ITW : AFTER O’CLOCK x GLAZART [ANTOINE HUSSON]

After a long break due to a wonderful Covid, Arnaud and Michael bosses from the Glazart decided to develop a new concept of after and day’s parties named After O’clock. They decided to push the concept and develop a real creative pool behind, with close than 15 resident artists plus guests. After less than a year of success I proposed to them to develop a label to push further our wishes of creativity and spread the word farther on the international side, then After O’clock record was born. It was a logical step after a first year of great moments.

Hello Antoine, thank you for your time. I am happy to welcome you back to InDepth. The Parisian techno scene knows you as Electric Rescue (your main musical project), but also as the founder of Skryptöm and as the artistic director of Kilomètre 25 and After O’Clock. Can you tell us more about your involvement in the Parisian and French techno scene?

I’m a simple techno lover who discovered techno at the end of the 80’s and started to get out in 1990. This passion never left me. I started to be a DJ in 1990, I started to produce and develop parties, labels and personal productions in the 90s and I never could stop. I was programming my own warehouse parties around Paris and at Rex Club, where I was resident for 25 years (with Skryptöm parties). I left Rex Club in 2019, so Arnaud proposed to me to join the Kilometre 25 team, firstly with the Skryptöm party and more recently, in September 2022, we started to develop After O’clock parties with all the team at Glazart. Beside this I continue to develop my own imprint Skryptöm with around 20 artists. I help them to push their wishes as far as I can. And sometimes I try to find time to push my own music. I really love to share a lot with many people from the scene. It’s so rich. I also develop some immersion and numeric art projects, like Skryptöbox or UFO of creativity.

Today we will focus on After O’Clock. For our readers who don’t know your influences or your after parties at Glazart yet, how would you describe the sound and the atmosphere of After O’Clock?

To start, it’s really important to say that this after party is not my own creation, it’s Arnaud and Michael (from Glazart) who really proposed that project. To be clear, I was not so much into the “after party mood” at the beginning but as I really trust them I push 100% of myself into the artistic mood of that event. 

And to be honest the first time I went there I had a big surprise. I didn’t myself into an after party but more into a super energetic and smiley party, something I totally wasn’t expecting. And this new meeting made me love the after parties again. So artistically the idea was to develop a team of artists with a true pure spirit of the culture of the differences, humanly and musically. It was the basis of the music choices, then I proposed a part of the team and Arnaud proposed another part. We had some common proposals and some different but everybody is now here. And we have a really eclectic vision of techno from today. We tried sometimes to push different kind of music like drum and bass, breaks, minimal or house, they are not the main music but people always follow, it’s really incredible, even if the main music is actual techno. With that basis we could see that the public is really open minded, relax and safe.

After O’Clock define the unmissable after parties of the French capital, but a few weeks ago, you announced another great news. You are launching a new label. How does an after party collective decide to launch a label? And what about your first release?

Yes, it was important after a year of success to not always repeat ourselves and develop something fresh, then we asked to the resident team and also to the artists who are coming regularly to propose us some demo tracks and push a musical identity from the party outside the club and propose it to the public outside and to the international public. 

It’s also really important for us to develop the future of our artists and help them to go farther, higher and represent France or Paris outside our borders. The label is the first step from that. I have other ideas I will submit to Arnaud and Michael in the future but step by step, we have to build something creative, with energy and sincerity.

So the first release arrived in December with Alys, Kuss, Double Trouble, Shaney and Ket Robinson. Alys, Kuss and Double Trouble are resident artists who are exploding these days on the scene and have more and more gigs. Shaney and Ket robinson are recurrent artists from the party and also develop their own label S-Label and KR recordings, who are really promising labels.

After that we will have the second release who will arrive at the end of the summer on february 24^th with other residents KMYLE, WLderz, Kamen and Giselh. And like this, each season we will propose a record from our residents, recurrents or guests. We started with Autumn 2022, next winter 2023 then spring 2023 etc … I hope that we will go super far, let’s see…

What are the plans for the next few months with the after parties and the label? Have you already planned the next release?

As I told you we already planned the winter one and I’m actually preparing the spring one, I have tracks from resident, but also recurrent as usual but it’s not 100% completed I don’t want to prepare it too early to keep it as fresh as we can, things are moving so fast in techno it’s important to be reactive and develop with the right sounds.

Things are moving so fast in techno, it’s important to be reactive and develop with the right sounds

Antoine Husson

As an artistic director and label owner, you probably receive lots of demos or requests. What makes you decide whether or not you work with an artist? And how would you define a good artistic director?

There are no rules to be honest for Skryptöm, it’s just the music that makes me crazy. For After O’clock, it’s bit different, it’s the same, the music have to make the team crazy, but I have to find this craziness into the resident, recurrents or sometimes some guest and the second important things is that they have to play into the After O’clock to feel the vibe and reproduce it into the tracks.

After O’Clock is supporting a new generation of dj’s and artists. There are also a lot of French artists coming through the international scene right now, which artists do you think we should keep an eye on?

I don’t want to make distortion between our team, but the fact at the moment is that we have some artist that we pushed with After O’clock or Skryptöm that are starting to explode like KUSS, ALYS, but also in a different kind of music DOUBLE TROUBLE who’ve just done transmusicales de Rennes. In the teal we have more established artists like Wlderz, Jee, Street Machine, Pepperpot, Kmyle but I’m sure that very soon things will happen to Paola, A.Mo, Hayashi, Scry, Rrose Selavy, or Absolute. Also follow the Venus Agency, they push the women to develop artistic engagements into music and career and their actions are super importants.

Techno as a musical subculture has undoubtedly grown in popularity in the past 3 years or so. How do you feel about the scene at the moment and what do you think is next for the genre? Where do you think it will go?

Yes it was too much grown and bad things arrived through social media like cheap music, or people without good feeling but beside this we also discovered a lot of new talents only focus on music and human equality that enjoyed us and gave us a lot of energy, then artists like Kuss or Shaney proposed again superclass techno, modern and creative not like shit remix from silly music. But I also met some interesting publics turned into music more than into videos or pictures. I hope that this way of growing will continue more and more to develop more and more the creativity and pleasure of everyone.

During our last conversation, you told me about another exciting news. You were talking about a new club in Paris, can you tell us more? 

There are many super cool things which are arriving but it’s a bit too early to speak about that, but you will be super welcome in the very first one to spread the word with us in a close future 😉 

Exciting, yes that’s the word from our team’s future !