Apollonia: the team dynamic

Image: Apollonia (c) Lola Ed

DJing together, producing together, running a label, and living together, it's fair to say that Apollonia have built something formidable in the last few years. Based out in Ibiza each summer, the three Parisians have become part of the furniture on the island with their brilliant B2B2B performances at the likes of Space and DC10, as well as a relentless touring schedule around the world.

Ahead of their gig for Mixmag Live @ Studio 338 in London on August 9th we talk to Shonky about what it is like to work so closely with his partners in crime, Dan Ghenacia and Dyed Soundorom, and how this meeting of minds has set about conquering clubland. 

We know your name pays homage to Prince, and that you have said you are trying to mix white soul and black music. In electronic music and DJ culture, do you think that every genre borrows from another genre in the past?

If you look to the past, you can often see that a genre borrows from another genre. Soul and disco influenced house music, hip hop takes from the same as well as a mix of funk, blues with african roots. We all have different roots and we express them in the music that we make, and that’s why the genres are borrowing from another one.

We like house, deep house and techno, so why not mix all of them together? In our case the mixture of white soul and black music is also not just about genres, but about our three identities, take a look at us!

You guys always seem to be on in DC10, as part of some amazing line ups. Do you spend much time watching and dancing to the other DJs' sets? Or are you normally chilling out back stage?

DC10 is a special place for us, it’s like home, and we are honoured to be part of it. The club puts on such great line ups every week and we always try to check what’s going on. It's interesting to see how other DJs approach the music. It’s one of the places where you can get inspired.

I'm so grateful to you for re-releasing Point G 'Underwater' on Apollonia (below) - it's a song that means a lot to me. Are there any other old classics from the past that helped shape your sound, that you think others should know about?

Our approach with releasing old classics is that we want people to understand who we are and where we are coming from. Those classics are tracks that mean a lot to us and they helped us to define our sound. We also repressed ‘Sunday Sunlight’ by Kerri Chandler and Callisto’s 'Need Ur Luv’ on the label… we had such a great response about those ones. 

There’s also loads of important records from Derrick Carter and Gemini that influenced us. Heritage is important - we are happy if we can make some of those great tracks known to younger generations.

Do you actually rehearse together to practice your DJ sets? Or does it just naturally happen?

We spend a lot of time collecting music - we buy records every week and have been doing so for more than fifteen years. We play a lot together so that in itself is the practice.

Usually we don’t really prepare anything. We play with the flow. Dan normally starts with the track, and then we play one record each after one another for the whole set.

I noticed you guys all lived together in the same villa in Ibiza at one point. What did you do to take a break from music? Just go to the beach? Watch sport on TV? Cook?

We have been living together during the summer for the last three years. Spending the weekend together playing and living together during the week is amazing. It creates a real synergy between us and it helps us to stay focused on all the projects. We also like to relax from the heavy weekend.

The funny thing is that during the summer, the weekend becomes longer, and midweek is only about two days! We play between three and five gigs a week so it's really important to get some rest and take some sun to recharge the batteries. Ibiza is full of peaceful places and amazing food. The travelling is really intense and Ibiza helps us to find the right balance.

How much of an Ibiza influence is there in France? In the UK, we can see it very obviously at certain nights, where promoters are clearly trying to copy what they've heard during the season. But because I don't see as many French people in Ibiza as the amount of English, I wonder if this influence happens in France?

It's true that ten years ago the amount of French people in Ibiza wasn’t so high, but its' definitely changing. If you pay attention to a place like DC10 there are now a lot of French DJs playing there… I’m sure it helps bring French people to come and support their DJs and it's nice to see that. In France itself are some Circoloco nights for example.

I associate all of you guys with after parties or day time parties. What would you say is the difference between an after-party DJing style and a peak time club style?

The location and the time you play makes the difference with what you are gonna play - that's an important job of the DJ - to play the music that fits the best depending on the situation.

It's true that we like day time parties. It's amazing to play in a beautiful villa during the summer with party people in front of us - you can really dig deep into your record bag (hear what they did for Richie Hawtin's Enter last month below).

When you guys make music on your own, do you think you are better at doing that now because of what you have learned from each other when working as a team?

It's different working together or alone - we learn everyday from each other. When we were in the process of making the album we all discovered more about the way of working like the other, and it's always nice to open your mind to test out different techniques. Working alone is also super good because you can push your techniques further and go deeper in your own direction.

I've seen the story that Shonky and Dyed would go and watch Dan DJ in France, and this is how you guys knew each other. But why was Dan playing in this place? What was the story of Dan in the nineties?

Dan was playing in the infamous after party called Kwality at Batofar. He was the resident there once every two weeks, playing this psychedelic deep house from the west coast. We loved it immediately and fell into this sound. It's part of our roots and we still play records from this time.

We learnt a lot from Dan and its a pleasure to now work the Apollonia experience together.

If you were to summarise what you guys do in one sentence, what would it be?

Living our dream, travelling the world with best friends, playing the music we like and doing what we always wanted to do.

Catch Apollonia on Saturday August 9th at Birmingham's Rainbow Venues.

See them hit London's Studio 338 on the same day here (or get tickets below).

For more Apollonia gigs head here, or check their Facebook page.