During these last 8 years, Technasia has extended his activities to artist and label management, conducting artist performance bookings and executive music production (through his own structure Sino/Technorient Music) for artists such as Joris Voorn, Renato Cohen, Steve Rachmad, and more recently Dosem. Charles just finished the latest Technasia album 'Central' which came out in May 2010.
Hey Charles, hope you are well... how's it going? Where are you at the moment?
I'm very good thank you. Just extremely busy in Paris at the moment, working the promotion campaign of my forthcoming album "Central". Lots of interviews everyday, loads of podcasts to record and of course the tour dates every week ends. I've also just finished a remix on Spectral Sound to be out before summer.
What have you been upto over the past 5 years? Your new album 'Central' is due out on 31st of May...why such a long break since your last album?
I think it's important to leave some time between two albums. They are the angular stone of an artist career and this is what artists will be remembered for in 20-30 years from now. It's not just a normal single release. These 4-5 years between each of these projects are very important, because they give me time to make my composing skills evolve. They allow me to offer something better and different to the listener in every new project.
I also think most artists release way too much music today anyway. It's the triumph of form over the content. Many artists dumps loads of music every month not by passion for it, but just because they're scared the public won't notice them anymore or forget them if they don't. It's really pointless I think. I've always been in electronic music to make a lifetime career. I have all my time and i take all the time to work properly on my projects.
What has your inspiration been for this album?
It's pretty diverse really. The actual production of the album took about a year. There are clearly two distinctive moments when working on an album project. There's first the experimenting phase, the moment where you look for ideas, and start to design sketches of how the album will sound like, and what will be in it.
Then there is the second phase which is very technical, arranging, mixing and mastering the tracks. I like to work on both phases a lot, but I also work with a professional sound engineer in Paris to finalize the tracks. The first phase is indeed the most crucial. This is the moment when you need to look deep inside your oneself and take it all out. I like when music is harsh, I like when music is melodic and deep, when it's funky, when it's raw or sophisticated.
I wanted this album to contain it all, like a colour palette from which the listener can make his own drawing. If I would mention albums that inspired me in the process of making "Central", I would say Carl Craig's "More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art", Bauhaus' "The Sky's Gone Out" or the Legendary Pink Dots' "The Crushed Velvet Apocalypse". It's not necessarily always easy music, but they are all albums designed as a whole, rock solid, where each track is a brick that makes the whole house.
The tracklisting becomes a sonic voyage and not just a collection of singles. The listening experience is one of the most important thing in an album project I think, even more than having one or two hit singles in it. The melodic aspect of "Central" is just one thing, it's got many other facets, especially the club and energetic feel of it. But what I like the most in it is probably the flow of the album, the way each track melts into the other.
Is there anyone you draw inspiration from in the non electronic music world? Guitarists, vocalists, visual artists etc?
Yes, indeed! There's a whole life outside of electronic music. I actually listen a lot of to Jazz, like Jacques Schwarz-Bart for example and 70's Funk/Soul. I love the 70's albums of Stevie Wonder a lot. I always liked Gothic Rock a lot, in the likes of Bauhaus, Joy Division, Sisters Of Mercy and so on. I'm also a lot into 80's experimental music and New-Wave, stuff like Coil, Legendary Pink Dots, Einstuerzende Neubauten… Visually, Vaughan Oliver inspired me a lot since his early works in 23 Envelope and 4AD.
Who were your earlier influences? What or who made you decide that you wanted a career in music?
That would be my father. He was a music lover, a complete eclectic listener, from classical music to 80's rap, funk, soul, jazz, electronica and so on. He's the one who gave me the passion for music. As a kid, I had the chance to be surrounded by quality music all the time because of my father's gigantic vinyls collection. That really put me on the right trail of doing a career in music. At the age of 10, I started taking piano lessons and got my first synth when I was 12. That's the momentwhen I made my first melodies and recorded my first tracks. I had to wait until 1996, when I met my former partner Amil, to become a professional musician and start releasing my music to the public.
