9 Philippe Zdar Records That Defined the French House Savant’s Signature Sound
When Philippe Zdar tragically passed away last night, at the age of 52, the disco-kissed French touch style of house music that flourished in Parisian nightclubs in the 1990s lost one of its chief architects and most talented craftsmen. Born Philippe Cerboneschi, the son of a hotelier in the French Alps, Zdar got his start in the music business on its very lowest rung, as a “tea boy” at Paris’ Studio Marcadet, where he was kept around, he once said, because he made good jokes and rolled good joints. His first year at the studio, Prince, Bryan Ferry, and Sade all recorded there. “It took me a while to begin to understand stuff, and I still don’t mind if I don’t know what all the gear does,” he said last year. “I’m happy to work as a craftsman who learned enough about the technical side to make what he wants.”
What distinguished Zdar’s music—both in his own groups and as a Grammy-winning producer of artists including Phoenix and Cat Power—was that unusually tactile quality. In the early ’90s, at the same time that Daft Punk were channeling Chicago’s raw, machinic house music into a fresh, filter-swept sound, Zdar’s groups La Funk Mob (with Boom Bass, aka Hubert Blanc-Francard, the son of Zdar’s first studio boss) and Motorbass (with Etienne de Crécy) invented their very own strain of loopy, funk-infused downbeat and house. Then, at the turn of the millennium, Zdar reunited with Blanc-Francard to form Cassius, who would perfect that gossamer, unmistakably French sound and tilt it toward pop.
Over the years, Zdar translated his innate curiosity, attention to detail, technical acumen, and boundless intuition into one of the most sought-out signatures in contemporary music, working with everyone from Beastie Boys to the Rapture to Franz Ferdinand. (Most recently, he contributed to Hot Chip’s new album, A Bath Full of Ecstasy.) On some records he’s credited as a mixer, on others as a producer, but Zdar’s collaborators tended to describe his role in more nebulous terms, as a sort of alchemist, or midwife. This seemed to suit him. “There are a few things in your body that you don’t control, like swallowing, sweating, your heartbeat,” he told The Fader in 2012, “this is exactly how it feels for me producing. People call it ‘producing,’ I call it ‘helping’—it’s the same. It’s totally natural.”
More than anything, in an industry characterized by its implacable egos and platinum-card swagger, Zdar was known for his humility. He was proud of the fact that he had poured his DJ earnings into building his Motorbass studio into a shrine to analog craft; he spent months in Ibiza every year—not to party but to spend time on a rural ranch. “I would also hope that the artists I work with are good people,” he said. “To me, that’s more important than talent. If someone is an asshole, I’m not interested in going into the studio with them, even if their music is incredible. The way I spend my time nowadays is what matters the most to me.”
Here are nine of Zdar’s most definitive productions.
MC Solaar: Prose Combat (1994)
Zdar was still starting out when French rapper MC Solaar came calling, looking for someone to record his debut single. Hubert Blanc-Francard supplied the beats; Zdar mixed and engineered, using a Fairchild compressor—a favorite of the Beatles—to put an idiosyncratic twist on the music, a world away from the rougher sound of American boom-bap. That sound would become a trademark of French rap. Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter would later credit Zdar’s compression as an influence on Daft Punk’s own style.
La Funk Mob: “Motor Bass Get Phunked Up” (1994)
La Funk Mob’s records on Mo Wax represented an early win for French dance music, at a time that UK clubbers weren’t much interested in what was happening among their Gallic neighbors. Impressed with Blanc-Francard’s beats for MC Solaar, M0 Wax label chief James Lavelle asked for more instrumentals in a similar vein, but not two- and three-minute cuts: He wanted longer excursions befitting the trip-hop label’s heady, psychedelic sound. Blanc-Francard reached out to Zdar, and the two endeavored to try making tracks similar to what Zdar was doing with Motorbass—sleek, sculpted grooves, just one or two sampled loops polished like marble—but with the four-to-the-floor pulse replaced by broken beats. They also put their hands to drowsier, more downbeat cuts, like the unforgettably titled “Ravers Suck Our Sound and Get Fuck,” while remixes from Carl Craig and Richie Hawtin carried their tunes into clubbier territory.
