Dimitri From Trash Palace (& Paris)- London Is More Perverse (and I Like It)

"Trash Palace started out with the idea of music as sex, which is not exactly a new concept but I think that the way sex is usually exploited in the music and fashion business, in fact generally in all commercial areas, isn't really sexual; instead it's slick and exploitative and there's nothing dangerous about it. I wanted to approach a deeper side of sexuality."

Sitting in a west London bar on a sunny afternoon, Trash Palace main-man and former Parisien producer Dimitri Tokovoi, speaks softly as he outlines the centrality of sex in his electronic rock band and more specifically the importance of real sex behind Trash Palace's aesthetic.

"There are so many programmes about sex on TV here but when you watch them you feel like you're at school studying a subject such as how you should give a blow job," he snorts.

"Sex is not about that in reality at all; it's fashion, perversion, love, whatever; it's much more complex than just the image that's portrayed in the media at the moment.

He's equally opinionated about Trash Palace's perfectly formed fusion of rock & roll and electro-disco, which he's created with the help of a highly impressive cast list of collaborators.

"I deliberately set out to find different people to collaborate with because sexuality is about a relationship between two people, it's very hard to have sex by yourself," he points out.

"I wanted to have different views, different moods and different sorts of perversions on the album and that's why there are so many different people involved."

That Dimitri's as persuasive as he's well-connected is clear from the characters he tracked down, who include Velvet Underground legend John Cale and Placebo singer Brian Molko. He also managed to seduce Italian sex siren Asia Argento into performing a version of Je T'aime, though admits he didn't actually know her until she walked into the studio to lay down her part.

"I had this idea of doing Je T'Aime because I've always loved the track, but my idea was to invert the characters' roles," says Dimitri.

"In the original track, Serge Gainsborough is fucking Jane Birkin, he's doing the act of penetration and I wanted to invert the roles; to have Asia doing the role of penetrating someone else. Brian (Molko) said he would do it so I asked Asia by sending her an email. Immediately she sent me an email back saying 'yeah, I really want to do it' so I flew to Italy to record her voice."

"She was very nervous when she did it because she's not a singer and she didn't know what I was going to ask her to do, she was still shooting XXX at the time," he continues.

"We did it in a small room with a very basic recording set-up and I remember her chain smoking with me sitting in front of her. It was a little bit of a tense atmosphere but that was good for the track. She didn't know me, I didn't know her so it was a slightly bizarre environment."

With Asia being generally acclaimed as one of the world's sexiest starlets, the resulting track is as salacious as Dimitri presumably hoped it would, reflecting the overall highly polished standards of all 11 tracks on Positions. Musically, he's succeeded in tapping into the talents of all his various collaborators, to produce a album of punk, funk and electro songs that genuinely (and unusually, in this day and age) truly rocks.

"I come from a rock & roll punk background but like a lot of people from my generation, when I was 14 I got a computer and started to make music on it, I was always trying to translate this punk vibe to electronic music," he explains.

"I used to love AC/DC and Motorhead and all that stuff. I think a lot of people from my generation grew up with that idea of translating that concept from one medium to the other."


Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): How long ago did you start Trash Palace-

Trash Palace (Dimitri): "I started it four years ago, I moved to Tags

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