Cerrone, the French disco legend and dance music pioneer, has today unveiled a new album: DNA, the 31st studio LP of his illustrious career. The album marks a return to Cerrone’s roots: unbridled dance music with a heavy focus on percussion – essentially his musical DNA.
DNA was largely inspired by Cerrone’s newfound appreciation for DJing, a craft he has perfected over recent years. Having performed as a drummer for the vast majority of his career, Cerrone was encouraged by his label to enter the DJ circuit several years ago. Initially he spurned the idea, considering himself a musician and drummer first and foremost, preferring to make music himself behind the drumkit. But he soon acquiesced and after dabbling in the art of record selection and mixing, he became hooked and soon began producing new records to play in his sets amongst some of his older hits like ‘Supernature’ and ‘Love In C Minor’.
Listen 'DNA' :
“I got caught up in this whole reinvention game. I started putting together snippets of music to feature in my sets. These sections then started to take shape, building into four-and-a-half even six-minute-long songs. Over the space of a few months, I quickly began to totally immerse myself in these sounds, little by little. They sounded vintage yet frighteningly current, with the kind of spirit I had at the beginning of my career, which is to create musical atmospheres rather than pop songs” – remarks Cerrone.
Prefaced by the single ‘The Impact’ – released in September 2019 – DNA is largely a progressive house album with sonic elements of disco: flush with old-school synthesizers, syncopated basslines and dynamic drum fills. Cerrone creates a sense of nostalgia that never risks sounding stale, offset by the polished production and driving percussion. He continues to play live drums on all of his productions, never once employing a drum machine across the album’s nine tracks.
“With this album, I reconnected with a musical period that I’d pushed somewhat to the wayside. This was basically my whole electronic period at the end of the 70s for example, Supernature and the series of soundtracks for Gérard de Villiers’ and Brigade Mondaine’s erotic films”.
The full LP is now available everywhere, so let’s put some boogie in your ‘DNA’!