Dirty Sound System have forged a reputation around the globe as music selectors extraordinaire, but have nonetheless remained under the radar in Australia. Guillaume Sorge is a man who cannot rest: as we exchange extended emails in a sporadic fashion while he is undertaking another new project in his home country France, it becomes obvious.
It’s apparent from the start that Guillaume Sorge much prefers being involved in music rather than talking about it. He responds to numerous emails with succinct replies, no useless banter and straight to the point. Days went by without a reply, sometimes a week or more. The picture slowly builds of how busy the one half of Dirty Sound System is: torn between gigs, party promotion, compilation projects and work as a sound designer.
Guillaume, with Clovis Goux, started the Dirty Sound System prior to 2001. “We were working together as music journalists, writing for several music magazines in France. We were also curating a website, with a lot of interviews and music mixes.” They started to play DJ gigs around their home country in 2001 as music selectors rather than DJs, bringing an eclectic approach with the music they played. The pair adopted the name Dirty Sound System, with the “dirty” derived from a Georges Bataille book called Le Bleu Du Ciel, and not any other connotation you may have imagined, even as you are changing your internet security settings on your computer to view their website (www.d-i-r-t-y.com).
They can never be pinned down to one style, spinning everything from house, electro, and free jazz to spacey disco, acid house, krautrock, sunshine pop, folk, rhythm ‘n’ blues, and music soundtracks. They perform at numerous venues, clubs, private parties, festivals and after shows from Miami to Copenhagen, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, Germany and even deep in the French countryside. “We basically try to mix instantly danceable music and more obscure stuff, we also try to avoid “big bangers”, but there’s no rules, DJ mixing is really about living the moment.” Guillaume adds they’ve played at Club Transmediale in Berlin, Basel Miami, Sonar Festival in Barcelona, Blogger’s Delight in London, Club2Club in Torino, Edgar in Istanbul, the Astropolis Festival in France, and their bi-monthly residency at Social Club in Paris, earning much respect for their DJ sets, making them an in demand DJ crew around the world. It’s this eclecticism that has filtered through as a common thread in everything they do, and has led them to expand their ideas more as musicologists and music historians.
This led to their first compilation release in 2003, Dirty Diamonds, followed by a further volume on Diamondtraxx/Discograph, showcasing a mix of old music, obscure dancefloor tracks and rare pop un-classics with no style, genre, or era distinction. “Releasing a compilation was just a way to do what we’ve done for years in a proper way, it was also a way to start getting involved in the music business with a will for creating a music label later,” Guillaume explains. “We have no particular philosophy, we just listen to music everyday from various sources, and when we feel we have something new or different to contribute to the music community, we release a compilation. The first Dirty Diamonds series was more an eclectic and post modernist statement, and the new ones are more focused on particular themes.”
There is no room for elitism though, as most of the tracks selected for the compilations are still widely available. They do try to shine their spotlight on underrated and forgotten tracks though. Using music that is still available on other releases does produce an inherent problem: licensing. Guillaume explains there will always be issues with the licensing of some songs. “It’s always a struggle to clear the tracks we want to tracklist on our compilations,” He admits. “We start with around 35 tracks and end up with less than 20. Making a coherent tracklist can become a real nightmare as we pay a lot of attention to the order of the tracks and the space between them.” This hasn’t gone unnoticed, as the artists contained on the compilations seem to like what they do. “We have received some great feedback from the involved artists so far, and the new compilation has been easier to assemble, as people in France tend to know more about the way we work now.”
This leads us to the recently released fourth compilation for Dirty Sound System, hot on the heels of Dirty Space Disco, released on Tigersushi. Dirty French Psychedelics is released on their own label Dirty in conjunction with Discograph, and on first viewing the cover artwork it’s obvious a lot more love went into this release. It just looks right, part classic 70’s psychedelic art, part Salvador Dali. It’s obvious Clovis and Guillaume think about the presentation of their compilations excessively, from the luscious artwork, the common musical thread weaving through the compilation, to the sequencing; everything has to flow, everything has to be just right. They have killed the misnomer that the French have never released innovative, original music, and with this compilation they have shared a collection of songs that have a rich musical tapestry, that sets a mood, not necessarily genre specific psychedelia.
As Guillaume explains, it’s more about a feeling the music evokes, not a set sound standard. Some people may not believe Brigitte Fontaine to be psychedelic, but listen more closely to ‘Il Pleut’, and you might agree. This is the effect the duo is trying to achieve. Their compilations are a jumping-off point to a whole new world of musical experiences for the listener, introducing artists such as Dashiell Hedayat, Nino Ferrer, Jeanne-Marie Sens, Alain Kane, Francois de Roubaix, Jean Jacques Dexter, Bernard Lavilliers, Cheval Fou, Ilous Et Decuyper and Karl Heinz Schaefer.
