Fabian Geyrhalter:

Welcome to the show, Philippe.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Thank you, Fabian. Thank you very much. Thanks for
welcoming me.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

It's so lovely having you here just as a little bit of an
introduction for everyone listening. You are a producer, a composer, a DJ, a
label manager, and quite notably one of the three founding members of Gotan
Project, the Parisian group that reshaped Downtempo in the early 2000s and
brought Electro Tango first to clubs and then later to every cool hotel lobby
in the world.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

That's True.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

That's true. For the few listeners who believe they do not
know Gotan Project, let me help you out. Gotan Project reinterpreted Tango by
combining electronic music with various acoustic instruments. And if you go to
Spotify or YouTube and you listen to the first 10 seconds of this song Epoca or
Santa Maria, you will know exactly who we're talking about and you will realize
how influential the band is to this day. Their 2001 Breakthrough album has sold
well over 1.5 million copies and Gotan Project showed up in films like Bourne
Identity, Oceans 11 and Sex and the City and countless TV ads. I recall the
first time I heard one of Gotan Project's tracks, which was super early on. It
must have been in 2000 or 2001 because I'm from Vienna, so I was quite in tune
with Downtempo because of Kruder & Dorfmeister and Berlin's Jazzanova and
that whole scene.

It was so different - and the artwork surrounding your
act, it was just as surprising. It was as sophisticated as the music. Philippe,
take us back to the early years like 1999 or 2000 and share a bit about how the
Gotan Project came about. I think it must be like “A French, a Swiss, and then
Argentinian walk into a bar…” but it might've not been like that.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Not exactly. We went to the bar later.

No, I was working already with the Swiss guy, Christophe
Mile. We were working together in studios since few years before Gotan Project.
I toured the project before Gotan called The Boys from Brazil and another one
called Stereo Action Unlimited that I was doing with Christophe and Boys from
Brazil was his name. Even we are not boys coming from Brazil. We wanted to
bring the Brazilian music to the club, to the dance floors. So it was a global
idea behind the boys from Brazil and Stereo Action Unlimited. It was more of tribute
to the era from the '60s with Burt Bacharach, Herb Alpert, or Sergio Mendez
from Brazil 66. It was really the influence of this project. And I was a big
fan of ... I was pretty ignorant about Tango except I was a huge fan of Astor
Piazzolla, which is one of the most important tango composer ever.

He really reshaped the tango music in the '50s and more
and later even is we compare Piazzolla to the George Gershwin for tango music.
And so I was fan since I was 20 years old of Piazzolla’s music, but I was not
so interested by the rest of Tango music. But when I started to ... At the time
I heard a record coming from Argentina, only with Percussion. The track is
called even Percusion and there was nothing else than percussion. And the
artist is called Domingo Cura. And he's pretty famous in Argentina as a session
musician, but also a very important percussionist. And when I heard his music,
which was only percussion, in my mind, I think I made this connection with Piazzolla’s
music and I thought it would be cool to bring those Latin Argentinian Afro
Latin even percussion to tango. And since we were doing electronic music, I was
starting to do electronic music to produce in 1989, I started to produce
electronic music at the time in Paris, which we were not so many people doing
that at the time.

And so it was 10 years later. And after all you were
mentioning Kruder und Dorfmeister, but I can mention Massive Attack or Thievery
Corporation, all the downtempo great albums released before us and also all our
fashion for house music and techno, I think all this came into a kind of
cocktail kind of mix. I thought that it would be cool to bring those kind of
percussion, those African percussion to tango music, to Piazzolla’s music. And
it's how we started. Eduardo is an Argentinian based in Paris and he introduced
us to a lot of great musicians living in Argentina and tango musicians living
in Paris. So we started to as more like an experience to do something very
experimental because we had no reference of something like a music mixing tango
and electronic and beats. There was no one before we did that. So we didn't
know how ... So we experimented for some time in studio.

And at the beginning, I have to say that the tango and electronic
didn't match together directly. And it's after playing with the faders of the
mixing desk and putting some delays and sound effects and mostly delays in ecos
on the Bandoneon, which is like an accordion, the tango accordion, let's say.
And to the percussion, the dub made the mix, the source of the ... It really
mixed the dub was really the element we brought tango and electric together.
And we started to release to produce one track and we did another track with
all the recording we had from the musicians and we did the dub track and we
released that as a 10 inch vinyl.

