Matthieu Faubourg: Finding a Balance
The 29-year-old DJ and producer is keen to find that sweet spot between work, travel, and relationships.
"I think I'm better at producing than DJing," Matthieu Faubourg admits to me having just finished a guest mix on Parisian station Hotel Radio, situated in the 18th arrondissement.
Agreeing to meet him straight after his mixing duties, Matthieu has invited me over for dinner at his place in the adjoining apartment block. He leads me upon arrival to the local shop to pick up the ingredients for tonight's meal: risotto, chicken, and tartar sauce. I assume Matthieu has the expected culinary panache of a twentysomething living on his own in the big smoke – a transitional period that sees one forego the college-dorm instant noodles, but yet to attain the flavourful intuition of a seasoned cook. However, as I eat this rustic meal in Matthieu's all-you-need studio apartment, I am reminded of his LP release from earlier this year, Simplicity Is The Ultimate Sophistication. It all makes sense now.
In many ways, Matthieu is a paradoxical character: reserved yet gregarious; nomadic yet settled; yearning yet content. He is a man who will be playing DJ sets full of deep house and garage, but he’s more interested in listening to the dream pop of Homeshake and Real Estate in his spare time. A self-confessed indie boy, he comes with some of the associated connotations: cuffed jeans; loves the idea of falling in love; Mac DeMarco. You know the type.
Dichotomies aside, one area where Matthieu is consistent is his unapologetic honesty, and it is this that makes the Frenchman a perfect dinner date.
With our food devoured, dinner plates are now replaced with a mug acting as a makeshift ashtray. Having gotten to know Matthieu while working with him in an online art gallery for six months, a beer alongside a conveyor belt of rollies feels familiar. Matthieu still works in the same job and, perhaps surprisingly, this is by choice: “The past year or so, I've gotten four or five requests from bigger booking agencies than mine right now – ones that are managing artists such as Kerri Chandler, Boo Williams, and Jeremy Underground,” says Matthieu. “I have always declined because they told me that if I go with them then I need to quit my job and do a lot of touring.”
“Essentially, it’s a matter of finding a balance.”
I struggle to understand this reluctance to avail of such a lifestyle considering his love of music and travelling. Matthieu has lived in Hamburg, Barcelona, Vienna, and Zurich over the past decade but 24-hour stints in different cities to play gigs – consisting of catching planes and afternoon naps in hotels – isn’t exactly his idea of sightseeing. After playing in 18 different countries, Matthieu has now recognised the precarity that comes with trying to juggle all that is important in his life.
“It's just too much,” he stresses, as if I’m not getting the point. “If you're touring every week - maybe twice, three times a week - you don't have time for yourself, your friends, a relationship, your family. You start to develop a nocturnal lifestyle and I need more stability than that. I'm really bad at coping with tiredness and there were points when I was touring that I got really down. I just wanted to be home doing nothing, sleeping. Essentially, it's a matter of finding a balance. Maybe I could limit gigs; for example, I won't play more than twice a month.”
After hearing about his first gigs in Hamburg five years ago, Matthieu tells me of his introduction to producing though a collaborative experience with an Israeli sound engineer, though he points out that this ended almost as quickly as it had began. I ask if it had fizzled out due to musical or character incompatibility. “It was a bit of both really, so I then tried to compose my own music alone,” he says, fiddling with a bottle cap. “It went really fast actually because I think it was in 2016 when I did my first song and then by the end of that year “Please, Stay” came out.”
“Please, Stay,” of course, being Matthieu’s breakout single. He has developed a love/hate relationship with the track: proud of the popularity it has gained, but perhaps fearful that it will cast him off into the one-hit wilderness. He has also expressed disdain towards answering questions about it but agrees to unravel the story behind its conception, if only ever so slightly.
He tells me of a break up that left him perplexed and without explanation – a state of confusion that is seemingly resurfacing as he recounts this tale to me. Not helped by the humidity of a summer’s evening in Barcelona, a sleep-deprived Matthieu “woke up to get some water and to pee” one night when he noticed his laptop on the kitchen table. Ploughing into a cathartic session on Logic, Matthieu had created his most recognisable work within an hour, setting him up to become another beneficiary of YouTube’s uncanny knack to propel house producers into household names.
Although Matthieu is increasingly trying to distance himself from “Please, Stay” to avoid stale rehashing, it did help him to identify the blueprint from which he approaches producing to this day. “It just comes out,” says Matthieu. “I have this rule that if I spend too much time trying to make a tune then I leave it because it is just no good.” This discernment has served him well. Releases such as 2018’s Phoenix EP and the following year’s Apolo EP showcased Matthieu’s ability to create raw, emotive house cuts that oscillate between regret and rapture.
Matthieu speaks with fondness of his humble beginnings in the suburbs of Paris and the music education bestowed upon him via his mother’s record collection. “I grew up with my mother and she's a big music fan. She listened to really eclectic styles of music – from rock, jazz, and classical to rap, hip hop, and even a bit of house music,” says Matthieu. “When she was away on business trips I would be digging through her records, CDs, and tapes just so I could hear them on this hi-fi player we had.” After hearing about this genre-bending collection, you can only imagine my shock, and possibly his mother’s, when he revealed that his first CD purchase was “Beautiful Day” by U2. Come to think of it, though, Matthieu does bear a slight resemblance to a young Bono. I digress.
“The youth strike back almost as a form of revenge for being neglected by the government.”
Now, after many years away, Matthieu is back in Paris, but things are an awful lot different in 2020 for the city’s cultural scene. This night I spend with Matthieu also happens to be one to savour as it occurs the day after French president Emmanuel Macron has announced a 9pm curfew, effective in the coming days, amid a spike in Covid-19 cases.
Upon the first lockdown earlier this year, it actually turned out to be a welcome respite for Matthieu. “To be fairly honest, I know it sounds dumb because the cultural scene is really suffering, but I was kind of happy that Covid-19 happened because it was a bit of break for me,” Matthieu reluctantly confesses. “I really enjoy having my weekends at home. But, of course, now I miss [playing].” While he suggests that it has been a quiet 2020, it certainly hasn’t been stagnant. A debut LP, an EP including remixes by Leo Pol and Frits Wentink, and his own remix of Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra’s “montmorency” have made this an arguably over-productive 12 months for Matthieu.
The question remains, though, as to how DJs in the French capital will continue to survive as we all continue to pine for late-night revelling. Even with The Economist Intelligence Unit’s recent study finding Paris to be the most expensive city in the world – the last thing any young artist based here wants to learn – Matthieu still seems confident that the city’s cultural scene will be characteristically defiant in the face of this unforeseen stifling, with or without the required state funding. “There will be a new flourishing energy,” Matthieu suggests. “The youth strike back almost as a form of revenge for being neglected by the government.”
At this stage of the night, the beer bottles are empty and due to the amount of ash disposed from our rollies this mug now identifies as an urn. Recognising this, I decide to finish our conversation by asking Matthieu, now approaching his 30s, what he hopes to achieve with his music in the next decade. He mentions make-a-wish collaborations with the likes of Kerri Chandler and Toro y Moi, but he’s generally quite relaxed about where he hopes his music, and life, will take him. "I'm not in it to 'make it', I just like making music."
Photography: Larissa Fister