What do you get when you sample all walks of music, combine them all and put it into a song? Well, unless you are C2C, that’s most probably a recipe for major disaster.
Meet the French turntablists that are taking the world by storm with their unique and refreshing approach to making music. Already boasting over ten million views on YouTube (24 million if you combine their two channels) find out what makes this band one of the most exciting things to come out of France this year.
Welcome to London! Is it your first time visiting here?
Not really because, although we are C2C, we come from two different bands. Like 20Syl and Greem have a hip hop band called Hocus Pocus, and they already toured in London. And Pfel and I (Atom) are a DJ duo called Beat Torrent. We made lots of gigs in the UK in the past. And we came for the MC championships in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006.
And you won them all!
(Laughs) yes
So what’s behind the name C2C?
It just comes from, you know the figure on the DJ mixer? There’s a little knob called the crossfader, and to scratch, we just hit the crossfader. In French we say ‘coups deux cross’ and the name came from that. But when we came for the championships in 2003…you know, it’s kind of hard to say ‘coups deux cross’ in English, so we just took the first letter and the number and created C2C.
You’re quite an authentic set of turntablists, and you have been making music for quite a long time. Nowadays, the majority of DJs choose to work digitally, do you find it quite hard to continue to promote turntablism?
We are try to take the best of both worlds, because we’re still using vinyls and turntables, but we also use computers to scratch sound and video. So I guess we take best of both worlds.
With this album, did you find it hard to find time to come together due to C2C being formed from two separate groups?
Yeah, it took a lot of time to come together because we were really busy with our project like, Hocus Pocus, we did three albums, a lot of gigs…big tour, and it was the same for Beat Torrent so yeah that was a good time to come together and do this album, but we had to wait that time.
Who would you inspires you musically?
We all have different influences, but we met through hip hop with turntables, so that’s the main thing. The hip hop from the 90′s in the US… stuff like that. And we have a larger influence aswell from all black music from the 70′s, Latin music, electro, so yeah it’s a cross between all those influences to make our sound happen.
Considering the length of time you have managed to stay relevant in the music industry, how do you think this album will differ from previous projects to keep your sound refreshing and unique like before?
I think our music is fresh, but it’s also timeless so I think we are not trying to make music that corresponds perfectly to the current time but just music we like, so I think this album could have been released like ten years ago, or could be released in ten years! So, it’s not really a time thing.
Out of the whole album, if you could only choose one song, which one would you recommend to the world to listen to?
(laughs) It depends on the day, the time of the day, if it’s sunny or rainy. I think all of the tracks have something special to offer. When you hear the whole album, each track is different so it’s hard to just pick one. I think F.U.Y.A. is maybe the one that has all the ingredients of the album. You have the world side, the electro side, you have the hip hop side, you have everything in this song. It’s really a representative of the whole album.
Now obviously, you are currently number 1 in France. How do you think your album will do over in the UK?
It’s always hard to say. We haven’t done many gigs here and the album isn’t released yet. The UK has always been very specific on music, you know, they don’t listen to much of what’s going on around the other areas from the UK scene and the US scene. But we hope to make something fresh, there’s a lot of French people in London…so maybe that will be a good step for us (laughs).
Will you be returning next year and doing more tours?
We hope so! That’s the goal, start with one gig and seduce the promoters, the crowds, and try to build something up from there.
What is the creative process behind making a C2C track? Would you say over the years you have formed a specific routine to create a piece of work?
It depends, on this one we just made a lot of little tracks first on each separate tag. So everybody can express their own vibes, and then we chose the fifteen tracks we wanted to use, and we just got four of us in the studio where we had a lot of instruments around us, so we just tried to find a new sound that we can match to the original track and make it bigger and better and longer. Then, we scratched everything on the seven side to make something new happen, something more modern on the turntable. So yeah, there were different steps. The turntable is not the first step, we compose music quite traditionally and then we use the turntables to make something a bit more special. And the big thing is to create our own material. Our own samples with our instruments, working with musicians and creating our own music. Not just sampling old records.
Finally, what advice could you give to aspiring DJs of today considering the fact that there are so many? But for those who don’t just make an iTunes playlist, and are truly passionate about the art of it all, what could you advise them?
Today, everybody is a DJ. It depends what kind of DJ you want to be. If you want to just play songs and make people dance then that’s…just it. But if you want to use turntables or your computer as an instrument, it’s different work. You have to work, you have to learn music. You have to practice, so I think it’s two different jobs. We are not defined as DJs, more as turntablists because we don’t mix songs together, we just play live instruments on our turntables so it’s a different kind of job. And it’s not just about spinning records, you know, it’s an interpretation of our music through turntables. But yeah, if you like what you do, do it!
Their debut album will be available for download in the UK early next year.
Interview by Tiffany Calver
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