And tell you the truth, I thought it would be very, very,
very niche because I couldn't imagine that the people who love House will be
interested by Tango and the people who love Tango that will be interested by
electronic music. So I thought, okay, it's going to be like ... Even at the
beginning, I wanted to release 500 copies only. And at the end we did 1000 copies,
but I thought, okay, it's going to take two years to sell those. And we sold
them in less than two weeks. It was like at the time, I don't know if you
remember, I'm sure you remember that at the time you were the distributor, the
people all over the world, they were listening to records through a phone. So
the French distribution was playing our music on the phone just like that. And
some people in Vienna, some people in LA, some people in London say,
"Yeah, okay, send me 10 copies or send me ... " And it started to
spread all over the world and a lot of DJs started to be interested and Giles
Peterson was the very first person…because he bought the record the first time
in the record shop in Soho and he loved it and he wanted to know more about it.
And he was the first to play us on his show, which is the Worldwide Show and
the Worldwide Show is played in LA by KCRW, in Vietnam by FM4, no?

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Yes, exactly.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

FM Vier. Shibuya Fame in Tokyo. So it really spread the
sound all over the world into all the people who are interested in new sounds
and some taste makers too. So after we brought us to say, okay, let's do
another one. Another one, we released three 10 inch vinyls and in two years it
became pretty like a worldwide buzz around Gotan Project. And when we did the
album, we had already a lot of fans, even if it was still quite underground, it
was not that so popular at the time, but we started to have a real audience in
most of the capitals of the world. In Italy, it was also in Portugal, in many
countries. And this is really the beginning of the story of Gotan Project. So
it was absolutely even a surprise for us that people were so interested, loved
our music so much.

And when we released the album in 2001, so two years later
after starting the project, because we started in 99, early 99 even, when we
released the album and when you were saying just in the introduction that
people maybe they don't know the name, they know the sound, they know the
music. I can tell you that at the time in 2001, 2002, it was impossible to go
anywhere in the world without listening to Gotan Project.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Absolutely.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

100%.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

So quick. I mean, it's like between you releasing the
first EP and the album coming out, it just became from the small clubs and the
small scene to becoming mainstream in no time with something, like you said,
that completely surprised you. And I love to hear that idea of that percussion
track and how that kind of made that difference for you because percussion and
electronica, I mean, it's very close, right? I mean, that's how it relates very
quickly. Absolutely. It's super interesting.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Just one thing that I wanted to add about that, the first
album was really directly made for the DJ and for the clubs. So all the tracks
that you can listen to the first album, which is 25 years ago now – La Ravancha
Del Tango is celebrating the 25th anniversary of this album this year
– and was really made for DJs and for clubs. So every downtempo, mid
tempo, up tempo, it was really, we thought about how to bring tango to the
dance floor and it was very the key of the first album of Gotan Project. And
one other thing that we discovered by talking with a tango specialist, a
musicologist, he told us that without knowing, we brought tango back to its
roots because we can imagine that the origin of tango music in the early 20th
century or even late 19th century was made by the African community in
Argentina.

And you can imagine it was much more percussive than the
tango became during after few decades with all the immigration coming from
Europe who brought all their instruments, like say the Bandoneon, which is like
the Accordion came from Germany, the violin came from East Europe, the Spanish
guitar, the Italian canzonetta, all this immigration from Europe coming to
Argentina, brought his own culture, instrument and brought tango a bit less
percussive during the 20th century, the late 20th century. And even Astor
Piazzolla wanted to bring Tango out of the dance floor because he was a bit
ashamed that it was just a kind of dance music. He wanted to bring to an
audience who were listening jazz or classical music a bit more serious. And
without knowing we brought by bringing back a percussion to tango, we brought
tango back to its roots. And it was very interesting for us to discover that
without any before this knowledge, mostly by intuition.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Yeah. Yeah. That was not a strategy of yours.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Not at All. Not at All.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

How amazing. That is such a good story. And talking about
good stories just last night while I was preparing for our conversation today,
I learned that Gotan is an inversion of the word tango. Exactly. So it uses the
same letters and I learned it's a very much an Argentinian slang thing to do to
mix that up.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Argentinian and French, very Parisian also. We call
Verlander so inverse because partly when I was in school, we talked a lot like
that with Verlon, and in Argentina, they have the same slang reversing the
syllabs and words. And that's why we decided for this name Gotan because it's
mean tango. If you repeat, go, tango, tango, tango, tango, you see it's
something that Argentinian or people from Buenos Aires and Paris have in common
is the same. It's not only Paris. I think France and Argentina have the same
slang, same kind of slang, let's say. And Tango, of course, Paris is considered
the second capital of Tango since the early 20th century, because at the
beginning when Tango really was starting to be popular in Argentina, it was
mostly for the bad boys, the people really not ... It was not the Aristocracy
at all, not the Bourgeoisie.

