- A history textbook of genre-defining French house cuts is remastered and reissued with new material.
- It's natural to assume someone like Alan Braxe has seen everything club culture has to offer by now. Electronic music has been shaping the French artist's life for more than three decades, first beckoning him as a dancer to chic clubs and raves on the outskirts of Paris before thrusting him into the roles of influential producer, in-demand remixer and well-travelled DJ. But when I connected with him over Zoom at his home studio in Toulouse, Braxe was still reeling from his experience mixing alongside his cousin and creative partner DJ Falcon at Printworks for Ed Banger Records XX, a celebration of both the beloved label's 20-year anniversary and the larger lineage of French dance music.
"It was amazing—one of the best parties I've been to in my life," he said. When I quipped that he's been to a lot of good ones over the years, Braxe assured me that few have been quite like that—maybe four or five at most. There's a sense of providence to the party's timing: just a few weeks later, Braxe's career-spanning 2005 compilation The Upper Cuts was reissued with new and previously unheard tracks.
The release is the latest instalment in an ongoing reappraisal of the seasoned producer's discography. Last year he and Falcon shared their first joint record, the Step By Step EP, which featured Panda Bear and came out via Domino's new, dance-centric imprint Smugglers Way. Beyond serving as the inaugural release on Smugglers Way, Step By Step spurred Braxe and Falcon to hit the DJ circuit harder than they have in some time, playing out many of the tracks collected on The Upper Cuts—including the seductive funk of "Intro" and the overpowering, piano-propelled emotion of "In Love With You"—reminding audiences of just how potent the French touch remains.
Even if you're not familiar with Braxe by name, it's basically impossible to navigate contemporary dance music without brushing against his work and influence. As one-third of Stardust alongside Thomas Bangalter (of Daft Punk) and singer Benjamin Diamond, he has a serious claim to being responsible for one of the most ubiquitous and universally loved house songs of all time with "Music Sounds Better With You." Later, the sound he disseminated as a producer and prolific remixer proved pivotal in paving the path from the initial wave of French touch artists like Cassius and Étienne de Crécy to the harder, more electro-tinged thrills served up by Justice, SebastiAn and numerous acts from the Ed Banger Records roster.
In addition to providing connective tissue between distinct eras of house music in his home country, Braxe's early '00s output helped shape the musical sensibilities of the rest of the decade and beyond, influencing bloghouse, nu-disco and dance-friendly indie pop, as well as genres popularised over the internet like synthwave and future funk. Much of this music was made in collaboration with fellow French producer and funk fiend Fred Falke, with nine of the 17 songs on the new edition of The Upper Cuts stemming from their partnership.
According to Braxe, the reissue was instigated by conversations with Smugglers Way label manager Peter Berard, who brought attention to the absence of The Upper Cuts from streaming platforms and the difficulty of procuring physical copies out in the wild. "The Upper Cuts was the starting point of the discussion with Smugglers Way—Peter told me that the vinyl version was almost impossible to get anywhere and that it would be a good idea to repress it," Braxe said. Besides the re-release of the compilation in question, these talks also resulted in the music on Step By Step finally seeing the light of day.
"I started making music with Falcon around seven years ago—at that time we made quite a lot of demos," Braxe said. "During the discussion about The Upper Cuts, Falcon and I played the demo of 'Step By Step' to Peter. He said, 'This is good stuff—you should release an EP on Smugglers Way.'"
Decades before there were any demos gathering dust or out-of-print records to be uploaded to streaming services, Braxe was a young man enthralled by alien synthesised sounds transmitting out of Detroit. Still known then by his birth name Alain Quême, it was around 1991 when he discovered the joy and communal transcendence of raving for himself. Raised on a healthy musical diet of disco, punk, new wave and R&B—including artists like Chic, Prince, Heaven 17 and Wire—and having spent ten years playing the cello with forays into the bass and clarinet, Braxe had a sharply tuned ear for these new electronic tones and an insatiable desire to hear more.
"I was totally invested—this music, techno and house, it grabbed me when I was 20 years old," he said. "It totally grabbed me, to a point where I failed at university because I was going out too much at night. It was a bit problematic. I had no job prospects at all."
Facing financial ruin, Braxe doubled down on what he knew best: music. Self-imposing a time limit of one year to make it as a musician, he bought samplers with whatever money he could scrounge up and turned to his connections in the French house scene to explore what was possible. Early forays into production included demos with Ali and Farid Allalou, a pair of brothers Braxe used to DJ with on a small Toulouse radio station, and who eventually released music as The Eternals on Crydamoure (the label run by Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo).
