SUMMER TOUR 22 - Documentary
Summer 2022. The summer tour was amazing. A lot happened in a short time. In 3 months, I feel like years went by, filled with emotions. It was the craziest summer of my life. We didn't rest, doing shows, doing promotion, photo shootings, producing music.
I'm very happy because this summer I produced a lot while touring. A lot happened, I released some music, a lot to handle. We finished "Birds" with Emmanuel Jal just before the summer.
"Birds" is coming out tonight at midnight, that you heard in episode 0. "Fearless" was also released just before the summer. The next tracks are coming out. It's difficult to know if we still have the right view and the right memory of what we lived, but I think that this summer I had 10 of the top 20 shows of my career. There were some sick moments.
We played on bigger stages. The last real summer tour I did was in 2019, because last year, we walked on eggshells. In 2019, I didn't do much performing with a big audience. About 2000-3000 people during big shows. This summer I can't even count the number of shows with more than 10,000 people, I think about 10 with 10,000+ people.
We even did 20,000, even 25,000. If you told me a few years ago, that I would play in front of 25,000 people I wouldn't have believed it. For me, it's like performing in a stadium.
We passed some big milestones this summer. It feels good to see the promoters, the audience coming to the stage where I'm playing, and wait for me. Like for Solidays. Solidays was incredible because there was no one before me, during 1h30min. Hearing the people coming into the tent 5 minutes before I performed and when I went on stage, I could see it was completely packed. It was even more packed 20 min later, and even more packed 20 min later, in a popular festival.
The feeling was awesome. There were some very strong moments that made us feel good, giving us confidence in what we do. That's nice. We feel like we're doing this for a reason. I was also afraid, playing on bigger stages, in bigger festivals, to have less time.
People don't realize, but our days are only 24 hours long like the others and in the summer you have to put 48 hours in 24 hours every day. I slept 5 hours in a row since the day before yesterday. 3:30am I was afraid of losing my connection with people, something I always wanted to develop, that I always wanted to keep very early in my career. For my 1st album Umami, I did a live stream during which I revealed the album from home in a really cool way, with good vibes, we talked on the chat with people, it was really cool.
I was afraid to get bigger and do more and more big shows and to loose that. But that's why I do this job. Besides the music, it's about making connections with people and keeping them over time. And not just: you listen to what I do and pay for tickets to see me and that's it. I've always wanted to keep something strong.
This summer I really felt that. I felt like we were doing it. I love when we're one to one with a person or small groups, I can talk to people. We talk about what we like, we talk about music, where we're from... We share things. Being in the middle of a crowd with everyone wanting to take pictures with me is not something I enjoy, but it rather makes me anxious.
We had a lot of cool moments this summer with people and people we know like my buddy Piro, people we met in Sonar, in Madrid, with whom we had a really good time. All the artists that I like, that we met many times, like Yung Singh, Parviz, Hugo, Young Pulse, even Leo who is now part of our team, Dan Shake, Chaos in the CBD, Jayda G, the list is endless. Also, people who came just to enjoy the music.
I think of this guy who gave me a necklace in Monegros that was sick. Est-ce que je peux te le mettre? Je peux prendre une photo? Oui bien-sûr. I think of all the people with signs, I think of those who had words with me, who discussed with me, and not just a picture. There were lots of nice discussions with people, and nice encounters.
It's an absolute pleasure. Even in the streets, in the airports, we met people. Merci encore. Avec plaisir. Enchanté mec.
C'est trop cool de te rencontrer. It was always a good time. The people were really cool. It makes me feel good to know that we've kept that, and that we're not just becoming a name on lineups over and over again, without it really having a meaning, that we manage to have that thing where we all share something together. This moment is important.
Especially on a tour like this summer where we have 60 dates over a few months. Each of these dates had something special. It wasn't just about doing one more show and checking off the calendar. There was always something. In Dublin, at Forbidden Fruit, there was really something going on.
June 4, 2022 The energy tonight was crazy. Every time I play for Irish people, it's always dope. There was something special. At Solidays, there was something special.