And it's because it came to Paris in the early 20th
century and became very trendy in Paris in the 20s and after in Argentina
starting to think that, okay, it's cool. Tango is cool. So it's funny how the
story of Tango music is really started from Buenos Aires in Paris and continued
with Gotan Project in some ways. Even Piazzolla, he was studying with Nadia Boulanger,
who was the teacher of Leonard Bernstein, Quincy Jones, many people. She was
the one to say to Piazzolla, "Go play tango." Piazzolla is there.
Your music is there. And as I say, he wanted to be Stravinsky. He didn't want
to be a tango musician. He wanted to be a classical musician and it's Nadia
Boulanger, the teacher, his teacher in Paris who says, "No, no, your life
is there and not how you think. " So just to say that it's a really
historical dialogue between the two countries and two cities between parties
for this music.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

So beautiful. And it was such a conceptual project too
from beginning to end. I just really, really love it. And something I loved
about Gotan Project to this day and many acts around that time was how
important remixes and collaborative reinterpretations of songs were, right?
There are so many amazing remixes of Gotan Project out there. I wish the Club
Secreto series would finally make it to vinyl. Those were such great mixes. I
mean, you founded the record label Ya Basta, right? I mean, maybe it’s time for
a re-release?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

That's true. Funnily, I never thought about releasing this
Club Secreto on vinyl. It's a good idea.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Those are such great CDs. It's amazing. And was all of
Gotan Project's work released on your label from day one?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Yeah. It's on my label. Yeah. Yeah. Created my label. It's
also an anniversary this year because I created my label in 96. Ya Basta was
created in 96 mostly to release my own music and now it's 30 years ago, so
we're celebrating the 30th anniversary. And yes, everything is on Ya Basta.
There is only one or two which are on the Blue Note thing, but most of the 99%
of our music is on Ya Basta.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

That must have been so untypical, atypical too, that
there's a big act like you were back in the early 2000s, selling millions of
records on a tiny independent label that the band basically owned. That's
unbelievable.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Yeah, absolutely. And we didn't plan even to go on tour
with this project at the beginning. We thought, okay, it's a studio project.
And when we did, there was one track in the first album called Triptico, which
is a long housey track... And I remember that when we were working on this
track producing that, we started to think, wow, that really could be great to
play that on stage. And this house was starting to think, okay, maybe we can do
five shows. And at the end, we did 500 shows all over the world. So it was
really not planned. Everything was really not strategic. I can tell you there
was no strategy behind the time project.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Behind the success, but behind the project, there was a
lot of strategy. It's funny that you brought up Triptico because just last
night I bought the 12 inch with Peter Kruder's remix and the Anti-Pop Consortium
remixes of El Capitalism. I mean, so amazing. So I bought my last record last
night. Let's go to your record collection, which is huge. When did you buy your
first record? Do you remember? Do you remember what your very first record was?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Absolutely. Very well. It was like the very first, it was
a seven inch single. It was the soundtrack of the movie. The track is called
Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. And it was the music for the movie Butch
Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a great movie too.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

And I remember I went to the cinema with my mother to see
the film because it was a Western. I loved it. And when I went out, there was a
small record shop in the little city where I was living. It's the suburbs of
Paris and I say, "I want the song. I want the song." And we both, it
was the first record that I bought and after I started to collect or to buy,
not to collect, but to buy a French singer, songwriter that I still love a lot.
It's called Michel Polnareff, great singer songwriter who lives in LA, by the
way. Very, very great melodist. And so I was a big fan of that. And after when
I was 10, I was a big fan of the Osmonds Brothers. Do you know the Osmonds
Brothers?

