LVLSRVRYHI-051: La Vie C'est Facile | The Levels Are Very High
Hey guys how's it going? I usually start with the introductions so, for anyone who doesn't know, who are you / where are you from?
Hi, we are 2 cousins Nico & Joka aka La Vie c’est facile, we’re both from Switzerland and started djing and doing music together around 6 years ago.
I (Nico) Live now in London and Joka is still in Switzerland but we actively continue our music projects together.
What music did you grow up listening to?
We both grew up with hiphop and rap / Fr rap music. When we started being involved and doing music we constantly have been inspired by different electronic music current and trends but especially the UK scene.
Producer duos and groups in general aren't that common in contemporary club and online dance music culture. What led you to two to start working together? Have then been any challenges along the way?
We have always done a lot together beside music, trying different things since our childhood.
In 2010 we were living together and starting to djing, practicing in our small flat an organizing a few partys in our basement. The sound production came naturally a few years later.
We didn’t had hard challenges, even now, we’re not living in the same country, we had to change our way to produce together but a the end the distance is not a problem.
It’s true that’s not really common and especially for us it’s nice to be always 2, like to share the pleasure when we play, to learn things from each other, to get motivation or to don’t get bored when we travel to play in another city.
For me, your name - translated to English as "Life is Easy" - and the happy grinning face that you use as a logo come across as almost tongue-in-cheek or even completely ironic choices when married to the palpable dread of your music. Where did the La Vie C'est Facile name come from? Is the contradiction intentional?
In fact the contradiction was not intentional. It’s just reflect the mood we were into when we started djing.
Yes we think that a happy face is a nice/funny message, rather than an irony.
Tell me a bit about your production process. Do you each bring different elements to the table when putting together a track - like, are there parts in a track that you can pick out and say "that's a Nico snare" or "that patch was Jo's idea"?
Not really, usually we more speak about the mood or the concept on what a track or an EP will look like, speaking about the arrangement, the melody the use of the drums for example. For the sonic part we agree with each other on a same kind of aesthetic even if our good friends sometimes can say that’s sound a bit more Nico or Joka.
Usually one of us start a project and send it to the other. We’re doing this Ping-Pong mode till the track is finished. So that’s why it’s not really a problem to not live in the same city.
Raw Shepherd, the EP you recently self-released on your Bandcamp, is almost entirely made up of collabs (with Detente, Nunu, and Modulaw all contributing) - save for the closing ambient track. What was the intention behind that approach? What was it like to work with the other artists and how did they fit into your dynamic?
For us, this was a special and very personal project 100% self-released. They are all artists and friends within musical universes we like a lot. Each collaboration is the fruit of several exchange/ping pong between LVCF and the producers. We try to have a strength concept at the beginning but it didn’t worked very good, so we just go more spontaneous with the music and trying to always show the aspect of the collaborations in every tracks but the whole process was quite long. At the end we think that this project is working really good as an EP.
From the acidic Grimey cuts on the Fun Zone EP for Creaked to the doom-laden marches for Tessier-Ashpool and the more nimble tracks of Raw Shepherd, what's impressive when taking into account the three major releases you've put together is the breadth of styles featured - something that's also present in fellow Swiss producers Lemonick's and Krizzli's output. How much does experimentation feature in your production process? What defines, for you, an LVCF track?
Experimentations are always being a big source of motivation when doing music, we still love french rap and grime for example but we constantly walk a different way and come back with new inspirations or crushes in music, that’s very important, and the style or the touch you can notice in our music is our still in development even if you can maybe notice a certain grain or some similar elements here and there in our different sounds.
Did you set out with a particular idea or theme when picking out the tracks for the mix? How did you go about recording it?
We first did a selection separately and then we put them on DropBox and it was funny because we really didn’t know a lot of the music in each other selection but at the same time we had the same style of music in our both selection so it directly gave a mood like how the mix will sounds like.
You can find some of our friend’s music, some very sonic and textural or more melodic sounds inside. It's a kind of reassuring chaos story.
What's next for you in the rest of 2017?
Making new music for some labels, collaborations with a friends for a perfume, starting with organising party in London (like the release for Raw shepherd) and continuing organising the ones in Switzerland…
If you had to pick something for people to listen to immediately after this mix what would it be?
Sawmal - Hier
Tracklist:
ICY FLAME - UNSTOPPABLE
OkLou - Defeat
KEISKA - BOBBY V REMIX
W3C - Ascension (Intro)
Happa - Hallucinations
??? - ??? (Eskro141 edit)
111X - Aggressions
v1984 - 02052014 zendaya skizzetch
Swan Meat & Yoshitaka Hikawa - Wilt
Staingate - Defensa
Jikuroux - Doubt
WULFFLUW94 - NGHT THGGN
Clu - Trance Lament
LVCF x DETENTE - II
ALEXALFONS - TRANSPARENCY
AWRWSW - HOLD ON 2 ME (FT. GXXOST)
ALEXALFONS - KABI
Wumpa Fruit - Gutterball
Eaves - Seas 2 (||FLORA Remix)
Shapednoise x Visionist (Nunu Edit)
Dutch E Germ - Black Sea
Egyptrixx - We Can Be Concrete
RYKT - ZOiD
Freeze Corleone 667 - Ekip (prod by CashMoneyAp & JoeyTheProducer)
