Telepopmusik is a trio comprising of Fabrice Dumont, Stephan Haeri, and Christophe Hetier. Their debut album Genetic World, which released in 2001, put French electronic music on the global map. A few songs of their’s have been used in commercials that have not only been broadcast worldwide but also won prestigious awards.
Each of them have their own successful solo careers. Hetier aka Antipop, who recently brought his solo project to India, talks to us about how important it is to get out of your comfort zone to make revolutionary and refreshing music.
Recalling how Telepopmusik was formed, he says, “In 1999, just before starting this band, each of us was in pop bands and a friend of ours had bought a sampler. We decided together to try and make one song with this sampler, and it was a completely different way to produce music. That’s how we decided to start Telepopmusik- as a side project/experimental project. We had to choose a band name as soon as our first song was taken for a compilation. There was a shop in Paris selling used electronic equipment called Telepopmusic, we just put a ‘k’ at the end to pretend we were Germans.”
As a collective, their philosophy of music is to “expect the unexpected.” “Accidents in music are very important. The comfort zone produces boring music,” he says. And that is what he has been up to on his maiden tour in India. “I stayed only five days and had my eyes wide open to take in as much as possible,” he says.
“After India, I’m preparing my tour for the rest of Asia and the release of a compilation of previously unreleased remixes of our two previously-released albums. My partner Haeri, aka 2 Square, is preparing the final mix of our next single,” he says. As a lot of their music has been used for commercial purposes (in advertisements etc), is that something they keep in mind while making their compositions? “No, we don’t know until the song is finished if it will be a good song for advertising campaigns. Because lyrics and music has to be positive and easy going and most of the time we are too melancholic. The use of Breathe in a Mitsubishi television commercial to launch the 2003 Outlander (which was nominated for the Grammy) had been a big surprise for us,” says Hetier who performed at Euriska on Sunday.
Talking about the current French House music scene, he says, “I m not listening to much of new French house but Uppermost, Kartell are great new producers. I’m more into deep and tech house but I still play some old French house sometimes in my sets.” While Telepopmusick will be coming out with a new album soon, as Antipop Hetier will be preparing a few new collaborations as well.