Motorbass: Pansoul (1996)
It was with Etienne de Crécy that Zdar notched his first—and, to real house music heads, his most enduring—classic album. Where the duo’s two 1993 EPs are rougher, more exploratory affairs, Pansoul is less rowdy, more heads-down, driven by powerful, swollen bass frequencies that are more felt than heard. As opposed to the silky approach Daft Punk were taking at the time, Zdar’s mixing dove directly into the goo, stirring up his sounds until they were as thick and disorienting as trucker coffee.
La Funk Mob: “Slimfasst” (1995)
The Source label was a key outlet for French electronic music in the ’90s, and its 1995 compilation Source Lab gave many listeners their first taste of artists like Air, DJ Cam, Alex Gopher, and DJ Gilb-R. Zdar’s productions turns up four times on that album. It fell to La Funk Mob’s “Slimfasst” to kick the whole thing off: an unorthodox take on drum’n’bass that proved exactly how freaky French electronic music could get.
La Chatte Rouge: “Affaires a faire” (1997)
Most people remember Étienne de Crécy’s Super Discount compilation for de Crécy’s own “Prix Choc,” an easygoing jazzy house track with the looped refrain of “Sensemillia/Marijuana” spoken in Jamaican patois over the top. But Zdar also teamed up with de Crécy under the one-off alias La Chatte Rouge for a string- and trumpet-laden downtempo track that’s as opulent as the furniture at Versailles.
Cassius: 1999 (1999)
Cassius’ 1999 marked the end of an era. Awash in sumptuous funk and soul samples, buffed to a deep gleam, and less interested in pop music’s quick-hit dopamine bursts the dancefloor’s hypnotic slow burn, 1999 is really the last great example of the French touch. The ebullient Gwen McCrae-sampling single “Feeling for You” laid the groundwork for a strain of disco-sampling anthem that would yield results as different as DJ Koze’s “Pick Up” and Avicii’s “Levels.”
Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009)
In 2000, Zdar worked with then-newcomers Phoenix to mix their debut album, United. Guitarist Laurent Brancowitz credited him for rescuing the record from abject failure: “Philippe came and he saved the album; he was a Christ-like figure, we were doomed and he saved us.” It’s not hard to hear Zdar’s touch on songs like “Too Young” and “If I Ever Feel Better,” which sparkle with an impossible-to-define sense of presence. That sense is heightened on 2009’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, where Brancowitz deemed Zdar’s role as more akin to “creative advisor.” The vividness with which he renders every sound, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, elevates the album, highlighting the band’s quirks and brokering an oft-attempted, seldom-accomplished alliance between indie rock and disco. It’s a joyful, guileless sound—a celebration of balance and proportion, an invitation to immerse yourself in a studio-constructed illusion.
Cat Power: Sun (2012)
There was a time when it would have been unthinkable to say Cat Power’s and Philippe Zdar’s names in the same breath. Then he produced Sun, her ninth album. Chan Marshall’s best work has always been mostly sinew and bone, wrapping her voice around simple, declarative chord changes, and Zdar honors that formula while blowing it up into four dimensions. Multi-tracking, synthesizers, the odd breakbeat or drum machine, and once, even, the almost-hokey sample of an eagle’s cry—he brings it all in, subtly polishing her sound without ever losing sight of its essence.
Cassius: “Calliope” (2019)
It is the very worst kind of irony that Cassius’ Dreems, the follow-up to their 2016 album Ibifornia, is out tomorrow. (Zdar was also billed to play Central Park’s Summerstage this Sunday.) A handful of singles from the album have appeared in the past few months, and the most recent, “Calliope,” is among the best things the duo has done in years. A world away from Ibifornia’s more over-the-top inclinations, “Calliope” looks back to classic ’90s techno without ever feeling like an overt throwback. The song starts minimally with gaseous, dub-techno chords, but once the beat kicks in, the tune swiftly converts itself a kind of eyes-closed, deeply ecstatic deep house, the kind of thing that would sound sublime at sunrise—whether on an outdoor dancefloor surrounded by a thousand loved-up ravers or sitting on the patio of a rural Ibizan finca, far from the madding crowd. Like all of Zdar’s best work, it’s a song that creates its own world.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
