You have a very broad background in music ranging from classical to indie rock, how do you think that background influences you today?
Well I think it doesn't help me, I think its a problem [laughs]. Sometimes I think I have too much music in my head, so it is hard to be free from references, but at the same time, everyone makes references. I was talking to this musician I'm working with in New York who read and watched every documentary and biography about all the bands and all the musicians that exist basically, and I was like, "so how can you make music if you know the life of every musician who's ever lived?" Like I would listen to indie music, hip hop, jazz, classical music, literally every thing you can listen to, and sometimes it's great because I can mix things and bend different drums and ideas, but it's also overwhelming sometimes.
So it's both good and bad to have the variety there sometimes?
Yeah and you can see that. Every time someone describes my music it's always very "eclectic" or "impossible to describe", basically something weird which is nice, but it also makes things harder.
Your music is definitely different, which is honestly why I like it, but then so are your music videos. How do you create a concept for your film clips, is there any mapping out involved?
The few videos I've made recently, that are just made myself, are made like that because when I travel and stuff I always have a camera and take pictures and sometimes videos. I would like to have videos for every track of the record, but of course the label doesn't have the budget to pay someone to do videos for every track. So I decided I could use some footage and try and get something, it's very amateur, like I don't know anything about editing software but I just try things. It's part of the way I do things since I started, I like to do very DIY kind of amateur aesthetics. But then I also have a real professional video coming out in the next few days, I'm still trying to get a video for each track of the album.
Releasing your cover of Neil Young's 'On The Beach' was a very interesting step seeing as we haven't seen an electronic mix of a song like that in a long time. What made you decide to blend your music with his songwriting?
First of all, my goal is to make songs, that's what I'm trying to do when I make music. For me the hardest form of music, trying to make a good song with a kind of finesse. I'm a big fan of Neil Young, he was one of the first acts I listened too when I was really young, and then I thought about trying to do a cover because I never really did that. I thought that to choose a good song to cover, I needed to find a song that has lyrics that I really like because when you do a cover, it's basically just the lyrics that you keep and then you can play with that. You can't change the lyrics or you can't play the song right [laughs]. So I tried to find a song that had lyrics that I really liked and this one blew my mind when I listened to it. I really love the line where he says, "I hope it doesn't turn away," and also it's a very classic blues song they way it's done by Neil Young, so it was interesting to try and do something very difficult.
You seem to approach your projects in a very artistic way, are there any painters or photographers that really catch your eye?
Yeah there's many artists that I like in the contemporary world. I love many, many artists.. sometimes I'm amazed. I wonder how there can be so many artists that can go on and make a living and it's the same for music and for all of them.
We've been able to listen to your track 'Bring Your Love' and have noticed a certain tribal sound in the track. What that what you were going for on it, or did it just kind of grow organically?
I'm very interested in rhythm so by extension, I'm very interested in that music because that is where you have the most interesting and diverse rhythms. Like in African music you have it and there are also some crazy rhythms in Indonesian music or some Vietnamese, Chinese, South American. For me in a perspective of music, that's really where it all comes from, the bursts, the rhythms and the trends. Music was made from trends from the beginning, it's like a ritual. So that's something I'm really interested in, it's something I've been working on for a really long time and on that record maybe it's a bit more of a tribal aesthetic. Also because I use drum machines I tried to go out a bit into that style.
When creating a track, what kind of process do you go through? Just it just gore organically or this there a tight structure that you follow?
It's quite organic but most of the time it starts with a beat, but not always. Then there's a lot of going back and forth and listening to the track then changing a lot and trying to do something else on the track. I like to try and get the most as I can from the track so that I can decide when it's finished because I am confident that it's reached some kind of level of maturity. It takes quite some time, that's why I always listen so that i'm sure that I'm not bored [with it].
The artwork for Tropic Of Love is very eye-catching, what drew you to use those visuals for the cover art?
Well that's actually a series of drawings that and artist made called Camille Henrot and it's part of a series that already existed, you can see it online. When I saw this series of drawings, the title of the series is "Tropics Of Love" and I thought that this was the perfect title for the album. I tried to find something else and I couldn't, so i decided to use "Tropics Of Love" and then I told Camille that maybe we could do a series of drawings for the record, since I'm going to call it "Tropics Of Love". She said yes and so I had some pictures created.
With Tropics Of Love being released in the next few days, could you give us a brief idea about what we can look forward to on the LP?
Well 'Bring Your Love' is going to come out as a single with remixes and there's a video that's going to be out in the next couple of days. Then I'm going to do some kind of 12" I think in September and then there's a video for 'Each Other'.
And finally, if you could describe your music in just one word what would it be?
Lemon.
Lemon?
Lemon [laughs] you should look it up.
Words by Lauren Payne
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