At Rose Festival in Toulouse, I didn't think people were waiting for me but they were. September 3, 2022 There are a lot of people. They are in front of this stage, while someone is playing on the other one. Good thing. It was super cool.
During the smaller shows, it was nice too. In Mykonos or Ibiza, we were in more posh places, if I can say it like that. Where people are dressed nicely, they drink cocktails... It's not where I come from. We like to sweat and dance to the music. Even in these places, there was a real connection with people, all types of people.
People that I played for in Ibiza and Mykonos were not the same as the people I played for in Egypt, or in Dublin, London... All the shows were completely different. We played for a diversity of people and personalities that was wonderful to see. It makes me really happy. Sometimes the audience is young reacting in a way, sometimes people are older, sometimes there are a lot of people, sometimes less.
Some shows were incredible, it's hard to list them all, but as I said the Rose festival in Toulouse was overwhelming because unexpected. Field Day was overwhelming because I had a lot of friends there, my old roommate from London, Khazali with whom I did a track. I was really stressed about this show, because it's London, it was my first big festival in London.
There was a lot of pressure. I knew people were waiting for me, and I wanted them to enjoy a lot. 2 minutes. Almost there. Go dude. Sonar, because I can not even describe this feeling, you have to live it.
The alley was full of people, at least 15,000 people. June 18, 2022 3 minutes. I’m much more stressed than usual. I just want to start. I need to go on.
It was one of our first big shows, really impressive. Sonar was incredible. I played from 4 am to 6 am. People that know me know I don't play at that time.
It's not me. I'm not a night owl. But this moment was crazy. A sick moment. When I put the last track, and right before the last track, they turned off the lights. We were in a big alley and all the lights went out.
They turned off the lights and we noticed it was daylight. We could see the sky. It was incredible. When the lights turned back on, everything went dark again. In one shot, the lights were back and we're back in night mode but it was 6am. It went from night to day to night again.
Everyone went so crazy. It was amazing. A fantastic vibe at Sonar.
It was really impressive. It was crazy. There were so many like this.
Milan was incredible. The whole weekend we spent with Parviz in Italy was amazing. These shows were difficult, because the audience was people on holidays in the South of Italy, they have some expectations. Not always the kind of stuff we do. But it went really well. The promoter was nice, we had a really good time.
what the fuck ? The miraculous arch that leads to a lagoon. It was crazy. Dude. Your reaction. I didn't even look up.
It's incredible. Wow. It must be so beautiful during the day It was nice because every weekend, we went home and thought that this moment was once in a lifetime. Almost every weekend, we had one show that we will remember for the rest of our life. It was powerful and beautiful.
It's really nice to have had plenty of them in the summer, not only 1 or 2. We had enough so every week, we had one set like this. Croatia! That time we arrived in Croatia in a festival, we thought we would play 4 hours later, and actually, we played 10 min after arriving from the airport. We were sweating because it was hot. We went to the stage, and there was no one in the crowd. Completely empty.
And I had to play 5 min later. It looks complicated. I wondered what I was doing there. I had this a couple of times this summer "What am I doing here?", but that time was a big slap, and I thought "What I am doing here? It's 113°F, there is no one. We're doing the AV show in the day, so we can't see anything."
A lot was going on. I started to play, it got crowded in 10 min. After 10 min, we experienced an amazing set. I could play anything, people were going crazy. My sets are made to get a message across. To spread the message that we are all together, we are all equal, we all want to have a good time, be at peace and enjoy.
These moments are so important. Music is so much for that, so enjoy. I wanted to add an other dimension. The pandemic gave us some time to think about it. I had the idea of doing a "visual show" with boards that would move behind me, that would be monitored by someone according to the tracks I play.
Each show would be different. Already, there have never been two alike. On top of that, I had the ability to communicate with people through messages that I could display on the screens behind me. So if I wanted to thank them, or represent something other than with music I had messages available. Let's go! The tablet. It is not that complicated.
