One of the prime producers who helped define the modern-times sound trend of the french house music. Swam with the big sharks such as Alan Braxe, Fred Falke and Kris Menace and pinned remixes for countless top bands and artists along many originals via Work It Baby & Vultures. It’s time he takes matters into his own hands. Behold the birth of Lifelike’s own label ‘Computer Science’. Interview below:

Everyone knows who Lifelike is, tell us about where you are now in your career and your newly launched label ‘Computer Science’?

Computer Science just started early this spring, so its really like a baby right now, I hope it will grow up fast and gives everybody a lot of other babies. I can’t tell where i am in my carreer, as to be honest, i never planned anything in there, i just do the way it goes, as relaxed as possible and try to release the best music i can.

Like your friends Kris Menace and Alan Braxe, we expected you to have started your own label ages ago, why now?

Well, 5 years ago after “Discopolis” successfull year i had the opportunity to release a record with Wall Of Sound in the UK (”So Electric”), so this pushed me away from the “do it yourself” part of building a label, and also i didnt have the pressure that Kris had right from the start, like building his artist name and trying to rush records out to be more known. The fact that I released already in the late 90’s and early 2000 on the french label 20000ST, helped me a lot to get the connections out there, so I didnt feel I had the pressure to release on my own and go fast to be more known.

I wanted to continue and sign again with Alan on Vulture, so I did with “Sunset” and probably more soon again. I’m pretty slow at having the right track ready to be released, i released only 2 records since Discopolis, i didnt feel that I needed to release on my own until now.

Is Computer Science strictly for Lifelike releases?

Right now, yes. I think that, just like Alan in the past, I need to be focused on a few projects and for that its better that I just concentrate on my music. We’re not so many people working in the label, it’s a very small company, we wouldn’t have the time to take care of everybody if we would start to sign a lot of newcomers unfortunately.

What kind of music will you be focusing on releasing?

I have this new single “Love Emulator” that shows maybe a bit what i will try to do. Between electro-pop and house music, somewhere in there, like i do since 10years now. We plan to do a “Love Emulator” remixed by the end of September/October and then something more radical, I have a few tracks i wanna release this winter, and they are totally 80’s, like something you wont hear anywhere else, I hope!

You’ve got your own signature sound, is it difficult to create music while sticking to your signature style and still keep it fresh?

Sometimes yes, it can happen, I sit in the studio and ask myself if what I’m doing, remixes or working on my music, is fresh ? how will people look at it ? That’s also why it was urgent for me to change a bit of the content of my music with ‘Love Emulator’. I wanted to use rap vocals, but I wasn’t sure at all how this would sound on my music… I was really surprised to hear that it sounded great. Then I had this feeling like “wow, now again something moved in my music, it’s brilliant times, lets do it”

What formats will the Computer Science releases be distributed on and Why?

Right now only Digital distribution has been discussed with our partners. But we’re not excluding a possibility to do a small vinyl pressing soon if there is enough demands.

We chose to stay with the Digital Release mostly because people dont buy CD’s and vinyls anymore, basically it’s not that we can’t press those records, it’s just that there are not enough people that would buy it, not in sufficient quantities for us to recoup the costs of the pressing.

5 years ago we sold a tremendous quantity of the infamous “Discopolis” as an example (around 20000 vinyls and almost the same with CD’s), but today the market has changed totally, only a few afficionados are still buying physical support, unfortunetaly, i really regret that, but it’s life, we got to move on.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of running an online music label in oppose to being signed to one?

The best thing is that you can really plan things the way you want it, nobody will come and tell you, “no we better do like this or like that”, the less cool side is that you have to pay for everything, but let’s say thats it’s the price of your liberty somehow. I decided to even build my own store, so that I can sometimes sell music through the ‘Computer Science’ website. Like now we have this exclusive offer that you can download the full EP plus an unreleased bonus track and you can buy it all on ‘Computer Science’ website. The offer is there for 1 more week then it will be available on normal digital retail stores.

For income, do you depend on your music sales only? How do you fund your label?

Oh no, i dont even think about making money with my release right now, and it has always been like that, we never thought that “Discopolis” would work that well to be honest, the record got released in June, and has a super ibiza season, we didnt know about it, it was only in September that we noticed that the record was on every DJ playlist on the internet.
The money comes from my own pocket, mostly from my DJ gigs, but its fine it’s not like horribly expensive to promote a record, it is possible to do it on your own, as long as you have the right promo agency.

Why is the internet so important to Artists and Labels nowadays?

It’s a very creative way to promote your artist name, your label or anything related to your releases if you are a record label. It’s great, efficient and fast, people have instant access to the music, no need to run to a shop when it’s cold outside or wait for your order from blabla records online that take ages to get delivered.

What online tools and services are you using to achieve your promotional goals?

Well, Fairtilizer is one of those tools, but also Soundcloud, MySpace music, Facebook, iTunes to name a few of them.
And we do have our own websites, like www.computerscience.fr where we sell our music, or www.lifelike-music.com etc…

What is the best way you can incorporate a music service such as Fairtilizer in your promotional strategy?

The best way is to do a big mailing to different key people in the buisiness and music industry, and the keys blogs, you can then count on a very fast internet spreading.

Are you part of any community/social-network where you can stay connected to your fans?

yes of course, we have myspace page, facebook fan page and soundcloud recently added.

Tell us about the first release and the collaborations on it?

“Love Emulator” is a kind of weird story, I had this track as an instrumental for months and planned to release it like a typical club track. We had been already started the promotion around this track when I finalized the vocal version. The vocal mix sounded so great that me and my manager decided to drop the instrumental on the way and go for the vocal track. We had those great choruses from Yota, she had already been featuring my last record on Alan Braxe’s Vulture record named “Sunset” and because she insisted to give it a try I sent her the instrumental. When I received the demo with her voice I was like “wow it’s briliant, but why wouldn’t we go further and add even more vocals ?”. And here we are, my manager connected us with Atlantic records in LA and we got this incredible rap topline from Namebrand, a fresh new guy over there, he has been working with Kelis already, he’s a brilliant singer really, his voice just took the track somewhere else.

Leaks are unavoidable, especially with releases in demand, how do you usually deal with that?

We didnt promote the single with any CD’s, even for journalists, we didnt post it anywhere and we refused also to give it away for free promo purpose or to blogs. Selected journalists, bloggers could hear it if logged into an account with a secured page. I know this sounds paranoiac, but it worked actually, we couldnt’ leak it anywhere on the internet until last monday, date of the official release. I was really happy with that. Also people hear about a new release, but couldnt get it anywhere so they had to wait, glad to see that finally nobody was bothered to not being able to download it.

Computer Science website
Computer Science Fairtilizer profile
Lifelike website
Lifelike Myspace page
Lifelike Facebook page