The new album is extremely diverse; the tracks seems a world away from 'Acid Storm', 'Evergreen' and 'Force' from all those years ago and it shows a natural progression of your musical style. Do you ever feel pressured to follow 'trends' in order to sell more records? i.e. minimal, electro etc.No I don't feel any pressure at all. Actually I never really cared or followed trends and I'm not gonna start today. Trends all come and go, and these days it's rather soon than later. It brings quick money to the one that follows it but it never lasts long. I actually quite dislike all those artists switching sound every two years or so just to be sure they are doing the music style the most popular of the moment. It's quite ridiculous and very opportunist.
We are doing a music which has always been based on the passion of it, the passion of doing it and living it, and I really do not adhere to these recent style of DJs who care just about being fashionable and in the spotlight, whatever the costs. Artists don't really need to sell their music principles for a few thousands dollars, or at least they should be honest about it and don't pretend they actually dig what they are doing. I understand not everybody as the talent to develop an original sound that please the public, but the speed at which new trends come and go these days is just crazy.
People should understand that trends are just invented for labels and management companies to sell you their new shit over and over again. This takes us all go away from the actual quality of the music production. Artists could just do the sound they believe during many years, and be quite successful at it. I'm the living proof of it.
Where do you want to go from here? Do you think you will be making music as a career for the rest of your working life or are there any other avenues you want to explore?
I will work in music all my life, that's a certainty for me. I've been in it professionally for 15 years, develop unique skills at making it and performing it, experience in producing mine and other's and running record labels and management agencies. Why would I suddenly change and restart from zero? Do doctors become butcher when they reach 40?
I've been building little by little a community around me, with the people working for my labels and my agency, and the DJ/producers I have collaborated with, produced and helped settling their careers throughout the years. It's been a long and hectic work, and I have no will to change it all, at the moment when I collect all the fruits from it. Music has always been a decision of a career for me. I actually studied cinema at university because I originally wanted to become a movie sound editor.
The great thing about our electronic music world is that we have all been able to share an amazing experience with the whole planet for these last 25 years, without having the downside of the pop-rock and hip-hop star systems. It's really the best of both world and I'll work my ass off all my life to be constantly part of it.
You worked as a duo alongside Amil Khan up until 2008 but I understand he left to concentrate on family life. How does your approach to producing differ now you are on your own as opposed to working alongside someone else?
I was always been the one the most involved in the Technasia music production. Amil was more the label manager and the projects leader when we were still working together. So in terms of music production working process, it's still quite the same for me. The main difference is that today I have to make choices about everything I do on my own, whereas I used to decide everything with Amil 
before. It's a bigger responsibility and more stressful as well, but I guess I'll overcome the problem sooner or later. It anyway gives me a lot more freedom to do the things the way I want to. I don't need to find compromises anymore.
You have held residencies at some of the world’s most high profile clubs such as Womb in Tokyo, Fuse in Brussels and Rex Club in Paris. Do you have a favourite country/city/venue? You have toured a lot over the years, can you tell us some techno gossip from your travels?!
Favourite country? Yes many! That's the great thing about electronic music, it can be amazing absolutely everywhere! Of course there are certain countries which have a more regular and prolific scene, such as Japan, Brazil or Spain. I really dig Nitsa in Barcelona for instance. I've been running a DJ residency there for nearly 10 years and it's been amazing every single time. Monegros in Spain is also an amazing festival.
As for techno gossips, well I could tell you that not all festival are good… There was one 30 or 40 kilometers away from Paris where the promoters were so fucked up on drugs that they all passed out and the festival was running on his own. When i finished my set, there were nobody to drive me back. So i had to go on the road with my record cases and hitchhike…The guy that actually drove me back was a fan so I gave him a few vinyls to thank him hahaha
Your record label - Sino seems to be booming at the moment, with a colaboration between yourself and new artist Bension, is there anyone else on your label you think we should look out for?
Yes, Dosem! He's an amazing young artist from Girona, close to Barcelona. I believe he will become a very successful artist in the future. It's very hard for me to be turned on by music today, but the first time I had the chance to hear Dosem's live performance, I was just blown away. He has this unique way of combining emotions and energy in his music, but in a very efficient manner. We have become very good friends in the last two years, and we started to work on different projects together, including the "Sino Live! Technasia & Dosem" performance, which is a kind of combination of our both live performances. 2011 will also see Dosem's first album release on Sino, and I'm really looking forward to it. He has so much to express in so many different ways.