We asked for this setup. We have a 16/9 screen, the backgrounds are on the line below. For me, it's here.
These are nicer that the others. For example, galaxies. On nebulas, you can make diamonds appear. They are superimposed.
Or other visuals, like the bucket hat. Folamour loves it. I click to choose my visuals, there are a lot.
Then, I use the controller to put them... Yes, there is an RJ45 cable. Love Forever, Power to the People, Flowers...
When he clicks, messages appear on the screen. This was super cool. We did a tour last year based on this, we did another one at the beginning of the year. This summer we did that a lot as well.
But that's the end of this show because I want to move on to something else. This show was super cool. Unfortunately it was not always adapted to the different stages and screens.
It didn't have as much impact as I would have liked. I really wanted it to be immersive and unfortunately it wasn't always as immersive because of the stages, of the times I played. There were a lot of reasons why it wasn't always easy.
What's going on? There is too much wind. For the setup, we are screwed. The cloth is moving way too much. I can't think of any solution.
The wind is blowing behind the stage, there is no way to block it out. As it is video projection, it will be blurred and sharp and blurred again... So it can't work. Let's see what we can do, but there won't be any video I think. No AV show.
It happens. It's a pity. But I can do the lights. It's not possible? For the video, no.
How do you feel now? It sucks. The AV show on the side screens. We could do VJing on the sides. It's better than nothing.
Let's do it. They need to set up everything. It's annoying. The side screens can save the AV show. You're a master. There were a lot of reasons why it wasn't always easy.
I want to move on. I want something where I can interact with people even more, where I can integrate people into what's happening, even more than just being in the crowd, to have an impact on the overall vibe of the night. We are working hard on this.
This summer, there was also a lot of different music. I loved it. Whether in the things we saw.
We saw French Rap, we saw Jungle, we saw artists we like, we saw artists we didn't know what to expect. There were many positive things. I forget a lot for sure.
A lot of positive things. And there was the other stuff. The other stuff... There were some times... There were some hard times, because this job is hard.
Having to managed a really intense rhythm, combined with the pressure of doing things well, having to fight against going the easy way plus dealing with everything that’s not going well on the side is so tiring psychologically. Bro the energy that was here tonight… All the times when we slept very little. Like Berlin. We did Lovefest in Serbia, then we slept like 1h or 2h, then we went to Berlin and played twice, then we slept very little and went to Plages Electro to play for the fourth time in 48h. This job is very demanding and not because we want to do a lot and fast.
It's more that there are so many places to go, all the time, where people wait for me, and where I want to meet those people. In 8 days, I went home for 20 minutes, and spent 18 minutes in the shower, eating a sandwich. There are hard times because that's how the job is. This summer was difficult also because we had a lot of problems with the flights. We’re at Marseille’s airport and supposed to be leaving for Ibiza. From Palma to Ibiza, but there are no flights… We’re trying to find a solution.
But now we don’t even know if we’ll be able to get to Palma. I think we’re fucked because there’s nothing left. The stress is on. As you can see people are already boarding the plane to Palma. We don’t really know how things are gonna go.
So now we’re just looking for options. Fingers crossed. Clem, what are we doing then? We’re taking a flight to Palma de Mallorca and then we’ll have to find another solution. Maybe a ferry… It’s not that far. But we’re not swiming… I can’t take it… How can it take so long for one flight? Seriously… This one was really hard. It was never-ending… So from 8pm, access to the festival is blocked to the festival.
How are we gonna make it if we’re still stuck here… He’s taking things into his own hands. Do it! Force it open. Did you break it? Do I keep forcing it? Nah… Don’t do it. And all the hard times, due to people who are not respectful. Like in Parklife in Manchester, we had a stage manager who was not respectful, not nice with us. The stage manager was stressed out or whatever.
He acted in a very strict manner. He wanted us to finish beforehand as a precaution. But no way.
We only have a 1h set. When we arrived I said we were gonna finish on time. We weren't going to play past 11pm.
