The weekend has landed and all that matters now is clubs, drugs, pubs and parties. You've got 48 hours off the 9-5, it's time to unbutton your hustle and breathe vigor back into life. Whether it be through losing your soul on the dance floor or grooving to it, we have your soundtrack covered. The EARMILK Weekend Selector, an exclusive guest mix series where we invite the latest budding talent from behind the booth to usher you through all the boozie and jam. From your morning bedside to tonight's evening formal, your weekend selector is here to fill a void of good taste and allow fresh connections to flow vicariously.
(WKND22) EARMILK Presents: Weekend Selector – Douster
Regardless of how long you've followed the name, it's still hard to put a finger on Douster. A man that has often flipped his production style from stripped down house to more serious electro. Listening to his catalogue you'd be hard pressed to accept that he's based out of the French city Lyon. With a brighter palette of sounds, exotic percussion is a must. And that's what makes this pelican stand out in such a drab environment. His music is of a different colour, but the motif has always stayed the same. An aural assault that pecks away at your insecurities and lures you onto the floor. Tribal and tropical, the feeling instilled in his productions is natural and buried deep inside all of us.
It's in wall beating tracks like "Afro Nuts", the 2009 release that saw play from everyone, the electro headbangers to the chin scratching house heads. And of course, who can go about mentioning his name without running over "King of Africa". The Lion King sampled intro track that threw his name into the spotlight as top bill DJs opened their headlining festival spots with a throwback to everyone's inner toddler. Since then things have changed, Douster has been racking up credentials to his name and his sound has grown to fully wrap around who he actually is. Find out in our interview with the man on decks and his hand as the soundtrack to your weekend.
…fun is an important part of my music and it's kind of hard when you want to do both fun and serious tracks under the same name… people hardly get it.
EARMILK: You're from France but I noticed the music you make is more tropical and borrows from sounds across the ocean into South America. What's fueling this inspiration and what are your influences outside of your home land?
Douster: I take inspiration from music from all over the world, whether it's chicago house, south african kwaito, jamaican dancehall or south american cumbia. I also happened to live in Buenos Aires, Argentina between 2006 and 2009. It was a normal thing for me back then to mess around with the popular rhythms in the city which you can hear in genres like cumbia and reggaeton. But the truth is my main influences is music from the 80s and 90's. Old school house, latin freestyle, digital dancehall, southern rap, basically anything that's simple and efficient.
EM: It seems like you're straying away from that latin sound you are known for, so let me ask what are you into now? How would you describe your current productions? And is it difficult to switch up your sound when you've established yourself with a certain style?
D: I realized that there were a lot of remixes and tracks that I was producing that I wasn't even playing. Most of them were too weird to play out so I basically went back to basics, straight house music. I've always throughout my entire career have been making some kind of house music, but this time I'm using the influences I had as a teenager — rap, funk, and electro records.
They give a more urban flavor to my productions. I still do it in the same fun way tho, tailored for the clubs. It's obviously kinda difficult to draw an audience to follow you on a different musical path but I've always been doing a lot of different kinds of music so it won't be any surprise for people that have already been following me.
EM: Now onto your followers, how big of an impact has "King of Africa" been on your career as a DJ and would you say it's your biggest track to date?
D: It's probably my most mainstream track to date, in the way that there's a lot of people, even people that normally don't listen to any electronic music, that knows me just because of that track. To clear things up, I did most of it during a three hour train ride. I wanted to have an intro track for a set I was playing that night, just before I left I heard my lil sister singing "naaasibweniaaa". I was like… yeah, that's a good intro.
Right away I ripped the tune from a Youtube clip and worked on it on the train. So it was sampled from the Lion King but it could have been anything fun and epic, like the Game of Thrones theme for example. I guess fun is an important part of my music and it's kind of hard when you want to do both fun and serious tracks under the same name… people hardly get it.
EM: Seeing that you sampled the Lion King did you ever have doubts that it may come off as too corny for the club?
D: Yes it is definitely corny, but wait, most mainstream club music is really corny anyways. I guess it's been a useful weapon for DJs all around the world to attract people toward the dancefloor but now I kind of want to leave that track and all the things it carries behind me.
EM: Makes sense considering the different music you've been touching recently. So you started a label called Bebup, can you talk about how things are going for the imprint, has the fan base been steadily growing, are there any future releases/young talents you're excited to showcase?
D: We're a really young label and we don't really aim to a wide audience, we're working on music that we love with people that we appreciate and we hope people will like it too. We had really good feedback on the first release (Roma – No Future EP) and the second EP is coming out at the end of June .
For the next releases we're going to widen the genres even more, with cinematic dub-techno from Nau.lot or sunny pop tracks of De La Montagne, we really aren't a genre-specific label, we just wanna push good music out.
EM: And finally, what can we expect next from Douster? Can you clue us in on some future remix packages that you'll be apart of?
D: Absolutely, I'm adding the final touch to my next EP as Douster. It's going to be a straight house record, my take on the different kinds of house that I love like garage, french filtered house, hard house. Then there's a few tracks we've done with Savage Skulls, when we're together we can produce either the cheesiest or weirdest record, at the end they're both big club bangers anyway.
I'm also collaborating with different artist on their projects and working on numerous sideprojects that are kind of a secret right now. On the remix tip you'll be able to ear my Pony Pony Run Run "Just a Song" Remix pretty soon .
EM: Just want to say thank you for the mixtape, it's been played more than enough over here at EARMILK.
D: [laughs] Thank you, the mix is a bit of a tribute to the 80's electro sound. Showing how a lot of those tracks are still relevant nowadays, there are also a few tracks off my next EP too!
TRACKLIST
01. Mixmaster Gee and the Turntable Orchestra – The Manipulator (Original Mix): MCA
02. Newcleus – I Wanna be a B-boy (Original Mix): Sunnyview
03. Man Parish – Boogie Down Dub (Original Mix): Polydor
04. Hashim – Al Naafiysh (The Soul) (Original Mix): Carrere
05. Egyptian Lover – Freak-A-Holic (Original Mix): Egyptian Empire Records
06. Cybotron – Cosmic Cars (Original Mix): Fantasy
07. Maelstrom – Outlast (2012 Milestone mix): ZONE
08. Mathias Zimmerman – George (Noob Remix): Discobelle
09. Drums of Death – Jerk (Sinden Remix): Civil Music
10. Distal – Temple People (Original Mix): Tectonic
11. Lvis 1990 – Workout (Original Mix): Night Slugs
12. Traxmen – Playing with a Rubberband (Arcade Edit): CDR
13. Douster – Gimme Back My Kush (Original Mix): CDR
14. Justin Martin – Ghettos and Gardens (Original Mix): dirtybird
15. Douster – Hush (Original Mix): CDR
16. SPTT – Strange Touch (Douster Weird House remix): CDR
Grab Douster's latest on Enchufada's Hard Ass Compilation. A release set out to reinterpret the hawkish style of kuduro into different forward thinking perspectives. At 141 BPM, our Weekend Selector's pitch to the collection further shows that he is tied to anything but a single genre. Also hit up his Soundcloud to catch a remix giveaway for the latest Sound Pellegrino Thermal Team EP which you can download here.
