Allez-Allez are Bloggers & Dj’s Sam Willis and Steve Nolan, they can be found playing kraut, electro or disco in a venue near you. They’ll be in Paris on June 6th for the Blog Digger party, in collaboration with Fairtilizer, so don’t miss them!

What’s the story behind allez-allez?
Myself (Sam) and Steve are two music lovers who came together over a shared love of deep music of all variety – disco, techno, krautrock, house… We try to use the knowledge we have to bind together the shared spirit and soul that links together the music of bands or individuals such as Can, Arthur Russell, Isolee, Carl Craig, Madlib, Four Tet et al. as well as the more obscure sounds that unfairly never reached a larger audience. We believe in talking up, not down to our audience!

5 tracks that define the allez-allez sound?

Ricardo Villalobos – Easy Lee (Smith N Hack Remix)
Ada- I Love Asphalt
Animal Collective – For Reverend Green
808 State – Flow Coma (Aphex Twin Remix)
Heiko Voss – I Think About You

How do you interact with artists and record labels?
we approach labels / artists that we’re into and explain the ethos behind what we’re about on the site. our posts / mixes are about supporting labels / artists and encouraging people to check out and maybe buy the release that’s being promoted, and also to check out some of the great music that’s featured on the podcasts..

How do you interact with the rest of the musical blogosphere?
We’re not featured on hype machine due to the technicality that we’re not an ‘mp3 blog’, so that has meant that people have kind of discovered us through word of mouth recommendation, and the kind words / links of other bloggers who we have stuff in common with. It’s nice to see that there’s a real range of people who’re into what we do – we’re not interested in being pigeon holed as a ‘minimal’ blog or a ‘disco’ blog or whatever… although this means that we’re never super trendy, we feel we’re in this for the right reasons, and for the long haul! I think also that some of the bigger name mixes we have such as Hot Chip, Four Tet, Nathan Fake, Lindstrom etc. draw people in who then explore the 100 + mixes on the site, which include some real gems, such as the (now sadly departed) One More Grain mix.

How do you see the blog game evolving? Are music blogger the new A&R’s? Tastemakers?
Definitely, bloggers are a really important way of finding out about music full stop, never mind new or old – stuff by harmonia, or silver apples or the like, if anything is even more relevant and fascinating in a modern context than it was at the time of its release. As someone who’s worked in the music industry for nearly a decade now, I think one of the revolutionary things about blogs is that they operate outside of the text book promotional model, which is that the likes of our good friends at 20 Jazz Funk Greats will write about a Throbbing Gristle record or Manuel Gottesching just because they feel like it on that particular day, rather than because some major label are re-issueing the back catalogue… for that reason there’s an increased sincerity, and thus a greater level of trust with the readership / audience.

In that way it means that people all over the world can get to hear about a forward thinking new band with great songs a hell of a lot quicker and easier, rather than waiting for the fuddy duddy accepted ‘gatekeepers’ in the form of the traditional music print media to get on board, who are left struggling in the wake, and having to appease their advertisers, i.e. the labels..

What initiative, in terms of music & internet, has lately drawn your attention?
Spotify is a huge leap forward for me / us in that it’s so much easier now to check out music you haven’t heard and get a good idea of whether it’s worth you buying or not, as opposed to itunes’ 30 second clips… I can fully explore Tangerine Dreams back cat now, and easily wade through the overblown stuff to get to the krauty goodness!

What’s your Fairtilizer’s mix about?
I tried to do something a bit different, and a bit slower, more song based… good for toasting marshmallows on a fire but on a sunny day…

Any new bands/labels/producers currently floating your boat that we should look out for?
As always, all of our good friends at Border Community (James Holden, Nathan Fake, Luke Abbott, Wesley Matsell, Avus and Ricardo Tobar) are consistently bringing the goodness, plus Appleblim and Shackleton, oh, and the new Gossip album sounds awesome – particularly a track called ‘Love Long Distance’ – one of the anthems of this year – trust me!

What is your favorite word?

Squelch!

Visit Allez-Allez website
Visit Blog Digger Fairtilizer profile
Visit Blog Digger Website

Tracklisting:

Heaps Of Sheeps Mix by Sam (Allez-Allez)

Arthur Russell – Maybe She
High Places – Jump In (For Gilkey Elementary School)
Nav Katze – Ziggy (Aphex Twin Mix)
Deer Hunter – Little Kids
Robert Wyatt – Heaps Of Sheeps
Vangelis – Keep Asking
Von Sudenfed – That Sound Wiped
Mikkel Metal – Kaluga