For many, NTS provided a reliable, constant stream of great music and joy during the uncertain and tumultuous first COVID-19 induced lockdown. During this period, and since, it is safe to say that Louise Chen was one of its shining lights, theming her shows with an aim to lift moods and bring joy to her listeners. The shows included ‘One Hour Disco Joy Re-Up‘, ‘Soul Tearjerkers Isolation Special‘, and even a house music focused ‘Bastille Day French Producers Special‘. We were very happy to get the chance to chat to Louise about the NTS shows, her love of the Smashing Pumpkins, France’s plethora of music talent, and her plans for the rest of 2020!
Hi Louise, thanks for agreeing to this interview/mix!
Thank you for inviting me on, I hope you’ll like the mix 🙂
The mix is sick! What was the idea behind it?
The idea is quite simple. I miss the club. I miss club music. I miss dancing, forgetting what time it is, staying up late for no reason, I miss everything nightlife has to offer: chance encounters, sweat, laughter, tears, hugs, leaving the house to lose yourself… and basically I just really wanted to BANG IT OUT so it’s a surprisingly fast mix hah! I’ve been buying lots of tracks and releases every month on Bandcamp and I’ve been dying to put together a mix with what I got my hands on. I’ve been kinda blue and sad lately and it was a real effort to sit down and listen to club music, to be honest. I reached a point in September where it just made me sad, club music was like a reminder of what was missing in my life and it just ached too much to put on and enjoy. So I needed to do this for myself, I think. I needed to feel like I could love this despite parties being forbidden, despite the French 9pm curfew meaning everyone has to be home by that time. It was therapeutic for me to record this mix, it helped me smile again… so I just hope this can bring a bit of joy and release to someone out there maybe feeling, like me, a bit depleted.
Anyway, lets take it back to the start! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself – who you are and where you are from?
Ooof getting existential right off the bat! I’m a 34 year old, half French half Taiwanese music lover and all-round pop culture fan that used to DJ hah! I was born and raised in Luxembourg up until I was 17. Then I moved to Paris to go to uni for 4 years, then in 2008 I moved to London to keep studying and ended up moving back to Paris in 2010 for a job. The whole time I was a student, I interned at various jobs in the music industry and eventually, in 2011, I thought of throwing a party with girl DJs. Got to organise my first Girls Girls Girls night at Social Club, which was really the ideal place to start a night at the time. Didn’t think I’d get to throw another one to be honest, but they offered me another slot and I offered Betty and a whole crew of girls that would always come to the parties to turn the initiative into a collective and that was the beginning of everything for me. Found my people in Paris and it opened the doors to my falling in love with club culture and club music. I owe Betty and the girls a lot.
Can you tell us a bit about some of your favourite music and bands growing up, and ultimately what led to your discovery of electronic music?
At the time, in Luxembourg I wasn’t really listening to the radio but I was constantly glued to MTV. So a lot of the stuff I was into just came straight from there. The first band I got massively obsessed with were The Smashing Pumpkins and by some crazy magic trick of fate, I got to meet my hero Billy Corgan at the Smashing Pumpkins show in Paris for their farewell tour in 2000. I was 14 and that moment definitely changed my life. It just made me want more of that feeling, made me hungry to be in music and at shows all the time. Except, in Luxembourg, none of the stuff I’d see on MTV was ever coming through to perform so we literally had to do it ourselves. It was DIY by default! My friends and mentors had a band called Actarus (later became Mutiny On the Bounty), they were part of a collective called Schalltot and they put up festivals, booked American bands that were touring in a van to come play in sweaty bars…
So, I wasn’t really listening to club music but I was very involved in my local underground post-rock, emo, screamo, hardcore punk scene. I wasn’t going to clubs to get my dose of underground adrenaline but I was going to shows.
