Fulgeance is, amongst Onra and Häzel a part of the new generation of French beat makers. A bass player from an early age on Pierre Troel fell in love with the MPC – it was obvious that the next thing would be to get his music out into the world. He started out with his Peter Digital Orchestra project back in 2008 and soon got bookings for bigger venues – an EP followed. More synonyms followed, Fulgeance and Souleance were further possibilities to express himself. Variety marks his productions – everything seems to be thought through. Synthesizers, drums and the sounds in the background are arranged perfectly. Fulgeance proves that there is an appeal to simplicity. This producer has not reached his peak yet and will be surprising the international crowd with more of his beats.
You have so many aliases, Fulgeance, Souleance, Peter Digital Orchestra – how did this all happen?
Fulgeance: I was doing bass guitar first, in bands and a little bit of keyboard with my mother. I finally realized that it was hard to go forward with a band, to keep everyone pulling on the same string. I wanted to do more; make records, play live, sing and all that. So I got into the MPC 2000 first – that’s how I discovered this music from beats to bass and even improvising on this machine was very interesting for me. After that I started to produce House, even Breakbeat, progressed to wonky stuff, electronic Hip Hop like Prefuse73 and Dabrye. I felt really comfortable playing my own stuff and to be able to play and improvise with it. That’s why I have so many outlets – there’s so much music that I like and that I like to do that I don’t want to limit myself.
The Peter Digital Orchestra was your first project?
Fulgeance: Yes, but I had another project before – we did two EPs and it was called Connecticuts. It was scratch MPC based music. But I was working on the Peter Digital thing at the same time. The Connecticuts project was my first real live project that I was trying to push. Later we all went into different directions. Then Fulgeance and then Souleance with Soulist.
How did that happen?
Fulgeance: We both got booked for a short film festival in France and we had just met there – playing the closing party together. We had never played together before – we connected instantly. We really felt good playing Funk, House and all that. So we thought we should do something together; first we were only thinking about white labels and then we found a label called First Word. The idea was to make some re-edits but eventually we did our own thing. We wanted to present it live, with a laptop, scratches and an MPC. But it is really more about the Funk and Soul thing. It’s a total product of the both of us. He brings all the samples to the table and I can put my way of production in it.
So every alias tries to catch a different crowd – Fulgeance being the bass, low end oriented thing…
Fulgeance: I sometimes get the same crowd with Peter Digital that I’d get with Fulgeance, the thing is that I have different bookers for different projects – I do some of it myself as well. So it happens that people put me on the bill as Fulgeance, Peter Digtial or Souleance that’s the reason why I can go to the same country three times in a row, which is cool (laughs).
You also run a label called Musique Large…
Fulgeance: It’s a big thing to say that I run it, because it’s a family affair. We try to do what we can with the little money we have. In the record business of today it’s really hard to succeed but we are proud of it – we are putting out the 10th record, which will be Ben Butler and Mousepad. One of my best friends founded the label and I was the first one to get signed on it. That’s also a reason why I’m more involved with it. So on the one hand I’m an artist but on the other hand I’m trying to help when it comes to finding people to do remixes and new ideas to do promotion.
Where will you be taking your projects in the future?
Fulgeance: I just finished a LP as Fulgeance and it will be coming out on Melting Pot Music, by the end of October. It’s going to be an album consisting of tracks, which are a dedication to the cities I’ve been to and that I really liked. It’s a shame because I don’t have a track for Vienna now but I think I’m going to do one with the Loud Minority. There were so many cities that I selected. Each city gets a track.. There will be an LP as Souleance too, but next year, I’ve been delayed. We were about to do it in October because I was really busy and couldn’t do the final mix – I want things to be done properly. I will also do a new EP as Peter Digital – maybe this is going to be a free download because I hate it how you have to wait sometimes and tracks get old. I would love to have a sub label of Musique Large to put music out whenever I want but it’s hard. I don’t like the way how so many releases are lost in the digital format. I love to do records, wax! It’s not so easy though, DJs use Serato and things are way different now.
