Locating Point G

Flash back to 1996 and you’d probably find Gregory Darsa foraging for disco at local record store Bastille Paris Musique. His initial work as Cheesy D was snapped up by BPM’s in-house imprint Basenotic and pushed out alongside Motorbass, Pieces of Mind, Ark and Bradock. The world would soon point to these early EPs as the beginning of a new era for European dance music – the French Touch.

At its core was the revival of 70s and 80s boogie, looped, filtered, phased and set to a bumping 4/4 backbone. However, while Daft Punk and Bob Sinclar took the torch and ran all the way to super-stardom with it, Darsa veered off down a slightly different path. Less than a year after the Basenotic EPs, Cheesy D morphed into Point G – a tougher-sounding project focusing on weighty percussive programming akin to Kenny Dope and Mood II Swing. Three releases followed under the .G alias before Darsa moved to New York to source West Indian grooves as DJ Gregory for the freshly hatched Africanism project. Opportunity cost, as they say, and that ultimately meant Point G would have to take a backseat for the next 12 years.

Fast forward to 2012. The heavy side of minimalism is going through its renaissance and the name Point G is whispered through the grapevine once more. A flurry of reissues and self-released 12-inches follow, encouraging Darsa to resurrect Point G as a formidable live beast. New record Live Season 1 contains eight new tracks while promising no pretensions of being a cohesive LP; this is a curation of rough analogue drafts based on a rock-solid foundation and built upon with all the hypnotic intent of a swinging pendulum… and it goes hard.

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“Sometimes it takes twenty minutes to find the sound; other times there’s no way to get what you’re looking for” – Gregory Darsa

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The Skinny: What is the main challenge of producing under Point G?
Gregory Darsa: The challenge is keeping it stripped back and sounding raw. I always start with the drums and build from there. Always. Everybody tells me don’t go too musical, don’t add too much, which is a temptation that can be difficult to resist.

How does that temptation come into play on the new record?
The track Surdo is a good example. It’s based on the sound of a Brazilian drum with a whole lot of sub, which is why it works 100% when played in the club – I don’t press anything on vinyl without having tested it on a dancefloor. That track always gets a strong reaction and yet it only took me half an hour to produce. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes to find the sound; other times there’s no way to get what you’re looking for.

By that logic it can’t have taken you too long to put the new record together...
I made these eight tracks between mid-July and the end of August last year, but there are certain elements that come from sessions over ten years ago. It really didn’t take too long to put together but that’s because of the very nature of the music itself. Mixing down is also a lot easier these days, especially compared to the DJ Gregory stuff, because I have the control to do most of the mixing down on my own computer.

You did all the artwork too, right?
Yeah, the artwork was/is mine. The album cover is actually a self-portrait I did in ’91, there’s a few distinctive features that really stand out – almost like a caricature style. I wanted to be a painter and I studied for five years before realising that I didn’t have the balls to go for it.

Which track are you most pleased with?
I really like Kond. It’s got a nice reverse pad which I really can’t work out how I achieved, and probably never will.

Going back a few years, were you surprised when you were approached to reissue some of the early Point G EPs?
When the guys from Real Tone and Apollonia got in touch I was seriously like, “What the fuck?” I get that the minimal side of things was coming back at the time but those tracks I made when I didn’t even know what I was doing! My idols at the time were people like Ludovic Navarre, Masters at Work, but I was nowhere near their level. I actually learned so much in the 00s doing the Africanism series that I didn’t really look back on the early EPs with pride. It was beginner’s luck on an SP-1200, plain and simple.

Going back even further, when did you first meet up with the Yellow guys?
Alain (DJ Yellow) and Chris (Bob Sinclar) would hang around BPM and we all gradually realised at the same time that house was the way forward. Up until that point trip-hop was the done thing but it attracted a much smaller audience… unless you’re James Lavelle. Even Chris had his Mighty Bop project back then.

Chris was also involved in the early days of the Africanism series…

Yeah, Chris was actually working with me from the very start when we first conceived Africanism but eventually had to devote more time to Yellow Productions and his Bob Sinclar alias. Really, the concept began when I was in New York from 1998 to 2000. I was there to search for Caribbean sounds, African sounds and that kind of thing. For me, I loved the groove of that style of music but I wanted to create something distinctively French… a kind of cinematic lens. It was important for me to get that French vibe across, and I think that shows on the release with Tourment D'Amour on the A-side. There’s a very French West Indies feel to it because I’d buy this type of thing on purpose. I knew the effect I wanted to create.

Compared to the camaraderie of the French Touch, do you think that sense of collaboration and support has been lost in the current state of music?
You have to remember the French Touch was a wave, it was something new. You had guys like Gilb’R, Funk Mob, Bangalter, Zdar all hanging around the booth at the Respect parties, each bringing a cassette with a track they had been working on that month. Back then, it wasn’t trendy until Daft Punk really took off and that’s when it became a storm. Despite the success they were still incredibly supportive of everybody around them. These days, the essence is all over the place and the way people communicate has changed forever. I have a feeling people get very bored very quickly now, whereas back then you could first hear a track in the club and it wouldn’t get released until a year and a half later. I don’t think the sense is lost but it’s in a very different form.