Star DJ Fatboy Slim recorded a clip during a public turntable performance Friday night on the terrace of the Center Pompidou in Paris, a venue with a rich history of electro.
The place, at the top of this institution dedicated to modern and contemporary art, was not chosen at random by the sixty-year-old Englishman, known worldwide in the late 1990s with the hits Praise You, Here and now AND The Rockafeller Slut.
Passionate about contemporary art, Fatboy Slim had already offered a DJ set in 2019 with Carl Cox, another monument DJ, at the Saatchi Gallery in London. In Paris, he played before a hundred fans who won a contest organized by the music platform Deezer.
“For this type of format, electronic artists are usually interested in issues of visual arts,” explains Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, director of the culture and creation department at the Pompidou Center, to AFP.
“When we recently hosted Jean-Michel Jarre, he spoke at length about the importance to him of the collections and exhibitions of the Pompidou Centre,” the director continues.
Rich history with electro.
Beyond the view of Paris, this place has a rich history with electro. On November 10, 1992, the young Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, who were fighting for a rock project, had a revelation at the “Armistice” rave (a nod to the next day, a holiday) organized on the Terrace Beaubourg, another name for the center. Electro called them and in 1993 they formed the duo Daft Punk (separated since 2021).
For Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, the “starting point” is the Institute for Acoustic/Music Research and Coordination (Ircam), 16 meters underground, right next to the Pompidou Center, founded in 1977 by Pierre Boulez, spearhead of avant-garde music.
“Ircam, a scientific music laboratory, has opened itself to all other musical forms,” says the director of the department of culture and creation. During the nights of August 1989, it was in these basements that JoeyStarr and Kool Shen, or NTM, recorded the title. I rap integrated into the foundational build Rapatitude (1990).
Today, electro is still well represented in the live show programming in Beaubourg. On June 14 and 15, a tribute to the electro label Mego, founded 40 years ago in Vienna (Austria), is planned.
Source: BFM TV