The other half of the soon-to-be robots, Bangalter, helped facilitate Braxe's breakthrough by way of his own record label. "Vertigo" was released on Roulé in late 1997, and in keeping with its dizzying title and punchy drum loops, the track quickly generated momentum for the ascendant artist. Within a few months, he was invited to perform live at the seminal Rex Club in Paris. Braxe recruited Bangalter and his friend Diamond to join him for the gig, with the former on synths and the latter on singing duties. As they rehearsed new music ahead of the show, alternately jamming and excavating records for worthwhile sample material, Diamond pulled up "Fate" by Chaka Khan. Captivated by an arresting guitar lick within the song's opening seconds, the trio knew they'd stumbled onto something special. Following the performance and a week of further refinement in Bangalter's home studio, Stardust and "Music Sounds Better With You" were born.
The key elements that made "Music Sounds Better With You" an enduring classic—namely the simplicity, to say nothing of its raw, unapologetic sentimentality—have remained hallmarks of Braxe's work. Several of his collaborations with Falke are exercises in distilling moods down to their most essential qualities, whether it's the euphoria induced by the irresistible bassline and ethereal vocals of "Intro," the melancholy of "Love Lost," or the blinding electro-meets-synth-rock sheen of "Rubicon," a modern take on an old template that'd be expanded on through later records like Metronomy's Nights Out, Todd Terje's "Delorean Dynamite" and, arguably, the whole of synthwave as a genre.
Braxe's gift for evoking maximal emotions through minimal means is the throughline of The Upper Cuts, present in both the sweeping epics—see the pleading, heartache and longing conveyed through the title refrain of "In Love With You"—and the compilation's more understated songs. The remix of Britney Spears' "Anticipating" strips down the strings and funk-tinged guitar of the original to little more than undulating synths, claps and a vocoded take on the pop star's vocals across a two-minute span that leaves you wanting more. Braxe is particularly proud of "True Love," a new track included on the compilation, for its directness.
"Simplicity is something I'm thinking of constantly—sometimes I get nostalgic for the early days where I was not trying to do simple things, I just had simple equipment," he said. "I put 'True Love' on the compilation because I did it in about 40 minutes. It was important for me to do something like that, almost like releasing a demo. Instead of working and reworking [the song] trying to make it sound better—which is sometimes pointless—let's just release it. The intention and the sincerity are there, and that's the main point."
This sincerity is the whole reason for the excitement surrounding the newfound availability of The Upper Cuts almost two decades onward from its original release. It's emotive music that cuts deep, sounds best shared with others and speaks to something fundamental. Simple, even.
Tracklist01. Alan Braxe / Fred Falke - Most Wanted (Remastered 2023)
02. The Paradise / Romuald / Alan Braxe - In Love With You (Remastered 2023)
03. Stardust - Music Sounds Better With You (Radio Edit)
04. Alan Braxe / Fred Falke - Intro (Remastered 2023)
05. Shakedown - At Night (Alan Braxe Remix) (Remastered 2023)
06. Alan Braxe / Fred Falke -“Love Lost (Remastered 2023)
07. Alan Braxe / Fred Falke - Palladium (Remastered 2023)
08. Alan Braxe / Fred Falke - Arena (Remastered 2023)
09. Alan Braxe / Fred Falke - Rubicon (Remastered 2023)
10. Alan Braxe / Fred Falke - Penthouse Serenade (Remastered 2023)
11. Alan Braxe / Fred Falke - Chrystal City (Remastered 2023)
12. Alan Braxe - Voices (Remastered 2023)
13. Britney Spears - Anticipating (Alan Braxe Remix) (Remastered 2023)
14. Alan Braxe - One More Chance (Redux) feat. The Spimes9 (Remastered 2023)
15. Alan Braxe - True Love (Remastered 2023)
6.Alan Braxe / Annie - Never Coming Back
17. Alan Braxe / Fred Falke - You'll Stay in My Heart (Instrumental) (Remastered 2023)
Photo 1: Seb Janiak
Photo 2: Laura Favali
Braxe's gift for evoking maximal emotions through minimal means is the throughline of The Upper Cuts, present in both the sweeping epics—see the pleading, heartache and longing conveyed through the title refrain of "In Love With You"—and the compilation's more understated songs. The remix of Britney Spears' "Anticipating" strips down the strings and funk-tinged guitar of the original to little more than undulating synths, claps and a vocoded take on the pop star's vocals across a two-minute span that leaves you wanting more. Braxe is particularly proud of "True Love," a new track included on the compilation, for its directness. "Simplicity is something I'm thinking of constantly—sometimes I get nostalgic for the early days where I was not trying to do simple things, I just had simple equipment," he said. "I put 'True Love' on the compilation because I did it in about 40 minutes. It was important for me to do something like that, almost like releasing a demo. Instead of working and reworking [the song] trying to make it sound better—which is sometimes pointless—let's just release it. The intention and the sincerity are there, and that's the main point." This sincerity is the whole reason for the excitement surrounding the newfound availability of The Upper Cuts almost two decades onward from its original release. It's emotive music that cuts deep, sounds best shared with others and speaks to something fundamental. Simple, even.