He didn't trust us and he wanted to turn off the sound. Bruno could not finish properly. He didn't want to go through me.
He was yelling on stage, so everyone could hear him, especially Bruno so he would stop the music. It was a rough way to do it. Honestly, we are cool and professional people. We are always on time, we're rigorous, we don't drink, we don't do drugs. This is our job, this is my job.
I come to have fun and share music, and I don't come to mess around and do stupid things. I come to do what I came to do. Sometimes, some people are really harsh, You don't connect with them at all, they want to show you who's the boss. This stage manager at Parklife was rough, we only wanted to have a good time. We like Manchester. I often go there.
Being on stage with this guy who's yelling at me, while I'm playing in front of people. He's yelling at me and pulling my clothes so I would stop playing 10 minutes before the scheduled time. It was really rough. I only have 1h to do my job. It is really short for a set. After 50 min, this guy says stop, when already I have 60 minutes only.
It's really rough. Bro it’s fucked, I was playing only 1 hour I’m so pissed off. There was that time. We had some tough times. Sometimes, all the flights would be cancelled and we didn't know if we were gonna make it. Sometimes, we wondered if the show was gonna happen.
And sometimes, we didn't make it. Glastonbury was a hard time as well. I'm still home. It is almost 2 pm. I should be on my way to Bristol to go to Glastonbury.
Yesterday, we canceled the show in Nantes, due to airline strikes. My flights are canceled to go to Glastonbury. This is war. Nothing’s lost, nothing’s won If we can’t managed it, what do we miss ? We won’t make it to Glastonbury, and this sucks Trying everything. We’re booking a flight to Paris now hoping we can find a way We might have one, but nothing is for sure. We’ve been through I don’t know how many options.
If we make it… It’ll be incredible… Stay tuned for the end result. Glastonbury was such a hard time. In For the Fam, you can't see it, because we can't express the sadness we feel when you've been waiting for something for years, I've been waiting for Glastonbury for years. All the English people I met told me: "man, go to Glastonbury".
We take a flight for Paris, because we don't live in Paris, we live in Marseille. We take a flight for Paris, we are at Charles de Gaulle in the terminal, and the next flight is announced late, and even more late. The flight is delayed. Never ending story. The flight is supposed to leave at 9:40pm.
Apparently, it will take off at 11 pm and I'm supposed to play at midnight. Let's hope for the best. We don't travel with private jets, but with commercial flights. We have to adapt to the flights available. Unfortunately, there are only a few options available.
1 heure plus tard. It sucks, I think we have to cancel. It's not over yet, but 99% sure we'll have to cancel Glastonbury.
It is 10 pm, and we are in Charles de Gaulle for nothing. We're tired of this. Clem, you did everything you could. What more could I have done? You did your best. We tried everything.
I was looking for seats and there were 3 seats in the plane. It sucks. The stars were not aligned. They rarely are these days. Paris, forced to cancel Glastonbury.
At that time, it broke my heart, it was really tough. We have a way of seeing things in this team, we always get back up and we focus on what's next. If there are still 10 shows in the next 15 days, you can't spend 3 days depressing over Glastonbury. We can't live like this. In Sziget, there was not enough volume. There is no sound.
Tell Bruno, I'm on it. They can't put louder. Before you it was the same. They are driving me crazy bro. I went to see them so many times, they are not doing anything. There is nobody on the side.
It's annoying. There were audio restrictions, it's not the festival's choice, the city imposed it on them. Sometimes it's difficult. There were a lot of things where we learned on the job.
There were a lot of times where we thought everything would go fine, and it didn't. Many times, we had much shorter nights than we thought. Many times, we struggled to eat. We are fighting to get something to eat We don’t share this enough in the vlog you don’t know how hard it is to eat Eating is a real sacrifice we need to do in our job. At least once a week, we are left without options for food. So before driving for 2.5 hours,
taking a shower and going to the festival. and after going to sleep, as we only have 2/3 hours to sleep, we stopped in a Serbian McDo. We're not sure what it'll be like. The life of a DJ is not what you think.
