Miss Kittin: You Don't Need To Be Famous To Write About Fame
Author: Benedetta Skrufff
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Staring off the cover of DJ magazine's latest issue, Miss Kittin (aka 'Dark Little Poet' aka 'artist, pop star, DJ, electroclash survivor and poet', as DJ dub her) is both famous and presumably well used to riding round in limos, though chatting to Benedetta Skrufff she insists she's only done it once.
"It happened with Sven Vath after I'd worked with him, I went to see him playing and later he invited me to an after party," she reveals.
"The people from his office had rented a limo with zebra seats for him as a birthday present, so there were ten of us in the car and it was really funny being driven along the highway. Especially when we had to stop at service stations because all ten of us were desperate for a pee. But it was nothing like I imagined in the song."
And significantly, when she dreamed up her seminal electroclash lyrics, her life was as far from limousines, Frank Sinatra and even Sven Vath, as any Hollywood rags to riches clubbing narrative could contrive
"Just picture this scene," she says (sounding exactly as she does on the records- her regular voice is exactly the same).
"I used to go to many illegal parties all night, and I'd go home, still on drugs, switch on the TV and watch the music channels, and all you'd see would be those hip hop guys in limos, surrounded by girls in bikinis. There I was, all super dirty, wearing my army boots, shaved head, off my head, watching these videos . . . of course I laughed at them, and eventually I decided to write my feelings down."
As well as writing Frank Sinatra during her early morning comedowns, she also sang the limousine themed lyrics to Felix Da Housecat's genre crossing anthem Silver Screen Shower Scene, which both kick-started electroclash and changed Kittin's own life irrevocably, when the track became one of the biggest club hits of 2000.
"When my career begun I never thought it would have taken this turn, I never even thought I would have become a DJ," she admits.
"I started making music with The Hacker, decided to talk on some tracks and next we meet DJ Hell. He asks for music; we deliver him music . . . bang, the rest is history. And then there's this legendary Chicago DJ who wants me to put some vocals on his new album, and sure, of course I do it."
And four years after Felix took her in the studio for his album she's sitting in a Central London luxury hotel to talk about her own album, a highly eclectic record called I com that encompasses hip hop, techno, electroclash and her own unique sensibilities and slant on life.
Skrufff (Benedetta Ferraro): "The album is really varied in style, did you create it with one specific vision-
Miss Kittin: "The whole concept for the album was to include a lot of influences that inspire me as a DJ or as a music lover and if you think about it, it's like my DJ sets. I literally went to the studio with a book of notes and went through all my ideas, one by one, with one of the producers Thies Mynther and we picked together the ones we thought would work. I told him what I had in mind musically, he then pointed out which styles would work best with whichever lyrics I had noted in my book. He made it easy, because we had a guideline to combine the music with this sort of imaginary world I had already jotted down in my notebook. It was fun. Perhaps some people thought I made this album in order to impose myself as an artist, which I can assure you is not true. I loved the collaboration and the input I have received throughout."
Skrufff: Did you consider involving The Hacker more closely-
Miss Kittin: "No really, because I don't think he would have liked to follow me in all these crazy, different styles I explored. That's not his philosophy, so I did it on my own.< Tags