Today, we bring you some French flavor. Three supertalented guys from Paris. They are musicians, fashion designers, artists, illustrators, producers, grafitti artists, all in one crew. They probably don't need sleep and have robot alter egos, we're not sure. What we of NERD Fest. Berlin are sure of is that they totally rock!!! Okay, now make way for the PERFECT LOOSERS!
Perfect Loosers: To be honest, we don’t consider ourselves as real losers. But part of us is nerdy, when we spend hours and hours doing beats in studio, playing with some machines, mixing tunes. Nothing else exists around.
NFB: How would you define being a Nerd, especially a Nerd that’s into music – and DJing and partying?
Perfect Loosers: Music is our life, that’s kind of nerdy. Being on stage with some turntables, machines or whatever we use is what we enjoy the most and that’s why we work hard to get there. Being a nerd for us, is a state of mind where you are ultra focused on what you do or create, be it music, painting, designing clothes....
NFB: All three of you are from Paris, France? What’s the music scene like that you’re in?
Perfect Loosers: Sigisbert and Mast are from Lille, Waly is from Paris. But we all live in Paris.
Music scene is quite rich actually, some people are doing great job like Sound Pellegrino, Youngunz, or ,Club Cheval for example. But we wish we had more crossover scenes, mixing different influences like dancehall, funky, house, garage, dubstep in the same crowd.
NFB: Tell us about your musical style. We saw that you are signed to Akwaaba Music, a label that is mainly bringing out African music, right? How did this come about?
Perfect Loosers: We like all kind of music, from reggae to dancehall to house to African music to techno to electronica to funky to garage to dubstep to hip hop to rock to pop to everything. We don’t want to be put in a single box. We produce music that we like, no matter what it is.
We are signed to Akwaaba on some particular projects. We participated to a remix contest for Angola Kuduro artist Figura on his tune “Ze Bula” a year and a half ago. This track was the starting point of our collaboration with Bbrave (boss of Akwaaba Music). After this project, he came to our studio in the suburb of Paris with tones of traditional stems by Ahmed Fofana, Baba Salah and Onyenze. Treasures he’d accumulated on his travels to West Africa. It took us some time to put the stems in order and sample them. Then we wanted to go a few steps beyond remixing classic world music and instead piece together a full length compilation where Africa would meet the club scenes from all around the world. “Perfect Loosers present Akwaaba” was born.
NFB: All three of you have different artistic backgrounds. One is a fashion designer, the other a graffiti artist/graphic designer/illustrator and one a DJ/producer. How did you end up forming a band?
Perfect Loosers: Yes, that’s right, we have different backgrounds. Mast and Waly are doing the beats when Sigisbert is doing some clothes. Mast is a graffiti artist/Graphic designer as well. We all work in the same warehouse. One day, before a party at Social Club in Paris, Waly and Mast asked Sigisbert to entertain their set as he’s doing that for his reggae crew “12Sound” from Lille. That’s how we ended up forming the band.
We sometimes do our music separately and sometimes together in the studio, it really depends. We share sessions as we work on the computer when we create separately. And we have jam sessions on the machines when we are together in the studio. We have different kind of hardware drum machines and synths. We like to work analog because it’s lots of fun compared to the usual work with computer and mouse.
NFB: You’re doing your album cover and other designs yourself?
Perfect Loosers (Mast): I started doing graffiti when I was a teenager, then I went into the world of graphic design, painting and illustration. It was a natural consequence that I make the artwork for the band. That’s part of our project, of our concept.
NFB: Do you think the idea or perception of what it means to be considered a Nerd - or loser - has changed?
Perfect Loosers: We all grew up watching some American TV shows where the nerd is also a loser that doesn’t know how to dress up or talk to the ladies…. That perception of the nerd hasn’t changed!!
NFB: Last questions: Who’s the “perfect looser” to you? Do you have any role models?
Perfect Loosers: Oh, yes, we have one. The French actor Pierre Richard!
Here is an extract of their next EP coming out in June 2011 :
To top it all off, they have this amazing website called
Badwinners.
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