I'm happy because thanks to you in particular, we got motivated to work out. Since then, I've been working out a lot. It's really hard when we're always on tour to motivate ourselves to work out. In addition to all the time I spent on stage, I was 8-10-12 hours on stage per week.
It's hard to work out after this. You're exhausted. We got motivated. That's the first summer of touring, 2019/2020 I couldn't do it, first summer of touring where I didn't lose too much weight. That's nice.
But we struggled a lot to eat this summer. But we also went to really nice restaurants. Like in Madrid. We don’t know what to expect but it looks really epic.
It's awesome. I have chills. We had some amazing times.
Lost Village was incredible. I had a great experience there this year. I looked around, and I thought this is what a festival should be. Congrats guys, this is THE festival. Lost Village, let's go! It was awesome.
It was incredible. Dude, this one was amazing. I told Clem, I was close to tears. Me too. During these moments, I love to go in front. It was so cool.
We went to very organized festivals, like Sonar, the production is incredible. Monegros as well. Doing a festival like that in the middle of the desert, it's really impressive. But when you get to Lost Village, you feel something you don't feel anywhere else. They made me forget the business side, that it's a job, that some people are employed and work there.
Suddenly you feel like you're in an imaginary universe. As time went by, the hard times that were not due to this job, to fatigue or stress, became easier and easier, because we were doing better, we were more comfortable in doing everything together. We were more at ease with not so much sleep, to make sure that we were all awake, to manage to fall asleep, to eat. We were able to organize ourselves more to make the best of situations that weren't so nice. It was replaced by a kind of deep fatigue.
We faced big struggles this week, it was really annoying but.. we did it. I was tired, I had no sleep and nausea, but I was like let's go. When we left from here, I felt it would be impossible. Sick no? Yes so sick, but I'm dead.
The energy bar? The energy bar is at 0,5. Bro, Clem? It is at 0 bro. I felt that we were all slowly getting worn down by a deep fatigue. I felt reassured that the rest of the team, which is younger, suffered too. I thought that all was not lost.
Impossible to sleep. I slept a bit more but not so much. Did you sleep? Yes. One thing I remember from this summer is that the music I like, funk, soul, african music, house, even music that I create, is accepted on big stages, in big festivals.
Before, it was not like this. It's not because of me. A lot of people worked at the same time to get this music accepted on big stages. When I started, it was only Techno music. We performed on a lot of stages, where the people before and after me were not playing Techno music.
In the last 5 years, there has been a movement of democratization of organic music, of real live music, which is edited, which is made in an electronic way but with instruments, and that makes people dance. Even in popular festivals where people come to see rap music, you put some funk on and they'll love it. That's one thing I remember from this summer. Another thing I remember is that it feels nice to be part of a group. We were always 3 people, sometimes, 4, 5, 6 and it was so nice.
The all team is here, amazing. Yup. You look like an otter.
Welcome to the Folamour stand! The last thing I loved, and it was the first time of my career, was to produce a track and play it the same night. The sunrise in Barcelona was magical. We are at Sonar, Piro, Cheeto, a Spanish friend, are there.
You're shooting For the Fam, he talks to me at the end of my set. We hug, he said he had an amazing time. I can feel what he's feeling, so we hug again, we move on. We decided to make a very short format of one minute of Sonar, and to post it on Instagram. Everytime I opened Instagram, the first thing that played was this one, and the first words were: "From Barcelona to Heaven man".
I noticed I paid attention to these words, when he said them to me, but then I wasn't really listening. These words are wonderful He said he felt it in his body. And that night was from Barcelona to Heaven, it was incredible. I listened to these words again, and I thought they were wonderful.
I was really moved. Je le ressens. De Barcelone au Paradis mec. I had the idea to use these words. I exported the audio of this video. I processed the audio with software to remove all extraneous noise, as we were 10m away from a stage with music and 15,000 people.
