The Hacker: Since Electroclash, DJs Can Take More Risks

"There seems to be a general feeling in the club scene that everybody is complaining all the time. I'm not."

Chatting down the line from his Grenoble headquarters in France, Michel The Hacker Amato admits he's happy with the state of his own life and the music scene in general.

"I'm really enjoying DJing at the moment and mostly I get a very good response from the audience, everything going pretty well actually," he confirms.

People are more open now than they were a few years ago, in fact, ever since this electroclash thing happened, it's started getting more interesting. Even though electroclash is now often seen as a bad word, the good thing about it is that DJ can now take more risks when they play. Before, you had to be a techno DJ or a house DJ or an electro DJ whereas now I think electroclash has brought in new elements so you can play more diversely and people are ready for that now. I think that's a good thing."

It's an approach he's applied to his new album Reves Mecaniques, which is considerably more varied and song based than previous albums he released, both as solo projects or with his regular collaborator Miss Kittin.

"I used a different process for Reves Mecaniques, because on this one I worked in a different way than I used to do before on the other albums," he explains.

"First I did it in my head, I was thinking more about it before I really started to work on it in the studio and I writing ideas down in a notebook, which was something I'd never done before. Then at some point when I felt ready, I had a lot of ideas written down, I started to work. It went really fast. I had everything in mind before I started."

The result is a ten track album that's recognisably Hacker-esque, while being more interesting and accessible than the techno he sometimes veers towards.


Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Why did you try this new technique- Was it just an idea or experiment-

The Hacker: "The main reason was because at that time I was travelling a lot and touring with Miss Kittin so I didn't spend a lot of time in my studio. So that's why I started to note some ideas when I was away from my home. Ideas would pop into my head, and you can't really control how that happens, that's why I did it like this."

Skrufff: What kind of ideas were you having-

The Hacker: "It could be different things, maybe just an idea for a rhythm or an idea for the structure of a track. For example, I'd think lets start with something really hard, then in the middle it goes really soft, then I can do this or that afterwards. Or it could be an idea for a particular melody."

Skrufff: Flesh Bone has a really high energy verse then breaks down to a seriously quiet part,which isn't particularly DJ friendly, were you specifically considering the dance floor when writing-

The Hacker: "For some tracks I'd think about the effect there would be on the dance floor, but for example with Flesh Bone, the idea was to try to make a techno track with a rock structure. It doesn't sound at all like it but what I had in mind when I made that track was Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit. Noisy and hard, then calm again, but you go from one to another really fast. I like that kind of effect of surprise in music."

Skrufff: The entire album is much slower than lots of the music you've made previously, why-

The Hacker: "I think it's more interesting to work on the rhythm and sounds when it's not going too fast and the tempo is slower. When the music's going really fast, you lose somehow, something, I think. Also when it's slower you have more bass. And I think slower music is more sexy somehow. That's why all the tracks on the album are around 130 bpm maximum. Also it's a tempo that everybody can play whether you're a house DJ or techno DJ. It's easier. That's just one of the reasons it's slowed down. Or maybe it's because I'm getting old. "

Skrufff: How old are you-

The Hacker: "31. "

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