Five Minutes With Club cheval

Last Friday saw the release of Bromance Records' own Club cheval's debut record, Discipline, an exciting and eclectic mish-mash of techno, trap, hip hop and future-R&B sounds - something that could only come from the four different Frenchman involved - Myd, Sam Tiba, Panteros666 and Canblaster.  To celebrate its release we flicked some questions over to the group - take a read and check out some of their recent stunning video clips while you do, and listen to the album on SPOTIFY or purchase it HERE.

For the uninitiated, can you tell us how the four of you met as students, and why you decided to start Club cheval?

Sam Tiba and Panteros666 met at a Political Sciences School, while Myd and Canblaster met during a sound engineer degree. Panteros666 already met Myd and had become the new drummer of his old band, Sexual Earthquake In Kobe. A mutual friends of us thought of the idea of a collective that would think about new musical projects. It was 2009 and now, seven years later, we are a real band.

France has such a rich history in electronic music – what were some of your first entry points into dance music, be it from your homeland or abroad?

Well, we are big fans of Daft Punk, Cassius, Air, Superdiscount, etc. We are proud of that heritage, and even if we don’t make the exact same music, we feel that it’s a chance to live in a country with such a dancey musical past. But we were not influenced only by French artists, and people like Basement Jaxx, Chemical Brothers or Armand Van Helden are super important for us.

Congratulations on the record! Can you give us a little insight into how it came together, how long you’ve been working on it?

We have been working a long time! We kind of started thinking about it four years ago, doing little demos and imagining a kind of 'Club cheval sound'. I think the real process started three years ago, and the last step was when we met DJ Kore, who helped us canalize ideas and decide what was to be kept or thrown. So if I had to sum up, it would be three steps : 1) creating a real Club cheval sound, 2) writing the actual album, 3) crafting the final project. 

You have talked about your shared love for Timbaland, R&B etc. yet your beats are very experimental, futuristic at times. How do you combine the two genres?

To us, R&B and hip hop are the most innovative genres for a bit of time. So it just made sense to us. Timbaland was one of the first to use electronic sounds in his slow productions (remember Justin’s My Love?) and The Neptunes could do a track with just a glass noise and be fine with it. We just realised that you could use the best ideas of a genre and craft them with your very personal ideas. To Club cheval, music is experiment by definition.

You spoke about Timbaland being daring whilst being in the mainstream field, is that something you guys plan on emulating - trying to bring different and unique sounds to the mainstream music world?

Yes! We want everyone to listen to our music. If mainstream artists were never innovating, it would be hard to make people’s mind change and get more open to new stuff. So yes, Timbaland is a real example. He managed to please both "underground" heads and mainstream fans with great and innovative music.

Do you spend a lot of time together in your studio? How does it work having four individual producers in the studio at once, does everyone bring something different to the table?

Every day, all the time. Studio is our second house. Panteros, Canblaster and Myd are spending more time with Sam Tiba than with their own girlfriends :) The process is pretty simple. One of us starts something on the Club cheval computer, then if he feels dry or out of ideas, he just stands up and asks someone to take his seat. And so it goes. There has never been an ego battle in seven years. Nobody in the group has ever said, 'my idea’s better than your's'. We take the best of each of us, use the skills of each member to the max, and so far it’s going super well.

How does the balance work between your solo careers and Club cheval?

It’s super hard. It was kind of easy during the making of the album, 'cause we would take our time, and use extreme ideas for our solo careers. It’s getting harder, cause days are only 24 hours. At the moment, we are 100% focused on Club cheval, but we all have solo projects in the pipeline. Panteros is working on his new live show, Canblaster started his debut album, Myd is preparing a new club EP, and Sam Tiba is working with a lot of rappers. It’s a hard thing to manage, but that’s a vital thing for Club cheval.

Who else would like to work or collaborate with that you haven’t already?

We love collaborations, and there are so many people that we would like to work with. Frank Ocean, Majid Jordan, Young Thug, Sophie, Jamie xx, MC Bin Laden, and many others.

You said you wanted to be remembered, have a sense of longevity, how do you think you guys can do that in an industry where turnover is so fast and brutal sometimes?

Bringing happiness to people through music is the main objective. Making people understand that genres are just words. We love niches, but we think that everyone deserves to get an easier entry point to each of this niche genres. We want to be remembered as four guys who tried to do great music, who pushed musical boundaries as far as possible, and who did all this with a smile on their faces.

Follow Club cheval: FACEBOOK / WEBSITE