With all of this musical archeology, it seemed to be a natural transition to the series of Dirty Edits, their very limited 12″ vinyl releases featuring some of their favourite tracks re-edited for the dancefloor and snapped up around the globe by discerning DJs and music fans. Such was the demand, that you blink and they’re sold out. Being a totally underground project, only small numbers were pressed up – usually 1000 copies – with only a couple of the series having an additional 500 repressed.
The project managed to stay under the radar of most music press, as Guillaume explains. “The edits series was more an undercover thing.” While recently searching for Volume 5 of the series – containing the best re-edit of the series in my opinion, ‘Kismet’s by Amon Duul II – it turned up for around $80, and that was before postage! It won’t last long either, even at that price. That is the level of demand for these rather special records. Luckily for the music consumer, they have kindly released two compilations of the best tracks from the twelve volumes pressed to vinyl, but even the CD compilations have become sought after as only limited numbers were ever released.
A friend of Dirty Sound System, Pilooski, was asked to produce the re-edits. “He’s a friend and a talented producer close to us,” Jorge explains, “When we decided to re-release some tracks on vinyl, we asked for his support, and asked him to edit them, as we’re not producers. We chose the tracks and validated them before he did the edit work.” Pilooski has been involved in the project ever since, and Guillaume adds, “Pilooski is also a member of the duo Discodeine, who are on our label (www.myspace.com/discodeine), they fit nicely into the Dirty Sound System family.”
The re-edits haven’ totally gone unnoticed by the mainstream though; Adidas contacted them with enquiries on the re-edit of a particular song. I asked Guillaume how this unlikely event came about. “We released this edit of ‘Beggin’ by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, Warner have the rights on it, they [Adidas] loved it, so we decided to release on a larger scale. When Adidas decided to use it for their advertisement they didn’t have the separate parts of the edit, so they called Pilooski to rework it for their video.” Subsequently the single gained a much wider release, through the notoriety of being affiliated with a large name such as Adidas.
Guillaume and an ever expanding crew of co-workers, collaborators and friends now contribute to their blog, Alain Finkielkrautrock, offering its readers a cultural snapshot of the contributor’s interests and passions, covering topics from a broad range of subjects and influences. The common thread of musicologist/historian/culture vulture returns, emanating through everything they do. It seems so effortless and natural, almost like a kind of blueprint they have consciously developed, but I wondered if this was the case, or something that has naturally developed over time. “It’s totally unconscious, it’s just the way we approach things that interests us. Music, cinema, cooking, art… we are not specialists, we’re just enthusiasts, and we get excited when we discover something new. The blog is a way for us to share with the world.”
Share they do, and since the end of 2006 when the blog was first established, they have happily shared their mad love for b movies (or as Guillaume adds “z movies”) and obscure music, with the assistance of close friends Cosmo Vitelli, Charles Hagelsteen, Pilooski, Emmanuel Plane, Laurent Fetis, Midnight Mike, Marco Dos Santos, Krikor, Eva Revox, Elisabeth Arkhipoff, Gwen Jamois and the Divine Carole. The blog has also become the natural home for the Dirty Sound System archives, containing previous interviews and mixes and a wealth of other information.
As we draw to the end of our email exchanges, it all becomes blindingly obvious when at the 11th hour, Guillaume fires off the final email simply saying “I have a new project: www.12mail.fr”, and that’s it, that’s all I’m left with. Some research later shows that it is indeed a new project, and one that has obviously been consuming much of his time. A gallery space, 12mail is situated in Rue Du Mail, Paris. Curated by Guillaume, he has been busy making waves on the streets of the city showcasing the astounding work of past editions of Sang Bleu magazine, beautiful photography, mesmerising tattoos, and art worth seeing hung on a wall.
As usual though, Guillaume doesn’t seem to be content with just that – there’s the after party he has arranged for the launch, and an exclusive CD for the guests. Guillaume makes an event out of everything he’s involved with, and this is what makes it special: from the compilations, the reissued gems of forgotten music history, through to the art and use of DJ culture to cement everything as an event worth attending. So much thought and passion is injected into all these things, and we should all sit up and take notice.
Dirty Sound System’ Dirty French Psychedelics is available now on Dirty, or on vinyl from Born Bad Records.
