Electrofunk and Sweet, Sweet Love: An Interview with Dave 1 of Chromeo

Dave1 on left, photo by Angela Boatwright

[Editor's Note: This awesome interview was guest contributed by Michelle Nail.]

There are many frightening things that have come out of Canada in the last few years: Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, poutine--but we’re willing to put all of that behind us because Canada has also brought us Chromeo: the electrofunk duo behind albums like “Fancy Footwork” and “Business Casual” and they are everywhere. We’re dancing to them at clubs, watching them on David Letterman and will soon have a chance to see them in action at ACL. Dave 1 and P-Thug, who have played together since their teenage years, is about to embark on a new tour sure to create an army of fans and leave in its wake a tsunami of sweet, sweet lovin’.

We sat down to talk to Dave 1 to talk about music, literature, truth and the hopeful inevitability that we will all one day be Samuel Beckett fans.

So you are a man wearing many hats these days: musician, professor, PhD candidate, Canadian. What’s your ultimate goal will all of this?

Well, I am mostly doing the music thing right now. Yeah, I am mostly doing the music. The PhD I am going to finish next year, and I'm not going to be teaching this academic year, so you know you got an option like you focus on one and then you focus on the other depending on what is more stimulating at the time. like that you said Canadian as if being Canadian was another occupation.

It is. I mean the Canadians I’ve met in the past...it seems like it takes quite a bit of time simply being from Canada.

[laughs] No, I don’t waste much time being Canadian if it’s something I am.

So you are talking about focusing more on music right now and you are thinking about finishing your PhD next year. So what do Proust and electrofunk have in common these days?

Not much. One is more like a counterpoint to the other in my life; they balance each other out. I kind of try to follow a humanist model in as having as many different interests as possible and to pursue them as much as honesty as I can.

Can we talk a second about the music video for “When the night falls?”

Yeah!

I am not into being a sycophant but I have to say that is an awesome music video.

Yeah…you know it does not sound sycophantic, giving a compliment, especially when it's deserved.

I think your level of confidence is absolutely apropos for this situation.

Thank you. I’m really happy with it as well. I think, you know, it’s cool to do something that’s a little bit shocking but that has like an even more shockingly moral ending. Like the ending of the video is almost, you know, it's almost Sarah Palin, you know what I'm saying? It's subversive and I like that.

So what was the genesis, what was the idea for that? Was it presented to you or was it something you guys like “we want to do something like this, what can we do?"

Yeah…I mean what we do is that we pick video directors that we really want to work with and develop an idea with them. So we really wanted to work with the Daniels, the guys who directed the clip, and they pitched the initial concept and we kind of built around their idea if you will. The little interlude in the elevator- that came from P and I. The fact that the baby's head, the final reveal of the babies head was P's head, that came from us, everything else is them. And the idea of having the complete change of tone and having it go from this really kind of zombie, pregnant apocalyptic dreamscape to the after school special dramedy, that definitely came from the director.

I've come across a few quotes from you talking about how you felt like the dorky boy standing in the corner trying to get noticed, and yet in all of the music videos, in the songs, you talk a lot about sweet, sweet lovin' and your sexual appeal to the ladies. So I'm just wondering which persona is the affectation, or is it just kind of a mix of both of them?

I didn't even know I talked about that. I don't even know if I have any kind of the appeal that you're talking about. I don't. I think the music is pretty honest. I feel that there's not a lot of affectation in Chromeo, everything is pretty sincere and pretty straight forward at face value to what we do. But at the same time we took the characters that we are in real life and just exposed them and built upon them. So the kind of love torn, 80's crooner, Robert Palmer type grew into kind of my persona for Chromeo, but there's gotta be an anti-heroic twist to it, something that you hear in certain lyrics. Where you know the album opens with Hot Mess, and it's kind of a guy saying “I've had enough, you're driving me nuts,” something like that.

So you and P-Thugg have been playing together since you guys were teenagers. So in following the theme of the development and how it works into the music and how it developed Chromeo, how have you guys been developing your characters? What are the major changes you've noticed?

There's no real changes, we're just evolving naturally and trying to get better at what we do. I don't think, there's any dramatic changes, I haven't noticed anything.

So where do you see that evolution eventually taking you guys?

Making better music. I don't feel we've reached our full potential yet at all. I think that there can still be a leap between what we've done and what we're about to do. I think I could be better as a singer, we could be better writers, better producers, better arrangers. I mean, we could still be pushing our craft. If you look at all the videos we've done before the Business Casual album, there's a big leap in quality in the new videos we've been doing. If you look at Night by Night, Hot Mess, Don't Turn the Lights On and When the Night Falls, those videos are far more refined than anything we've done before. If you look at the difference between the first album and the second album, Fancy Footwork is far more refined than what we had done on She's in Control. So I feel like we can keep leaping, you know what I mean, we just have to keep getting better. Our music isnt... Even though people try to pigeonhole our music into this sort of arch 80s electrofunk tongue and cheek thing, it can be way more then that. There's a whole artistic component to it. Even though it stays very lighthearted and amusing, in the music we can actually tack on some substance to it, like the David Letterman with the string section and all that.

Do you guys have a game plan for this next leap or are you just playing it by ear?

I feel like...I want to make sure this tour, musically, is the best thing we've done, and so I'm going to rework a lot of the songs, especially the transitions and try to make the best set possible. Then, once that's done, we'll start working on a new record. We're just going to push ourselves. Whereas I would take one day to record vocals before, I'm going to try to do all my vocals in two days, or you know, three days: one day for harmonies, one day for just chorus. Just try to make it stronger.

Are there any new acts on your radar that you guys are interested in as far as what you're listening to and what you're interested in.

Um, yeah, I think I like the Weekend- like everybody else likes. I like the same stuff everybody else likes, you know? I like the Weeknd, obviously Kanye's stuff is good, I like Drake's new stuff. Same thing everybody else is listening to.

Any summer reading recommendations?

Um, I would have to see what kind of person they are, could you give me some character types maybe?

I feel like this person reads a lot of Sartre, and Rousseau, some Zola.

Oh, wow. OK. French classics. Let's see, in that case, maybe a move towards French avant garde novels of like the 50's. There's something called Nouveau Roman. They're cool, they're like a novel version of a David Lynch film. Sort of weird, blurred narrative lines and no real protagonist, a very anonymous character, devoid of psychology, like a play on what a narrative can be.

Are you a Samuel Beckett fan?

Yeah, I think everybody is a Samuel Beckett fan. That's like saying you like Prince.

I don't know if everyone would agree with you on that,sir! Maybe in Canada...

I like Michael Jackson too.

One day we will live in a world where everyone is a Beckett fan.

One day I think we will live in a world where everyone has access to read Samuel Beckett, and then obviously they'll be a fan. It's just that not everyone has access to that. What we want to wish is for everyone to have access to that kind of culture because if you have access to it, you can't not like it. Good taste is objective, remember that.