Where did you guys meet and how did you decide to start ‘You Man’? And how did you decide on the name?

We met in Calais, a very small city in northern France.

There was a wooden club on the beach called “Planet Circus”, and we spent a lot of time there when we were teenagers. That place was very strange!

It was like a very big wooden cabin in the middle of a desert.

We discovered house, techno, and many other types of electronic music there.

We started making music together 20 years ago and we’ve never stopped making music together since.

And one day, ‘You Man’ arrived.

How and when did you get into djing and decide to start making music?

We started to play together around 2005.

It was in a small club in Lille, SuperMarket, which was 150 meters from our home. 

We didn’t even know how to mix, so we prepared almost ready-made sets of music, editing the mixes like mashups, like the 2 many dj’s did.

It took a long time, but we had a lot of fun 🙂

What is your routine when creating a new track?

We create a lot of small loops, from 20 to 30 sec maximum.

Loops that we make do almost everywhere, in the studio, in a park, on the train. 

It’s even better if you see the decor moving while we play, the movement is very inspiring.

We then choose the one we prefer and which seems to have the most material and after that we finish the structure and the mixing in the studio.

A certain form of innocence and condor are very important in creation, and therefore we try to keep a certain naivety in our way of composing music.

What key pieces of gear/software are you using to define your sound right now?

Our configuration is very simple: Ableton Live, samples, plug-ins, Love, and motivation.

You are from Lille. What is the electronic music scene like there?

There is a great emulation and creativity between artists in this city! 

There is a big level of open minded people, self-assured creators like Kimshies, Jerge, Kubébé, Camposs, Address Hymen, Rocky, Azur .. who are up for anything, just as long as there is a good groove.

We think it’s maybe because of the equidistance of the city from England (1h), Belgium (20 minutes), and Paris (1h).

“The crossroads of Europe” as they say in the town hall brochures, hehe.

We can feel it. And we love it.

We’d like to know more about the men behind, ‘You Man’. What kind of music do you listen to when you are at home?

Giac: All kinds of music. Yourself, could you say that you listen to one or two particular styles of music?

There is so much style today that there is only one: music. And even good music! But that’s different for each of us.

But if it was absolutely necessary to find an answer, I would say that at home I listen to a lot of english pop rock, artists like Damon Albarn or Thom Yorke do catch my attention.

I also really like classic music like Claude Debussy or Erik Satie, and I have a huge love for everything Agnes Obel does.

I have also been a fan of the Chemical Brothers since I first heard them.

Tepat: It depends on what I’m doing. 

If I am working, then I prefer to listen to music without too many melodies. 

There is music designed for that, it sounds a bit like meditative music, or for personal development. It really helps me focus. 

If I am melancholic, I like to listen to sad pop music like Radiohead, the Good the Bad and the Queen, Caribou. 

And if I want to have fun, I will listen to sounds from the “dark disco” scene, you could say it’s the nu nu new wave disco psychedelic, hehe. 

It’s on SoundCloud, there are some tons, I can listen to them for hours.

 Manfredas, Curses, Thomass Jackson, Local Suicide, Red Axes …