As for clubbing, the music was usually mainstream stuff that you’d know from MTV. I suppose kinda like you’d have “Cheese nights” except that was the norm. Don’t get me wrong, I used to love going out clubbing but to me it meant hearing hip-hop R&B and Britney Spears, not Mr. Fingers, if you know what I mean? Underground electronic music felt out of reach back then. I think there were a few good club nights on but I just didn’t get it, in my mind club music was for “old people”. As for electronic music, I listened to stuff that was electronic but without realising that it was. I was really into Ninja Tune, Big Dada, Boards of Canada, Warp, some of the French touch stuff that was inevitable and when Ed Banger became massive, it was using codes taken from rock n roll bands, codes that, for the first time, I felt I could understand but it wasn’t what I was listening to. I was still heavily into bands at that point. Even when I started the club night in 2012, I was playing hip-hop and R&B! It’s through Betty and Piu Piu’s sets that I was exposed to club tracks that I liked, and to be fair, it’s really when I met Bambounou that I finally GOT IT! He understood what I liked and showed me labels and producers, he’d figured out how to get me interested enough to go dig for myself. To me, club music was something I needed to experience to fall in love with. I had to go and dance for 15 hours at Panorama Bar, I had to experience the communion, the magical moment when Betty would drop a Girl Unit track or Piu Piu would play a Dancemania classic that everybody sang along to… I had to witness the moments myself, live them, in order to feel connected, like this music could then also be mine to love – does that make sense? Sounds cheesy but it really boils down to “House is a Feeling” and I had to feel it first hand, I couldn’t feel it alone listening to my Discman.
I watched an interview of yours where you said your parents went to see you play a festival – were they a big influence on your music tastes?
Haha yes! They definitely had a massive influence. My Dad is the music lover in the family, he’s the one that was making me cassette tapes as a kid and teaching me how to record my own. I think in some way we used music to stay connected despite the geographical distance, when he’d be in Taiwan and me in Luxembourg. It became our very own secret language. And my mum, she’s been a rock my whole life. She’s always been so supportive of me! She took me to the Smashing Pumpkins show and met them with me, she would drop me off at hardcore shows when I was just 15, she’d always let me play my music in the car and ask me loads of questions… Without knowing she was doing it, she helped me build my confidence in my own taste. She got me piano lessons, singing lessons, ballet, painting, you name it, she encouraged my creativity in so many ways. I grew up an only child and I think she was wary of how lonely I could feel at times so she encouraged my escaping through music. She listened to me chew her ears off for hours about Placebo, Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins and No Doubt and would act like she loved them as much as I did. When my parents came to see me play, my mum was the curious one, asking a million questions, wanting to watch Octave One and understand what they were doing, she stayed up all night to catch Peggy Gou play while my Dad, who’s super shy, asked me to take him back to the hotel. My mum stayed by herself at the festival vibing to Peggy’s late night techno set! That’s my parents’ energy in a nutshell.
How has COVID-19 affected your plans for 2020 and how did you fill your time during lockdown?
Oh God, Covid put a halt to most of my 2020 plans. In March, I was working on producing tracks to put into my first Boiler Room that would have taken place at Fly Open Air Festival in May, I was gunna play Lovebox for the first time ever on the Homoelectric Stage, I was gunna play New Year’s in Vietnam at Epizode festival, my year was filled with shows, music, travels and I was putting myself under immense pressure to sustain the pace physically and mentally. In all honesty, everything stopping, has made me reconsider my lifestyle a lot. Of course, economically, it’s a tough year and I don’t know how to bounce back just yet or what to “pivot” into but I know a change was necessary. I’m 34 now and I really want to have a family one day and that dream doesn’t really seem possible if I’m constantly on the go, flying to the next gig. Whether it’s the effects of touring on my personal life, my health or even the planet’s health, I just don’t think I agree, ideologically, with what one has to do to in the industry to make a living off music. I don’t think it’s fair to ask of musicians to produce albums all the time to feed the Spotify algorithm for pennies and I also, don’t think it’s fair to ask of musicians to have to rely solely on touring and merch to make money. I don’t have solutions, sadly, but I’ve become more and more critical of the career I was after… In a way, Covid has allowed me to try and figure out what is the essential force in music that drives me and I don’t think it’s money nor fame… It’s allowed me to recenter my focus on community building, because in the end, whether it’s when I was 15 in Luxembourg, 34 now or when I’ll be 65, that’s what motivates me, connections I can make with people through music.
The theme of your NTS shows from the start of lockdown were exactly what the doctor ordered! (‘Songs of Hope’, ‘Soul Tearjerkers Isolation Special’, ‘One Hour Disco Joy Re-Up’) How did you come up with the ideas behind these shows?
Aww thank you! I’m so happy to hear they resonated with you. My NTS show has really been my lifeline since March… I guess that’s the one thing that made it clear to me that even without shows, the fact I could still use my radio show as a platform to connect with people emotionally through music and realising that was what kept me sane, kept me from feeling alone.