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Of course.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Oh my God. Now I mean, the track Crazy Horse is amazing,
but it was a kind of white Mormon version of the Jackson Five, but at the time
I didn't know who were the Jackson Five. So I was just a big fan of the Osmonds
Brothers and I even see them in Paris playing when I was 10 or 11.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

I love how one listens to music when you're young and
naive and you don't know how

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Things

Fabian Geyrhalter:

…are stamped, right? This belongs here, this is good, this
is bad. I remember I was listening to Shakin’ Stevens, which was really, it's
like when you look at it now, it's like, oh my God, it's like an Elvis Wannabee
of sorts... It was hilarious. But I mean, listen, if your very first record is
Burt Bacharach, you're off to a good start. You're off to a good start because
I bought his greatest hits I think 20 years ago when no one bought records,
like no one. I bought it for like a dollar, the greatest hits. And it's just
unbelievable. The talent, the songwriting is just unbelievable. Wow. Okay. So
how much of your musical taste do you attribute to your upbringing? Was there a
lot of music in your household?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Yeah, yeah. Look, my father mostly was a big music fan.
When he was young, he was really into jazz music and bebop. Even when my father
was coming from Tunisia and my mother from Holland, and they met in Paris in
the jazz clubs…is how they met, they were listening, they were going to dance to
jazz and bebop. So he was listening a lot of jazz music, but also in the mid
60s, late 60s, he was buying a lot of great records, a lot of Brazilian music.
I remember the first album he bought from The Rolling Stone was Aftermath,
which is a great album. He really loved James Brown and after Marvin Gaye,
French singer songwriter like Jacques Brell... Some Arabic music…

Fabian Geyrhalter:

It makes so much sense that you ended up being who you
are, right? Yeah. What an amazing mixture of styles that perfectly ... Yeah.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

And there was one record that my parents were listening a
lot. It's from Argentina. It's called Misa Criolla. Misa Criolla, it's a
classical choir music, classical folkloric music, became a huge hit in the late
'60s all over the world and it's beautiful. And what I discovered much later is
the percussion on this record was made by Domingo Cura, which was the guy, the
record that really inspired me to Gotan Project. So it's incredible. So I
discovered much later that the person played on this record was the guy who
really inspired me to do Gotan Project. So it's something maybe really almost-
It's beautiful. It's like something that maybe something coming from my
childhood that unconsciously, subconsciously, I didn't know brought me to do
Gotan Project and going to Argentinian music because I'm not an Argentinian,
I'm not a tango musician, but I was inspired to do something around Tango and Folklore
music from Argentina maybe because when I was a kid, I heard that this record,
which is beautiful for the people who don't know this record, they should
really listen.

It's called Misa like the mass, like a Christian mass
Criolla, like Creole, Misa Criolla. It's beautiful.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

And this Philippe is why I love doing this show because
after every show I'm looking up like five, 10, 15 records, and I start having
new favorites and I go deep into the history that people like you share, which
is wonderful, wonderful. How many records do you think you own? I know you told
me that you moved at some point between places and you realized that there were
a lot of records.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Yeah. I mean, I have around now, it should be 20,000
records because 10 years ago I had almost 18,000 and I'm still buying, still
receiving records. I have a room full of all the walls are used for the records
and in the middle I've got my piano, my DJ equipment and guitars and it's my
music room at home, but it's mostly covered the walls are covered of records.
But I've got also CDs. I'm not only only vinyls. I've got some cities that I
love cities too and I'm nothing against CDs. I think it's a shame that people
are throwing out their CDs because some cities are really good, but of course
mostly vinyls because I'm buying vinyls since I'm very young. I was young.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Yeah. The room looks absolutely mesmerizing. If you have
any pictures, you should share them with me later so I can share it with my
audience when we release this because it's really, really beautiful. The wall
of music, I think it's such a big part of vinyl to have that. It's like the
library, right? Which artist do you own the most records of? Do you have any
idea? I saw a picture of you with tons of David Bowie records, but I mean, I
didn't ...

Philippe Cohen Solal:

That's what I will say. Yeah, it's David Bowie,
definitely. I've got, of course, all his records, but also in different ...
When Bowie was on RCA, but after he went on EMI, so I've got all the RCA
collection, all the records from at the time when he was at RCA, but after I've
got the same records published by EMI and after Virgin, I don't know. I have
also when in the 80s I collaborated on a book about David Bowie at the time and
I was connected with the woman was the president of the fun club of the David Bowie
Fan Club, but she was an old lady originally from Russia because she was also
doing ... She was, how you say, tailoring…and David Bowie was a friend with
her. I mean, when he came to Paris, he was visiting her mostly for the clothes
and costumes and things like that.

