Para One’s New Album ‘Club’ is By and For the People

"I've been making people dance for more than ten years and there was no equivalent in my discography," Para One says over the phone a couple of weeks before the release of his new album, Club.  "I needed to make an album that would reflect that going out, partying, getting crazy."

Such is the origin of Para One's fourth LP, out today via Big Beat Records/Because Music. If the producer's fans also want a party vibe, Club doesn't disappoint. For a DJ who got his start in 1998 producing in the French rap group TTC and hasn't stopped since, it's no surprise he knows exactly what the clubs are looking for.

Para One first got involved in the second major wave of French dance music in the 2000s when Ed Banger helped develop the "really poppy, catchy, banging house music." People like Cassius and SebastiAn along with Para One ran the dance music scene. Fourteen years later, that sound is old to the new generation ravers of France, and Para One is back leading the next new wave. "We're going back to techno, hipper stuff and the early house stuff as well," he explains. "I think it's really healthy to go back to that."

Unlike his previous three albums, which were "made to be listened to one person at a time," Club is a celebration of this new vibrant club scene. While his earlier works were "like a letter from one person to another," this is explicitly about the party.

In a move unheard of for electronic music, most cuts on the album was recorded live and the ones that weren't were played live and altered according to crowd response for maximum club impact. In this way, the creation of Club was a truly democratic—by and for the people.

Para One had to work differently to create the desired effect. "It needed to sound good and it needed to have some kind of impact, so that was really driving the work," he says. "I found many different solutions to make dance tracks starting from tunes that were not really dance tracks. I stripped them down to the bone and split them into tiny elements, used every sample and then rearranged them."

The transition to Club comes at an interesting time for Para One who has experimented and transitioned with his own relationship to clubbing: He spent much of the past year sober.

"I did not drink one drop of alcohol. I was really bored with getting high all the time and it also affected my work," he said. "I used to be all about shots and when Jagermeister arrived on the market I was all about Jagermeister—it was really about getting super drunk."

As such, his whole view on the experience has transformed. "It's interesting to be sober in a club because you understand that you actually get high from the music and the atmosphere and the people," Para One explained. "Sometimes of course it can get a bit annoying when someone is super high and you're just absolutely sober, but I have different standards now. When I go to a club there has to be either some of my best friends or the best music because there is no other reason for me to go."

Only now that he understands his limits and goals, he's going back to some controlled drinking, "Now I'm a bit older, I have some gray hair and I'm very French because I drink champagne and San Pellegrino at the club."

Perhaps the new motto of France goes something like liberty, equality and a good night clubbing.

Purchase Club today.

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