Chez Damier Interview

1.
From 1997 till 2004 you kept off the radar in terms of production and DJing, as your personal affairs had taken first priority. How did you keep yourself busy? Were you still actively tracking the industry’s trends?

First of all I have always had a corporate background so my life has always been split between what I called the real word and the artistic world, one having rules already in place and the other you get to make rules. Once I am into one or the other world then that is the only world that exist for me, so to answer if I kept my eye on the dance industry and trends doing this time the answer is no.

2. You’re responsible for some of the most classiest and sensual house music. The body of your work is an amalgamation of influences coming out from Detroit, New York and Chicago, yet you stay true to your own sound. Who were your mentors when you first got started? Did you start DJing before producing?

I humbly thank you for them powerful words, concerning which preceded the other I guess the both really started at the same time after growing up in Chicago apart from the House Most of my inspiration to play and music came from Frankie Knuckles, and the inspiration to pursue it came from Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick may, and the motivation to give it my all came from, Dave Morales, Timmy Registford, Tony Humphries, Paul Simpson and Boyd Jarvis

3. IIt was easy to assume that you ran the Chez Music imprint, a common misconception perhaps? But after working on KMS with Kevin Saunderson, and Prescription with Ron Trent, you do in fact run Balance Alliance. Can you tell us a bit about your upcoming Chez Damier projects?

There are so many projects to hope for, completing a album, doing Live shows, and helping to develop new talent, these are on my desk at the moment, but with Chez things changes quite a bit, so who really knows until it happens.

4. You, Chris Carrier and Jeff K collaborated on a project called The Gathering and wound up with a little gem entitled, “In My System”. This was probably one of the biggest records to be released in 2010. How did this collective come about? Did you anticipate this record to be as widely received as it did?

I was spending a a month in Paris and Jef a longtime friend wanted to do a project and so he introduced me to Chris and we all agreed on doing this project, I stared the track , just tracks at the time and left it with Jef and Chris to work on when it was time for all of us to do the session we wanted to write a hook to it and that was it. I have been producing music for 22 years so you never anticipate what a record will do, so this was just a collected project that we were doing, I am always happy when the world agree with something I have done or been a part of, so to really be honest I do what I do, feel what I feel and if people like it, then it’s a good reward in the end, but this is and have never been why I do music. Chris and I have stared on the follow up , we are expecting nothing.