So he was bringing to her some gifts, some records, some
bootlegs or some rare records. And when this lady, this old woman, she retired
and she gave it to me all those records. So I've got a lot, a lot, a lot of
records. Even a few months ago, I did a DJ set in Paris only on David Bowie for
three hours.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Oh my God. Amazing. Wow. That's amazing. Which out of all
of your records, and I put you on the spot here because you didn't see the
questions prior, so this is going to be on the spot. But is there one record
that you cherish the most that if the apartment comes crumbling down and you
have to run, which one would you take?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Okay. That's a tough one. I think I would say maybe the
very difficult one. I can hesitate between on Serge Gainsbourg vinyl. For the
people who don't know Serge Gainsbourg is a genius, French genius, who was very
influential, not only in France, but in many countries. Even Beck was very
influenced by Serge Gainsbourg. And I was lucky enough to meet him a few times
and interviewing him when in the 80s and I would spend two hours in his home in
Paris with him. So I was very lucky because at the time I was only 24 years
old. It was incredible to spend a face-to-face two hours with him. And he
signed for me a record. I met him twice or three times even, but I signed two
different records for me. One to my name, it was the album, it's called Love on
the Beat and he signed it to me.

And the other one, which is an old 60s with Jane Birkin.
The cover is a beautiful picture of Jane

. And he wrote, at the time he just split up with her and
he was still very hurt and very heartbroken.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

That's when the best music happens.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Yeah….this one is a treasure for me, treasure.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

That is unbelievable. That's beautiful. I have something
similar where I'm a big Depeche Mode fan. That's my band that I've got 500 or
so records of Depeche Mode. And I went to the concert and I got a backstage
pass in Vienna back in, I don't know, the 90s. And I brought a record and I was
thinking, which record should I bring to get signed? And I brought a bootleg. I
brought a bootleg of them, which was only pressed 50 times because it was a
special version of it. And I brought it backstage and those guys just looked at
me like, "What is wrong with you? " I was like, "You're bringing
an unofficial pressing." But I have this bootleg by all four members and
one of them jumped ship and the other one already passed away. And it's just so
unique because no one would have a signed bootleg and they just quickly signed
it and they were like, "What is going on?"

But those are the things you cherish, right? The ones that
have a story and a personal attachment. Well, let's jump into a big question.
This is going to be a tough one for you on the spot, but usually I ask my
guests, what are the top five albums? But for you, maybe I'm like, just list
five or so really important albums to you that shaped you or that you think are
... Yeah.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

I would say it's very, very difficult because, okay, let's
say David Bowie, Hanky Dory, let's say.

It's very difficult because I love almost all this album,
but Hanky Dory is so amazing. I will say I love all the Beatles album, but I
could say one Paul McCartney album called Ram, one of my favorite albums. From
The Rolling Stones, I will say Exile on Main St, one of my favorite albums. That
is so hard. It is so hard. I would say The Magic Flute from Mozart. It's one of
my favorite albums and it's beautiful. It's really beautiful. And maybe the
last one would be Marvin Gaye, What's Go On. Because What's Going On is – I'm
not a believer. I don't believe in God, but when I listen to What's Going On, I
start to believe in God. Yeah. I think he didn't do just by himself like that.
He was helped by something above him. I'm pretty sure. When you listen to that,
it's clear that he was ... I read an interview a couple of years ago where he
was like an old interview, of course, where he was saying that when he was
recording what's going on, he was feeling like a tool from God.

He was feeling that in studio that he was just a
transmitter. Channeling. Yes. Channeling. Yeah, exactly. And he was of course a
believer. But he said that he didn't have this feeling on all his record, but
only and particularly on what's going on.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

I only own one LP of his and it's What's Go On. And it is
such an unbelievable album from beginning to end. And I too am not a believer
in that sense, but you feel that there's another album where I feel that it's
Keith Jarrett’s Köln concert. And at that concert, everything went wrong. And
when he sat down and he started just channeling and he just started going into,
and it became one of the bestselling jazz records of all times, right?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Yeah, true.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Those albums are amazing where you feel that, right?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Like the magic really when it’s magic,
exactly. The magic happened on specific special nights.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Not much different than your first album with Gotan
Project. I think there's something special there when you go through it. And I
don't think it ever happened again in anything. It's like there was something
there and all the releases afterwards were amazing and the remixes were such
good work. But there's something about ... I guess it's very often the first
release. There's

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Something- I totally agree. I totally agree that something
was pretty magic and it was free. We had no-

Fabian Geyrhalter:

That's it. No Expectations.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

We had no intention to break anything, to really have to
try to have a heat or try to do something successful or I don't know. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

