Hilary Rawk

"Bing…Bing…You are now free to dance about the cabin."

Listening to music by Dimitri from Paris will make you feel like you are cruising at 30,000 feet drinking a dry martini—shaken, not stirred. Ranging from swanky, loungey and smooth-to-house disco, his newest compilation album, "Cocktail Disco," showcases some of the lushest and rarest underground tracks in his collection, mostly "organic, funky sounds [with a] very strong disco flavor, a lot of vocals and the same tempo as a house track," Dimitri explains.

An avid vinyl collector with a passion for underground disco and house twelve-inch records, Dimitri sought out a way to support his addiction. What he found was a gig as a radio DJ at a pirate station in Paris. "That was sort of the beginning of when pirate radio was becoming legit—in the early eighties, and you had tons of radio stations where you could get a show," Dimitri recalls. "You just had to knock on the door, and they were like ‘Yeah, just go ahead.’"

Shortly after, Dimitri landed a position as a DJ at a major French station where he worked for about eight years. "That’s where I honed my DJ skills and also production, because I was also working on the production side doing jingles and editing songs. So that was the phase in my career when I was trying to subsidize my hobby, and my hobby became my full-time job."

His skills in the studio got the attention of high-profile record companies, and he was sought out to remix songs for artists like Bjork and James Brown. "I was one of the bigger guys doing remixes at the time, so I got the opportunity to work on higher-profile artists. So that’s how I got the gigs remixing [James] Brown and Bjork. But Bjork—I worked on her first singles, and she wasn’t that big of a megastar at the time, but it was great because I used to know her from her older band The Sugarcubes, and I loved her voice, and I was really, really happy to work with her. And the fact that she was one of the first international artists I got to work with helped me get my name outside of France—it gave me opportunities outside of my country, which was the beginning of my career in the more international way."

Dimitri decided to start DJing in clubs again because they started allowing and even encouraging DJs to bring their own records. "I found that exciting. When you DJ on the radio, you don’t have a crowd to read their reactions, so you really make sure you’re not going to bore them. So it was always a big deal for me to select tracks that would get the attention of the people, and that really helped me out when I started DJing in front of a crowd because I had that in mind, and I could actually see them and see how they reacted by combining the two components of that—so I was able to DJ in front of a crowd quite properly."

His passion for classic disco comes from the fact that most of it was produced using live instruments. "That’s something that’s really hard to do with a computer, and there’s something really sterile about music made with a computer. It can be electronic, it can have soul, it can have a nice beat, but it doesn’t touch me the same way as something that’s live," Dimitri says. "It’s more exciting for me because you don’t really know what’s going to happen next."

Now that nearly everyone is able to download music software and songs on their computers, Dimitri thinks the electronic music scene is headed back toward its roots. "The thing that’s not at hand is actual talent, and that’s something that’s going to be more valued in the future than it is today…That’s something that was kind of lost in the last ten years because everything was down to image and marketing…Today, you still need the help of a major company with a lot of money, and a lot of money means a lot of compromise…But with MySpace and stuff like that, people who make music in their bedrooms can become stars overnight…So I think there’s going to be a new business model, and the new hope for people who make music is to have the talent to make good money."

Dimitri From Paris joins DJ Lego and residents Sativa, Chris Santiago, Dysqo and E&G at Zentra, 923 West Weed, (312)787-0400, on June 8, from 10pm-4am. Rsvp to zentranightclub.com for free admission before 11pm, $10 from 11-midnight, $15 after.

(2007-06-05)

Also by Hilary Rawk

Spin Control
After a successful eight-year run on "That 70s Show," Danny Masterson has been focusing lately on music and art
(2007-05-08)

Master of Trades
Joakim is one of those incredibly diverse musicians with a repertoire so varied it absolutely defies definition
(2007-04-24)

Crobar Craze
Guests are greeted by distinguished door staff wearing suits and ties, handed gold crowns and goodie bags and treated to forty-ounces of Bud in paper bags, buckets of ice filled with Jell-O shots and passed hors d'ouevres
(2007-04-03)

Global Electro
German electro-rock duo Digitalism makes super-fun dance music "for your ears and your feet."
(2007-03-20)

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