Wild Ones: dOP

"We love to play with English people. We love to joke with them..."

dOP are a trio of energised Parisians. Slightly unhinged, they spend most of this interview enthused about their show this Saturday in Manchester at Victoria Warehouse. One of a several events put on by the Warehouse Project. It's will be their first time in the city, and their thoughts are distracted by Eric Cantona, a band member's birthday, and the trip.

Their music, like their personalities, is wild and unhinged,. They're bombastic, loud, constantly jumping about blowing plumes of cigarette smoke from their face. They are French. Long term friends and free from hang ups nor pretensions. They're just making music. Something they've been doing since they were 13. They're now 33. There isn't a hint that these boys are anything but trouble. They finish each others sentences, they get distracted by their own.

"We love to play with English people. We love to joke with them…"

As is common with interviews conducted with the French, it became quite clear that they didn't really understand a word I was saying. Smiling, nodding, talking at me. This is the result. Three Rugrats who don't look like they've slept, at the tail end of a midweek studio party.

"We started the Noze guys six years ago, they gave us the first view of what live Techno could be, which was different as their idea is very real. so that was out fist inspiration so we liked it. so when we started to play live we were we really shit musically at the beginning, but we had this burning energy. flat the beginning, we wanted to… We love to be on stage…. Improvisation, energy. We really love to be with the crowd. So our first contact with music was the band show."

You started out as a jazz band?

Well the first band we had together was a rock and roll group. so when we started our first band together we were 13. Yeah, so this year will be the 20th anniversary of our first concert together. Which for our first ever concert the boss of the pace payed us to stop playing we were that bad.

What were you called?

This first one has no name because if you will, the bands didn't last that long. And the next one…no, no names. They were bad. We would prefer to not speak about it. The names refer to personal things to us.

When did the idea for dOP appear? It's always been between these two experiences. First of all, when we first started, we started we were doing pop songs that we did for maybe three years. then we met Nico. we did jazz, reggae pop, we had studios. we were making a lot of different styles of music. We were collaborating with many different people. We were experimenting in many different directions.

You continue to exist quite uncomfortably, in terms of the the music community.

For sure. We try to develop out own vision. Our vision of techno. We don't think about it. we've been making songs together for 20 years so we just make what ever. We just do this song. It's always an idea we have, wherever it comes from that we galvanise it. We don't think about the song before or the song after. We don't think of the genre, we just do. Is it OK for this or that. Does it function. We're just making songs together. Whatever the mood of the day. What's so special with dOP is that we never know. You never know with dOP what you're going to get. For example, when we produce for other people we try to stay in line with they music. So we will adapt: whether that be through acoustic, some tracks vocals, some track totally digital. That is what is special. That's if you listen from our first release to now, there's never a genre thing, it's always everything at once.

Words by Samuel Breen

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