Every time I prepare a show or invite a guest, I try to stay as honest as possible and find the balance between what I feel I need to hear and want to hear and what people might connect to. I try not to think about it too hard and just go with my gut feeling… Covid has freed me in that way. I feel free to show my vulnerabilities a lot more than I used to when I was touring every weekend… Now it feels like I don’t have it in me to pretend, like I can’t lie with music and pretend I’m happy and can play a fun disco set when in fact I’ve been wallowing in my misery chain-smoking cigarettes, you know? So when I recorded the Soul Tearjerkers Isolation Special, that was the emotional space I was in myself, I needed to hear sad songs, I needed to hear beautiful voices singing in harmony, that was what was soothing to me at that exact moment. I’m just lucky it seemed to match your mood too hah!
Your Bastille Day French Producers special was brilliant. Can you shout out some of the producers and labels that play a key role in the French music scene?
There are so many great producers in France and I’m far from being an expert to be honest but I have a deep admiration for the scene I came up with through Social Club, for example, so Bambounou, Manaré, Aleqs Notal, Coni and his label Firecamp, but also Louis Brodinski, Lowjack and his label Gravats, Simo Cell, Emma Dj, Brice Coudert from ex-Concrete has a great label too called La Vibe and is working on a new music media platform to help French electronic music producers get their royalties, called Underscope Feed. There’s this great reissue label Chuwanaga Records run by Clementine, Marina Trench is a dope producer, The Beat X Changers, Neue Graffik whether it’s his productions or his Jazz ensemble, Phil Weeks and his Robsoul label, Lazare Hoche, Molly Dj and her label RDV Music, the guys at Ed Banger of course that are like family to me now, Nathan Melja, Bamao Yende and his label Boukan Records, Sylvere and his La Creole nights, Kiddy Smile is a dope producer and performer who did a lot the introduce the world to the voguing scene in Paris, Teki Latex nurtures the scene in so many ways too, whether through his defunct label Sound Pellegrino, or just keeping an ear out to stay in touch with the times and the local scene, his efforts have led to producers like De Grandi for example, Miley Serious and her sick label 99cts… List goes on and on, That’s not even scratching the surface!
How has lockdown and the pandemic affected the music community in France? Have you seen many club closures and artists switching careers?
In France we have a special status for musicians called “intermittence” – providing you’ve done ‘X’ amount of gigs a year, the government provides social security and a guarantee of income even when you’re not touring. It’s basically trying to even out your income throughout the year so you can save up when you work loads and still get a minimum income when you have no work at all. Through this plan, it’s helped musicians and DJs who have subscribed to this government plan, to stay afloat until the end of the year. But when it comes to venues, clubs or festivals, the government refuses to officially cancel anything to keep insurance companies from paying back promoters that have advanced huge sums to book venues and acts… Musicians are already hardly respected or talked about in France because as a cultural art form it’s not respected or elevated on an institutional level the same way visual arts, theater, dance or cinema are and it’s not a business that generates enough money to be respected as a full blown industry the way cinema or fashion are for example. When musicians are out of work, it doesn’t generate unemployment for the country, so everything can keep operating in full denial that anything is hurting or going wrong! The only time, newspapers have touched upon the 34,5 billion euros generated by “events” in France, it was because food caterers had a protest! There wasn’t even a mention of festivals! It’s like we don’t exist and nobody misses us… I honestly feel for my fellow DJs, musicians, but I also hurt for all promoters, club owners, venue owners that have all their money tied up and hardly have any way of getting their voices heard, let alone any solutions for surviving. So far, there haven’t been any closures just yet but I reckon by March 2021, there’s no way, without any help, they can stay open, maintain jobs etc. As for switching careers, I think a lot of us are thinking about it… Not sure where to turn to but definitely feel the need to do something, act in some way to work and earn a living again.
What plans do you have for the remainder of 2020? Can we expect any more music releases from you?
Still no gigs but I’m still doing my CHENTS on NTS Tuesday every other week and I’m learning the guitar! I want to make more music but I’ve not felt very inspired to make any club tracks. I guess, I’ve been a little bit depressed and It’s been hard for me to sit down and work on anything new. I’ve been feeling the need to go back into all the familiar sounds, explore my own nostalgia… Playing the acoustic guitar is a little bit medicinal for me, I get to zone out and the sounds are just really soothing to me. So for now, I’m just focusing on whatever feels good, reading, cooking, playing the guitar, listening to Brazilian records or listening back to my favourite bands from when I was 15. Hopefully, inspiration will come back when I will have moved all my equipment to London in the next few weeks. I’m sad but I’m hopeful there’s room for new beginnings ahead.
Interview By: James Acquaye Nortey-Glover
For more on Louise, be sure to check out her recent in-depth interview in the brilliant, Record Magazine