As a quite old party goer now (1st time out for techno late '91), I'm pleased and stunned to observe that in the past 3-4 years as of writing this, Paris has gone into an unexpected golden age for electronic music (esp quality house and techno), courtesy of hordes of thousands of super cool kids (girls and boys) rushing to parties thrown every week in town (which has now too many clubs to mention) and also (that's new) in various alternative spaces of the suburbs (warehouses, former offices, woods, parkings, weird farms open-air spaces etc) by literally dozens of generally super-well-organized collectives and party promoters doing things mostly with the heart. The stunning part being that everybody seems to be in it mainly for the music (as opposed to the show-off/guestlist/getting high-focused culture that was quite dominant in this town's nightlife until then), hence a stunning quality level in selection and mixing around town these days, and this somehow pleasant feeling of regularly having to rush to the decks to spot the tune being played. These kids have so much culture it's embarrassing, and discussing the latest obscure romanian release or how hard the Fuzz Face EP rocks in a very spontaneous manner with super cute 20 year old girls was not something I'd ever thought of experiencing in this life but here it is, on a weekly basis. In this enthusiastic (despite other darker realities here and elsewhere) context, I'm regularly stunned by their ear and ability to naturally dig obscure tunes out of the dirt and give them a new (real) life. So the other night I went to dance to Mata-Hari Sound-System, one of the numerous 23-year old average DJ collectives around town at the moment, and I found myself checking the decks every three record, which is something I would normally do only with an exceptionally fit Zip, Baby Ford or Villalobos (i.e. once a year). They were very naturally going from the old to the new, from the deep and dubby to harder, breakish moments, playing only their own little classics and obscure diggings with an ability that most don't have after 20 years. Hence this "Watchalike" record I had owned for 15+ years without realizing its super futuristic banging hypnotic trippy chopped-up-disco-latin-vocal vibe. Would Raresh, Ricardo or Zip play this, prices would go sky-high in the minute.(And actually I'm not the only one to notice this amazing new generation rising, as Anil aka spa5tik0lonz, king of the reviewers in here, was also DJing -incredibly well and deeply btw- at the very same party and was equally impressed altogether ;)

Thanks for this lively Paris report, I totally agree that the city's party scene has grown to multidimensions within the past few years. Fact is, I got introduced to this EP when it came out and Zip or Ricardo was spinning it, indeed, back in the days when we frequently played parties together. It's a timeless classic and found its way into my bag again right now (and I am sure into the bags of the two mentioned gentlemen as well).

Empowering speech, really gives me hope for my generation !