Didn't think what would play well in Radio. What would
play well in the club? None of these thoughts, right?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

You just had an idea. Even the first thing I say to
Eduardo, the Argentinian guy, before starting, I say, "You know what? I
don't want to do anything, something like commercial I want to do music that we
like that we love. And if other people love it, it's great. It's even
better." But really it was absolutely the mantra even to say, "No,
let's not try to get success or popular." And by coincidence, the opposite
we can because it was the most successful record I Remember in my life.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

That's how it works. It's just like that Keith Jarrett
record where he sat down and he's like, "This is the worst night of my
life." The piano isn't tuned. Everything is horrible. He's in a bad mood
and then magic happens. And that's the beauty of life, I think. That's amazing.
Absolutely. Well, as we're slowly coming to an end here, I want to know what
are you working on currently and what's next for you? What can people get
excited about?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

So I'm releasing on Friday, so maybe it's going to be when
I know we're going to be released interview, but I'm releasing a new track,
which is a very special. It's kind of Yiddish Shatta. You know Shatta? Shatta Music?
Not familiar? Shatta is a very urban, very underground music from the French
West Indies, from Martinique. So it's very rhythmical... it's very street
music, but with a Swedish singer, she lives in LA, by the way, young girl was
singing in Yiddish. So it's something very weird. Really funny to do. So it's
going to release very soon.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

And that's under your name? That's going to be-

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Yeah, under my name. Exactly. Under my name. I'm going to
release another track before summer called Rainbows and Starlight, which is very
inspiring. And for me, it was inspired by the romcom from the '80s romcom on
the '90s romcom by Richard Curtis. I don't know. It's like a love song, the
song that you want to play when you propose, this kind of thing. So I wrote the
song and it's a funny, I think there will be a funny music video. And also a
couple of years ago, I released an album called Outsider, which is inspired by
Henry Darger, which is an American outsider artist who died in 1973.

I did this album with a Mike Lindsay from Tunng, the band
from London. Yeah, we did this album and we put into music the words, the
lyrics written by Henry Darger. Henry Darger, he created a huge amount of
painting, drawings, writings all over his life, all his life without showing to
anyone. So that's why he's outsider artist because he never wanted to show. It
has been discovered by the landlord of his room just before he died in 1973.
And now the biggest collection of this artists are at the moment in New York or
the modern art museum in Paris. Every big piece is like almost a million of
dollars. It's the main, let's say, one of the most important outside artists
today's. And so I did this album called Outsider and it became a very
transmedia project with a lot of short film podcast series and things like
that.

But more recently I released a VR experience, a musical
interactive VR experience. So you just put the headset on and you are really
enter in his room first. And after from his room, you go to his imaginary
world, very musical, you recreate, you can change the sound and transform the
sound, you really interact with music because it's the core of the heart of the
project is music, but it's VR. And with this project, we've been to South Bike
Southwest a few months ago and this project is going to go to a big festival of
animation in Unseen France and we're going to Korea, South Korea in September.
So I'm traveling with this project. It's for me the first time that I direct a
VR experience as a director because it's my ... But based on my music, of
course, on our music with Mike. So I'm very busy on that and some other
collaborations.

As you say, the first record are sometime magical and I
try to do every time a new kind of first album.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

I love that.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

That's why I change my music, of course, Gotan Project is
one part of my life, but I did also when I was doing Gotan Project, I was doing
the moonshine sessions, which is country music and bluegrass. And I try to do
all the time in a new genre or a first album because I believe in first albums.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

I love that. That is such a great mantra and challenge.
Yeah, it keeps you creatively inspired at all times. Where can people find all
of that work? Is there a website where you keep people updated or a social
media?

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Account? Yeah. I mean, on ¡Ya Basta! Records, the website,
so Ya Basta Records, we have a website and we have also a website for called
outsideronline.co, not dot. com but .co, where you can find a lot of things
around this project inspired by Henry Darger. And the best is for the people if
they want to get informed is of course you can go on Instagram or on my profile
or on Gotan Project profile, but also on Ya Basta profile. But also on the
website they can register to the newsletter and then they're going to get
information, not too frequently, but frequently still.

Fabian Geyrhalter:

That is fantastic. Philippe, thank you. Thank you so much
for spending this time with us and pulling the curtain behind your record
collection and the story of Gotan Project. And it was so much fun. We really
appreciate it.

Philippe Cohen Solal:

Thank you very much. Thanks for everything.