I processed it as much as I could to clean it. Then I could use this audio. I worked on it during a weekend when we were touring, I finished it, I listened to it and I thought it was an amazing track. 2 days later I played in Monegros, I played the track for the first time.
That's funny because we landed in Barcelona, and went to the desert from there, so it was a quite funny thing. I played it and people loved it. We did 55 shows in the summer, I composed 6 or 7 tracks, we recorded in the studio at the beginning with Amadou & Mariam.
I completely forgot about this, it's in the first episode. This summer I met 2 artists, who are among the artists who moved me the most and that influenced me the most in the music I play. Amadou & Mariam. I did a track with them that I played during the summer, people loved it. It was really moving to create a track with them.
I didn't tell you earlier, but I've been dreaming about making a track with you for a long time. I've been a huge fan since I was a kid. I listened to your tracks Mon Cheri, Bofou Safou... thousands of times. I often play Bofou Safou during my sets. People love it.
People dance a lot. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
It was a pleasure for us as well. I did a track with Nassim, my good friend, in the last episode. How are you? I'm fine and you? Good. What's up? Can you put a loop on the 2nd half of the loop we have please? That's good. Yeah that's what we need. The track with my friend Nassim was completely sick, I love him so much, and that night he came to KM25, he was really excited and in a good mood.
It's like with Antoine or Young Pulse. These people make you happy. When you see them, you're happy. When you're with Nassim, you're so happy. We need something that rhymes with Shalamar. It's a strong word.
Rhyming dictionary. With AR. Carambar. Blablacar. You're laughing but that's how we'll find good words. My birthday at Nuits Sonores was completely crazy.
At home, well not at home anymore, but in the city where I played for a long time, with Elliott which is like family, the cake shaped as bucket hat, which was a complete surprise. Cheers, happy birthday man. Wow thank you so much.
A lot happened. In addition to that, we worked on the launch of the label, which I have been dreaming about for a long time. We are starting now we already have 3 incredible releases, and it's completely dope.
People can't even imagine what's coming. It was an incredible adventure. The final word is for you obviously, for the people.
You made this summer incredible, even during difficult sets, even in the festivals where we were not treated properly, even during days where we had no sleep, people were amazing. Everywhere. In all the shows, we met people with a nice vibe, that just wanted to have fun with us, people filled with love, we were also filled with love for them. Each show was special thanks to you. This summer was incredible thanks to you.
You were wonderful. I can't wait to play for you again. A page is turned but a new one begins. Winter season is coming, spring and fall until next summer.
I'm sure we'll see each other again during shows. Thank you so much. You were amazing, you gave us so much love.
We were all really moved during the tour. We didn't always show this during the For the Fam, as once again it is something we feel, so it's not easy to show this, but we all talked about it at some times, we had tears in our eyes during a lot of sets, where we could feel something inside. All of this thanks to you. Thanks to everything you gave us, all of the good energy you spread around, all the people that came with big smile, with posters, who came to say hi in the street saying they loved it, even the people that came to say hi to my team, telling them they watch For the Fam, and that's incredible. It gives us so much strength.
Sometimes you can forget the impact it has on people. Sometimes there can be such a gap between the artists, the people who work in art and the people who enjoy their work, their music or their movies. We can forget that the gap is not that big. We are directly connected.
You like my music, you come to my sets and enjoy, and I enjoy spending this time with you listening to the music and dancing. We have a connection that's much closer and much stronger, than you might think as we can think I'm just a guy on Instagram making music, but you really matter. This summer we really felt it, and every weekend we had times where we were really moved, where we had goosebumps or tears in our eyes. There are moments when I was on stage and I was really moved. All of this thanks to you. I can't wait to play for you again, to grow together, to show you everything we are working on, we're not here to sleep, we won't do the same thing for 10 years, we're here to always do more, and offer you more immersive and incredible stuff.
I always work on my music to make it more interesting, and that it moves you as much as possible, or as much as it moves me, because I would like it to tell a story. I can't wait to see you again, maybe in the fall, winter, spring or summer. Thank you so much. See you soon.
2022-11-07 13:36
