After losing interest the club scene during the pandemic, Parisian artist E-Unity returns from hiatus with in his latest project BBB<3.
As a self-titled “mainstream rock kid”, E-Unity spent his teenage years listening to bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Libertines, and the Kooks. It wasn’t until he entered the world of clubbing however, that his curiosity for electronic dance music piqued.
E-unity’s music is a congested melting pot filled with pinches of seasoning from a well-stocked spice rack of sound. Much like the diversity of the UK music scene that has at times been a major influence on him, it’s not hard to hear hints of 2-step in his drum programming, or post-dubstep aesthetics in his bass design.
The scope of E-Unity’s musical prowess was first demonstrated on his previous EP Duo Road, released in 2020. The eerie, ambient, and dark tone of the project weaves through moods, textures, and rhythms to transport you to different worlds.
Tracks such as ‘Not For Me’ – which sounds like your inside the mind of a paranoid, malfunctioning robot– show off his electronic sound design skills, whilst ‘Late Tate Tale’ uses organic sounding percussion and a deep, weighted bassline to teleport you to a tribalistic, ritualistic, ceremonial world.
Despite its more light-hearted tone, BBB<3 still has some serious production behind it. E-unity shows again that he isn’t afraid to blur the lines of contemporary dance music. His unique blend of ambient, hyperpop, latin, hardcore, and post-dubstep sounds create a memorable EP full of catchy vocal chops and bubblegum synth leads.
Can you tell us a bit about your early life? How did you initially get into music?
As a teenager, I was more of a mainstream rock kid. We were listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers – Live in Hyde Park” CD all the time with my friends. I wasn’t a digger at all, I just listened to what my friends showed me. That’s how I also started to listen to British bands like The Libertines and The Kooks.
Later, I returned to electronic music through Ed Banger, Justice, Kavinsky and Cassius. I say ‘returned’ because I remember as a kid I had this CD with very mainstream (and pretty bad) club music on it. I blasted Daddy DJ out of my cheap monitors in my bedroom. I also had this software on my parents’ computer where you could play around with readymade loops. Fun fact: as a child, I was always saying that I wanted to become a DJ, a hairdresser or a pizzaiolo. I’m producing electronic music and I married an Italian woman, so that’s not bad, I guess.
So, as you can see, I had pretty random tastes in music for my whole early life. It was only around 2010 that I started to really look for more specific sounds. I started going out with friends to clubs where the music was more interesting. At the same time, I discovered the sounds that would change my life somehow. I began listening to Burial, Mount Kimbie, James Blake, Joy O, Pearson Sound, etc. That’s when I started to produce music too. I have some great memories from that period. Everything was so exciting. It felt like I opened a door into a hidden world, and everything had this magic aura around it. The only negative thing I can remember is that I might have said “post-dubstep” thousands of times in one year.
You have had a release on Simo Cell’s TEMƎT Music. How did you become involved with the label?
I’ve been sending music to Simo for so many years now as he was, at the time, one of the only DJs to play these UK sounds in France. He’s the first DJ to play my music on the radio. I’m grateful to him because he’s always taken the time to give me tips and feedback on what I sent over, even when it was very bad! When he decided to start his label, he told me he wanted to release my music. It was good timing, as I had this EP that was almost ready as I was trying to sign it on big British labels. I knew immediately that it was going to be the home for my music from now on because it made so much sense to me and to him too.
On a more personal side, I’ll always remember this image from last year. Last summer, after my wedding in Italy, we visited the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua. At some point, I looked back and saw Simo having a conversation with my grandmother in this incredibly spiritual place. I remembered that 6 or 7 years earlier I was attending parties where he played, I was such a fanboy. Life is full of surprises, isn’t it?
Tell us about your new album, BBB<3. What was the inspiration behind the project?
At some point during the covid pandemic, I lost my interest in club music. I had this sort of hippy phase where I listened to psychedelic rock music, new age, and ambient stuff. It coincided with a period when I was working on myself. I’ve always struggled with anxiety and my mental health wasn’t very good at that time. So, I guess, like a lot of other people, I really needed this restart. All this to say that I almost didn’t produce any music for a year or more.
I don’t know why, but at some point, I started this very melodic track that would be the cornerstone of the album. This track isn’t on the album, but at that time I felt like I had unlocked something both in terms of creative block and the sound that I wanted to make.