Do you think it is still possible for a producer to survive as just a producer in this digital downloads, pirating and sharing, digital age?
No it isn't, and that's really a shame. there's a big difference between today and the ten years ago's industry. At the time, many artists could just make a proper living out of releasing music. they didn't need to perform to earn money. They could vie from their art. Today it's just basically impossible. But who's to blame really? I don't personally think it's the public and piracy, but it's more about where the whole electronic music industry took this whole thing to.
Why are so many producers lack so much of originality and copy one each others all the time? Why don't they even bother learningDJing skills and use computer and auto-beatmatch softwares instead to do everything for them? Why everybody sees in Beatport some sort of savior of the whole scene, whereas sales on that particular shop are drastically low for 90% of the artists and they want to focus more on commercial music anyway? Why do everybody believe that you can learn how to be a producer in a month by getting some cracked plugins and this lame piece of software called Ableton Live? As far as I know, being a musician, being an artist, create and express your art requires A LOT of sacrifices from the person who wants to be it. Financial sacrifices, time sacrifices.
One needs to take time to develop skills and originality. But go and tell that to our fast-living/fast-consuming society, where it's all buy fast, eat fast, and shit fast… It's indeed impossible for producers to survive today and it's not gonna become any better in the future, so I forecast that somehow this whole scene will collapse sooner or later.
Where do you think the electronic music industry is heading? There are a lot of new producers, a lot of new music released everyday, but do you think things will over saturate soon?
Things are already over-saturated. That's one of the reason why nothing sells today. The global amount of sales is actually quite big at the moment, but it's just soooo much music out there that it's spread in little pieces for everybody…
My biggest worry is that the global and individual image of the labels and the producers have quite taken over the actual attention of the public towards the music production. You now buy a brand, not the music. In an ever growing internet and information based society. Too much information becomes no information. The public needs references and standards to find their mark. So when you label things, it makes it easier for people to understand it, but at the same it pushes people away from discovering and understanding it by themselves.
If you call a track 'Detroit Techno', most people actually heard of that name, without even knowing what it actually means and what it refers to, aside the fact that it's a style from Detroit. Not many actually know Octave One's 'I Believe', Jay Denham's 'The Calling', Carl Craig's 'Galaxy' or Underground Resistance's 'Amazon'. People went crazy in the last years for whatever Ed-Bangers or Cocoon labelled items, whether it's music or not.
Things are gonna go further in that direction, for the financial good of a few, more and more based on the look, the brand, the appearance, with new recycled styles popping up every few years, and the whole industry jumping for it, until everybody's bored and jump on a newer one. The cycles will get faster, the life-span of a track and a genre shorter and shorter, until the moment it will become completely empty and the general will get away from it once and for all. That's unfortunately quite inevitable looking at how things have developed throughout the last few years. But I'm not a witch doctor so I could also well be totally wrong…
There's another factor which is actually important but at the same time the most unpredictable, it's the technological advances, and the way the general public absorbs and uses them. The future of electronic music goes together with whatever technology becomes available and what producers and people will make out of it. But it could also well be that producers and DJs will soon or later be replaced by algorithms able to produce something to entertain crowds at least better but at cheaper value for the club and event promoters.
Technology is moving fast, and in the world of the DJ it seems to move even quicker, how have things changed for you, and what pieces of technology are you loving at the moment?
I'm quite old-school. I don't like to invest too much in all these new Native Instruments toys or others. It seems to me that the more toys they make, the more musing made with it becomes boring… I like simple and efficient music. I like when music has a story to tell and when it's organic, alive. Music done today by these softwares that everybody uses sound all the same, with no originality whatsoever… I use pretty much the same setup as in the beginning. I've always been recording with Cubase, and using some external equipment as well as some plugins for mastering. The only things I have changed is that I'm not using my Akai sampler anymore but several different sampler plugin instead. Anyway, there is a universal truth about music. Your best gear, your best technology, will always remain your own ears!
Finally, any summer plans?
Enjoying the sun, we all need more of it.
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