I first met Gilles Weinzaepflen in 2000. Some jap-parisian friends introduced him to me , but I knew his work before meeting him, as he was part (in some way) of the 'Momus-Kahimi Karie' equation (they toured together). We soon became close friends, but we didn't decide to work together before some time. In fact, I wasn't even doing music at that time, I was only DJmixing/compiling. To tell the truth, Gilles gave me (indirectly) my first 'music' job as he introduced me to his friend Julien Ribot: my first ever track is the remix I made in 2000 for Julien's album, all thanks to Gilles ! We started meeting/talking/listen to music/going to parties very often, as we don't live very far from each others. In 2001, I gave Gilles a copy of  In DOS we trust an album of super cheap 8 bit tracks made entirely under the MS DOS system. When he heard DOS Brothers (the name of the band we formed with Eric Ker) he decided to ask us to work on a collaboration together. The result came as a serie of remixes for his track The general says (a track from his Easy Toog for beginners album) which was actually never released. Well, anyway.
In September 2001, things happened and Gilles decided to record what I would call 'a short album about love' (to use a Divine Comedy album name), songs about love, NY, and Asia Argento. This mini-album was released as a very limited edition in Japan only under the name Anna-Lou in late 2001.
In early 2003, Gilles decided to 'develop' the original idea behind Anna Lou, and turn it into a 'real' album. Maybe influenced by some of the compilations, mixes or tracks I did in 2002 (I don't know, ask him !) he turned to me to do some 'beat work' on one track from Anna Lou for his next album. The idea was easy: add some beat, and turn what sounds like a "Toog at hardcore, German industrial goth pop" track (to quote someone from the Momus newsgroup) into, well, something even more hardcore and industrial (kinda). This track, Terroriste,  would be the start of the Toog x Digiki collaboration on Lou etendue.

Lou etendue

After finishing my "beat work" on Terroriste, Toog asked me for some production ideas for the rest of the album. I wasn't all that surprised when he asked me, because we've been talking a lot about music and production for the past three years, but I decided to answer him with some kind of a 'plan' on how I would envision a Toog record. He found it interesting, and asked me to 'try something' on his songs. Almost one year after, we are completing Lou etendue, a 10-track album full of love stories, noises, strange sounds, and I hope, feelings.

I think it's important to define what exactly you should expect from this album: I'm not a musician, I'm doing sounds and I'm bringing production ideas to the record.
This is not a Toog (Digiki remix) album: this is a collaborative production work, where Gilles is doing all the original design (lyrics, music, themes), and then I add my own ideas, sounds, and we mix things together in a coherant way. All the tracks are written by Toog and produced by Digiki, and I also arranged some tracks. Toog did all the melodies and lyrics, I produced, and we mixed it together. The result is a Toog album: this is NOT a Toog/Digiki release or a Toog (Digiki remix) thing.

I don't know what you will think of this album. I think it's a good Toog album, with a fresh sound, it opens new directions for both of us. It's quite different from our past works (as Toog or Digiki), but I think it's exciting to try something fresh. To quote a friend, "did I tell you that this is the best album I've ever been involved in" ? well, I don't know if this is our best work to date, but I am (and I think Gilles is, too) very happy with the result.

See you in 2004.

Antonin
DIGIKI Sounds
7.11.2003.
 

Listent to some elements from the album:
Toog: Lou etendue (dgk edits) [DOWNLOAD] (4.41 Mo)

We are now looking for a label, for a release in early 2004.
We are currently working on other material not featured on 'Lou etendue', but that's another story.