Rodriguez Jr. - Young enough to know

As Rodriguez Jr. on Mobilee or as The Youngsters on F-Communications, France's Olivier Mateu is unarguably one of that fine country's consistently best electronic producers. As a live act, DJ or producer his influences are wide reaching and have encompassed all shades of electronic music in their time, spanning three albums plus a myriad of releases and remixes for more than a decade. Now releasing on mobilee, Helen S caught up on his plans and grabbed an exclusive mix from him.

Musically speaking, you started out life on Laurent Garnier's label.  What was it like working with such a legend? It actualy began well before this adventure, but F-Communications obviously helped to push things forward! Laurent was supporting some tracks we had released on our own label and during one of his gigs in South of France he asked us for a demo. We eventually worked on new material during summer 2000 and sent back a CD with 24 tracks on it! I still remember when I received a phone call from Eric Morand (the label manager) regarding this demo. I thought it was a joke. 
Touring with Laurent and releasing on F-Comm has been a founding experience for us. He knows the job pretty well!

The Youngsters is your previous alias, what made you leave that behind? The band is not really behind but on stand by, and we will possibly work again together in the future. Our F-Comm years were busy ones and I needed to try something else at some point. When label stoped, we eventually felt the urge to focus on our own projects.  Furthermore producing for The Youngsters is very time consuming because of geographical issues: my partner and myself are living now at 1200 km from each other. 

Where are your influences now and how would you describe the sound of Rodriguez Jr.? That's about house music, so my influences should be somewhere between Chicago and Detroit. These are always been my musical roots. I try to be as much open minded as I can though. So the sound of Rodriguez would be a blend of a lot of genres: house, pop, jazz, dubstep, techno, classical, plus some experimental weird stuff.

Your debut album came out this summer on mobilee, what's your favourite track from it? It could be Music Don't Lie or Los Matadores because they are collaborations with two artists I like a lot- Cari Golden and And.Id. It's been very refreshing to work with both of them and you could probably feel it in the tracks.

You're well known for using old skool analogue equipment.  What's the fascination with that and what do you think it lends to your productions? I collect vintage synths for a long while now. It's maybe a way to make my childhood dreams come true. And these old babes don't only look great, they also bring the sonic colors I look for: something warm, organic and alive. Furthermore, hardware synths also help in having a good workflow, because you have a true relationship with your instruments. There's a direct physical connexcion between the sound and your body- you can almost touch it. Though I am also a huge fan of plug ins and computers because of their power and ergonomy. The great thing today is that you can mix all of these technologies in the same environment. They are complementary to each other.

Any plans for remixes or further releases soon? I just finished remixes for Tigerstripes on Audiomatique and for Joachim Pastor on Sebastien Leger's imprint Mistake. We will also release a track I produced with my friend Marc Romboy with a remix from Deetron- that's very different from what I use to produce alone musicwise  but that's always refreshing and cool to work with Marc. I will eventualy begin to work on a new own project before the end of this year. I can't wait! Producing is my drug. And I am so excited about the work we're doing together with the mobilee crew.

Finally, where can we catch you playing in the near future? I am going to support my album on stage and in clubs around Europe, so I'll be travelling to cities including Berlin, Paris, Budapest, Stockholm, Vienna, Hamburg, Bucharest, Zürich and more. The best way to check my last updates is to log on either mobilee's website or www.rodriguezjr.net 

Listen to Rodriguez Jr. On Pulse Radio