It was way more honest and spontaneous than everything I’d made before. It was the first time I felt liberated from my own judgement, and I didn’t want to sound like anybody else. I felt more confident than ever and wanted to make music that sounds like me.
During that period, I was listening to a lot more mainstream pop music, which is, I guess, responsible for certain aspects of the album. I think you can hear inspirations from Latin music, pop music, drill music, house music, and of course, post-dubstep throughout the album.
There are more melodies and vocal samples, and I guess it’s more accessible to everyone than my previous records.
These influences, coupled with the fact that I don’t really go to clubs anymore, are the reasons why I don’t see it as a club music album. Of course, most of the tracks would work in a club environment but I wasn’t too worried about it when I was producing it. I wanted to make music that makes you feel something. Something based more on its emotional virtues than its functional qualities. To be honest, it felt so liberating to focus on this.
What I mean by this is that when you make club music, your music almost always exists in a corpus of tunes since it’s played in DJ sets. This means that you can’t do anything other than compare yourself with others. When you start to think in a more self-sufficient way, you just feel freer and saner somehow.
In terms of process, I didn’t start with the idea of making an album. As I said, it just started with me trying to get back to music production. At some point, I made a few tracks and I felt inspired to make more. I spoke my with friends and it seemed that the sound I was developing would work well on a longer format, so I tried to compose the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Let’s talk about production. What does your creative process look like?
That’s a question that terrifies me to be honest cause I don’t really know.
When it comes to music, my creative process is pretty chaotic. Actually, I see this as sculpting. I experiment with random things and eventually, I’ll end up with this pile of raw material that I’ll try to refine. You have to trust the process when you work like this as you can spend long periods without making anything interesting. On the contrary, I sometimes find myself being super inspired and I can produce tracks in a few hours. Funnily, it’s often the best ones!
As I said, it’s pretty difficult for me to talk about my creative process because it feels like I enter an altered state of consciousness. Everything just tends to flow by itself. It’s a super organic process which is quite different each time I open Ableton.
Another pretty unique (I guess) aspect of my process is that I always start my new tracks out of the previous ones. It means that when I’m done with a track, I’ll duplicate the file, erase everything, and start over with the same tracks/instruments/settings. So, in a way, all the tunes I’ve ever made are connected. I don’t recommend this process, because it can be super chaotic sometimes. It’s not the best way to bring fresh ideas to your projects, but it works for me.
There are times when I will open Ableton with a sort of urgent need to make music, and I don’t want to spend time looking for synths, samples or whatever. That’s part of the music production that I hate, and it explains why I’m using a lot of native Ableton presets in my music.
How would you describe the underground scene in Paris at the moment? Are there any parties or crews that we should be looking out for?
I think I am the least well-placed person to answer this question at the moment as I didn’t go to a club for a few years. Despite this, I feel like the French scene is richer than ever, and there are tons of great artists making very varied genres now. And not only in Paris but everywhere, in Saint-Etienne, Marseille, Nantes, and so on.
You have played in London previously and you can hear elements of UK music in some of your mixes. Are you in the UK often and how, if at all, has the scene there influenced you?
As funny as it might be, I’ve only been to the UK 3 or 4 times. I love London, I have a few friends there, but I haven’t been there as often as you might have thought! That’s very true that the UK scene has influenced me A LOT through the years though. As I said, it started in 2011 with the post-dubstep / future garage era. To be honest, for a long time, I had this very phantasmagorical vision of London through Burial’s music. It felt like I knew each of its dark streets at night without even having travelled there.
Since then, I’ve always been quite obsessed with UK artists and labels, and their innovations. When I was starting to develop myself as an artist, I wanted to sound like them because of that.
I still love this scene, but I feel like it’s changing now. It’s still in me and will be forever, but I feel like it’s time to make it the French way or at least my way. To get back to one of your previous questions, that’s also why I’m super happy to be able to work with Simo. We share the same path in this regard.
What is your go-to track to get the party going?
These days if I want to get myself in the mood, I’d listen to Free YSL by Hamza.
What have you got coming up for the rest of the year?
I’m moving to a house near a forest and a river with my wife so maybe I’ll come back next year with a bird songs album. Who knows?
Joking aside, I’m working on new music that develops what I started with the album, we’ll see where it leads us! I’m also developing my design studio, Unité Services, and the more it goes, the more I see this all as the same thing. The music, the visual stuff, etc. it’s all driving me towards a single point and I’m excited to discover it!
You can purchase E-Unity’s latest EP BBB<3 here.
Follow E-Unity here.