Feb 03 – Santé b2b Sidney Charles |

Feb 03 – Santé b2b Sidney Charles

SANTÉ

Santé, hailing from Berlin, is part of a new school of artists championing musicality, skillfulness and creativity over mindless loops and endless repetition. His productions, like those on his record label AVOTRE, ooze character, charisma & humour, feelings so often overlooked in the realms of house music.

Santé’s career trajectory has grown hand in hand with AVOTRE’s reputation. His success has allowed the brand, founded in 2012, to grow incredibly quickly, to the point where it is now an established label selling out at least two international showcase events every month while continuing to act as a ‘go-to’ label for the undergrounds hottest acts. 2015 saw the release of two further successful House Lessons releases – One from long term friend Russ Yallop, and the other, touring and production partner Sidney Charles. The House Lessons concept itself comes from one of the label’s first releases AVTR003 – Sidney Charles’ genius track of the same name that has led to a musical concept, fully embraced by Santé and the AVOTRE family. Culminating in the February 2017 with the release of Santé’s own House Lesson’s LP, the twelve track concept album is a compilation of collaborative tracks, featuring some of house and techno’s most influential artists including wAFF, Marshall Jefferson, Ann Saunderson, and Solardo amongst others.
Beyond AVOTRE, label boss Santé has continued to build his already impressive repertoire of releases with a number of Beatport top ten records including a hit track for Hot Creations – ‘Forever’ – and the era defining ‘Stay’ on Nic Fanciulli’s Saved Records, which went on to take a place among the label’s most successful releases of 2015.

Looking to the year ahead, Santé’s 2017 calendar is already filling up with key events such as Glastonbury, several dates with Elrow at their newly announced Amnesia residency, and BPM Portugal. Continuing to push boundaries with his electrifying live shows, Santé launched event concept ‘Cave Rave’ at newly opened Leeds venue The Church in late 2016. Incorporating 3-D projection and an altogether deeper sound, Cave Rave is set to make a return in 2017 with a series of yet to be announced summer dates.

It all started when Santé bought an Akai MPC-2000 aged 16 and set the ball rolling for a life entrenched in electronic music. “I was totally into sampling and house”, he recalls of those early days of button bashing and experimentation. He left his hometown when he was 21 to immerse himself in the dance music mecca that is Berlin. A studio internship blossomed into a full-time career, with the emerging talent spending six years producing jingles and ad music and nurturing his passion for house music at any opportunity. Nothing was released, however, until one of his demos found its way to Matt ‘Radio Slave’ Edwards. His first ever release came out on Edwards’ acclaimed REKIDS imprint, setting the bar incredibly high and garnering him a lot of high-profile attention in the process.
The next major stepping-stone for him was meeting Tiefschwarz. “They were looking for a new engineer and hired me to oversee all projects for their label Souvenir, where I got the freedom to release my music and a platform to experiment” he explains. This fruitful, intense relationship lasted three years, a time Santé describes as being “a fantastic experience”. After working on many of Tiefschwarz’s releases, including remixes for Richie Hawtin and Grace Jones, Santé decided to fly the nest in search of new pastures. His subsequent release schedule spells out what a diverse producer he is and how far his popularity ranges – from bastions of techno like Cocoon to the kings of big room house Defected, through to underground darlings like Desolat, all the way to acclaimed remixes for huge stars like Depeche Mode. Few producers can claim such a breadth of imprints to be associated with at any one time. When you ask Santé to describe his musical style, he says he doesn’t really know how to – which goes someway to explaining his widespread appeal.

SIDNEY CHARLES

It might have come as a surprise to some that Hamburg’s Sidney Charles topped Resident Advisor’s Top 100 Most Charted Artists of 2013, but it’s an accolade that speaks volumes about both his approach to music and his prolific, consistent output.

Born Sidney Charles Hurricane Vieljans (yes, really), his journey towards the world of house and techno began when he first started DJing hip-hop, soul and funk at the age of 15. Taking his cues from the golden age of turntablism and associated culture in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, his attentions were led towards other sounds of the era also enjoying their first heyday. His infatuation with those classic 4/4 club sounds is something that lives and breathes vividly in his music today. “I see myself mainly connected with the raw house sound” he says of the style he projects with his productions and DJ sets today. “I am highly influenced by the early ‘90s. Jacking beats; heavy kicks; dirty highs. But I also like to experiment a lot to not make people bored of a certain sound.” Whatever shade of house or techno he’s producing, it’s always packed full of hard grooves, raw sounds and a classy simplicity that lets the track do what it’s supposed to do: make your ass wiggle.

For a producer who only started releasing music in 2011, Sidney’s achievements are all the more impressive. In the space of just three years, his works have graced bastions of house and techno such as Avotre, 8bit, I Am A House Gangster, Moda Black, Off, VIVa, Kling Klong, SCI+TEC, Suara and Area Remote – each release adding to his clout and helping him to become one of the biggest names in the underground. And that’s where he wants to stay. He has no lofty aspirations to play arena shows or break through into the mainstream of electronic music. He’d rather stay true to the scene and surroundings he loves and develop and grow therein.

“I think the most important thing for me is that people take my music as a personal part of me” he says. “That means I can create an image mostly characterised by authenticity. So I don’t need to play for the biggest fees in the biggest clubs. I am mainly interested in the underground scene itself and being an active and creative part of it. With my music and my activeness in the scene as a DJ or otherwise. I want to give my part to keep the underground alive. As my music is meant to be honest, I also see myself more playing in clubs which are not fancy or posh-like. I see myself in more underground-orientated locations like Sankeys, fabric, Watergate, Panoramabar…”

Along with his lengthy studio stints and packed DJing schedule, his role as A&R for Santé’s burgeoning Avotre imprint and the occasional parties he throws in his hometown ensure that he’s constantly immersed in his passion. While his focus is on making dancefloors vibrate, he’s also working on an album and a project with like-minded star Darius Syrossian and is keeping plans for his own record label in the back of his mind.

With the diversity he’s displayed and the continually acclaimed output he’s been creating, there’s little doubt that Sidney Charles can continue to grow and evolve in the years to come – even within those refreshingly focused parameters which he has set for himself.