IT TAKES TWO...
Words: JOE ROBERTS Pics: BETH CROCKATT I 032
t doesn’t take long with Bromance, the DJ pairing and label run by new school French techno upstarts Brodinski and Gesaffelstein, to think of the adage ‘opposites attract’. Arriving at their hotel just a few hours after they’ve finished playing the second leg of Hard Miami at WMC 2012, we’re wandering around in the brilliant mid-day Miami sunshine as Edouard
their manager tries to rouse the understandably tired pair, familiar faces such as Diplo basking on the decking of the spa hotel which backs onto clear blue waters.
First to emerge is Brodinski, aka 24-year-old Louis Rogé. Dressed in skinny black jeans, a black DJ Mehdi t-shirt — to mark the invite-only party happening here later in memory of the Parisian star who died last year — and sunglasses, black hair slicked back, he’s a flurry of apologetic smiles and handshakes, effusive charm evaporating any clouds of fatigue. Behind him comes Gesaffelstein, the older by two years (though younger looking) Mike Levy, a brooding presence from the off in formal shirt and jacket, the few words he utters after saying hello to ask for coffee and cigarettes in French. To quote Mike’s own observation later in our interview, on their first face-to-face meeting two years ago: “I didn’t imagine he’d be my friend. We are really different.”
VIVE LA DIFFERENCE It’s difference, though, that Bromance thrives on. Launched late last year, each label release concentrates on individual tracks from artists, rather than multi-track EPs, offering DJs and dancers a contrasting choice. “I’d hate to be a 16-year-old kid because you have so much choice right now,” observes Brodinski, himself a self-declared music addict who came of age in the blog-house era and still scours hundreds of sites
each week for new tracks. Bromance’s first release was split between its founders, Gesaffelstein’s ‘Control Movement’ wearing Mike’s love of EBM and the industrial darkness of Front 242, Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb from his Lyon teenage years on its tailored sleeve. Likewise, Brodinski’s ‘Let The Beat Control Your Body’, featuring Louisahhh, fitted into his own oeuvre of bass and electro-infused techno, highlighted on DJ mixes such as his recent ‘FabricLive 60’ for the iconic London club, which moved with ease from the deep floating pads of Bicep to the panel-beating techno of Objekt, or 2009’s ‘Suck My Deck’ compilation for Bugged Out!, which took in the maximalist German techno of Format B alongside the UK bass of DJ Zinc. Since then, they’ve released a split-sided release with Pipes, an LA-based collective from the city Louis moved to in January — “you miss me!” jokes the now Paris-based Mike at this, just one interaction that illustrates the infectious bonhomie that now exists between them — and
G.Vump’s falsetto-fuelled ‘Feeling’, from Louis’ collaborative project with Giom from The Shoes, an act that began around the same time as Brodinski’s DJ career in their hometown of Reims. This was followed by a remix EP of Lana Del Rey on which Gesaffelstein heaped dark melancholy over ‘Blue Jeans’ and
G.Vump (originally Gucci Vump until the clothing label intervened) gave ‘Born To Die’ a moombahton swagger. Most recent is a new Brodinski/Louisahhh collaboration ‘Nobody Rules The Streets’, a siren-filled cut of musique-noir which switches into a paranoid, detuned half-step break, backed by young Parisian collective Club Cheval.
MENTORS In the light of the afternoon’s celebration of DJ Mehdi, someone who Brodinski was particularly close to, the Bromance moniker, for all the macho American connotations it might conjure up amongst the pumped up bros of WMC, also speaks of the
www.djmag.com
Separately Brodinski and Gesaffelstein are France’s techno young guns, tearing up discos with their dark future funk. Now united, their Bromance project pools these resources, unleashing music from the grittiest underground acts to Lana Del Rey, paving the way for success of Ed Banger proportions. We linked up with the French new wave to find out what’s next…
camaraderie and friendship that exists on the road for artists away from the stability of their home lives for weeks on end. And with everyone from Miss Kitten to Santigold wandering around the hotel grounds, the size of the hole left by the Ed Banger star’s sad death is apparent. “When I started to listen to electronic music it was really random,” says Brodinski on Mehdi’s own inspiration to him growing up, his fluent English making him the most talkative of the pair, Mike chipping in with wry, deadpan asides, like the classic good cop/bad cop shtick. “I listened to Amon Tobin and Michael Mayer at the same time. Then Ed Banger came along and it was a really big influence on me, playing every kind of music from ‘Windowlicker’ by Aphex Twin to the new Justice track, and some techno. Everything. It influenced me a lot to see them and now they are friends. “I actually invited them to the Electricity Festival we have in Reims, which is 10 this October. We invited Feadz, Uffie, Mehdi, Pedro as Busy P, Justice, and Erol Alkan, who is a friend of theirs and came to party with them. It was amazing. At 10pm, people were getting super-crazy. It was super young people, so it was really surprising. But it was such an honour for me. I remember having my demo CD and giving it to them. They were super-nice. They were like, ‘let’s talk about music, about stuff’. It still means a lot to me.”
This sense of belonging, and of the party onstage looking even more fun than the party on the dancefloor, is a significant strand in Bromance’s DNA, Louis recalling a contemporaneous appearance by Super Discount — Alex Gopher, Etienne De Crécy and the lesser-known Julien Delfaud — rolling into town for the release of ‘Super Discount 2’ to amaze him with a stage full of hardware.
Mike grew up in Lyon, France’s second largest city, but it was nearby Grenoble that provided his own graduation to modern dance music via another group of French artists, who in their prime possessed
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