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Interview: French-Italian Duo Camion Bazar and Their New ENEMY DANCE Label

Camion Bazar

Camion Bazar delivered the third single on their new imprint ENEMY DANCE mid-December, entitled ‘1319 Acai’. Download/stream it viahttps://fanlink.to/enemy003_camion-bazar.


“ENEMY DANCE is the brand-new sub-label of Camion Bazar’s Jaki Records, focused on ready-to-dance music. It will be releasing its singles and remixes from its favourite artists. Bangers, fast kicks, hand-made hardware sounds, unique design and emotional hard grooves. Even our enemies will dance!” Camion Bazar.



‘1319 Acai’ sees Camion Bazar shift focus towards an old-school leaning Techno sound with a heavy focus on intricately intertwined melodious elements, from cinematic, ethereal pad textures and fluttering resonant synth licks through to acid bass stabs and choppy chord sequences, all underpinned by a swinging robust rhythm section. 


Hi Camion Bazar, thanks for taking the time to talk with us here at UNDRTONE; for those people who may be unfamiliar with your work, could you tell us a little about yourselves and what you do?


Hi, we are Camion Bazar, aka Benedetta and Romain Play; we’ve been together for many years: ours is a love story full of music and parties and the need to share our vision.


We’ve created Camion Bazar, and next year it will be the 10th anniversary, another excuse to celebrate :) We first started our project with our van, a DJ booth on wheels, touring all around Europe, participating in the best festivals, and curating our own floor. It was crazy. Organic music, vinyl handcraft scenography and respect were featured. Then we started to organize parties, invited guests, collaborated with the underground scene, became Rinse residents, did a Boiler Room, did the artistic direction of a night bar, created two labels, toured as a DJ duo with our hybrid DJ set and now also with our live show.


You recently launched your new label ENEMY DANCE and have been unveiling singles of late; the first single “was conceived in a strained atmosphere of people VS police and government confrontations, each track is like a Molotov cocktail, a rock, a cry, a huge middle finger.” And the theme of the label is even our enemies will dance. Can you elaborate a bit more on this for us?


In the last few years, in France (and all around the world), there has been a rise of extremism, fascism is back, and the police look more and more like a government militia. The gap between the power and the people is getting bigger. There are a lot of demonstrations and violence. The fear of the police. Fights. Deaths. Laws against freedom. We don’t feel safe in the street anymore. That is why our tracks are nervous. Puns with “Enemy dance” are that the released music is so good that even our enemies will dance.


Camion Bazar

2023 saw you guys hit the road with your live audio-visual tour, performing live. Could you share with us the set-up of this, what equipment you guys use and if you have any special clips to share? 


We have a bass guitar, microphone, drum machine (TR8S), acid bassline sequencer (Cyclone), synth (Minilogue, MS1, Bass station ), laptop and controller, many effects pedals, drum pad & loads of cables. But we are working on a 2nd version, and we’ll change our gear so we do not get bored.


Camion Bazar is made up of “The Italian Benedetta and French Romain”, we can see from your biography. Could you please both tell us a little about your roots in electronic music growing up in your respective homelands?


We were born and raised in different countries and at different times, but we both have deep roots in rock, punk, fusion, and later on in drum’n bass, jungle, hardcore and then electronica, house and Techno. 


You’re extremely prolific in your contributions to electronic music as “DJs, producers, party curators, label managers, Rinse FM radio residents and live performers.” What drives you guys to do so many different things, and are there any particular things you would cite as influences that keep you inspired to move Camion Bazar forward into the future?


When you love something, you’re completely devoted and passionate, and you’re led by a fire in you. Party and music, people’s transcendent states and smiles, and this particular moment of communion on the dancefloor is what keeps inspiring us. Also other artists’ work, movies, books, paintings, current events, and so on.



What’s next for Camion Bazar and ENEMY DANCE? 


We’ll be releasing a new single in December and another one in January. Next September, nice remixes will be released on Enemy Dance, and maybe a vinyl by the end of the year.


We’ll also have our new live show V2, the OUT OF CONTROL tour (for our 10th anniversary), our current Voltage residency & another South Asian tour. And hopefully, something unpredictable will happen as well.


Lastly, could you both please share with us something that’s been of importance to you lately? It could be a new record you discovered, a book, a recipe, a place or anything else that comes to mind. 


We must say that the SE Asian tour that we did in October (across Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Hong Kong, rekindled the flame. It has boosted our passion for partying and DJing again. Discovering a new audience, a very wild one, was so inspiring!


We also spent a weekend at the D.ko Records studio with the very talented GGGG, jamming for 3 days; it felt so good to make music without a purpose. We really needed that break.


And, of course, our current projects are very important and stimulating, like our ten year tour, our next Rex party with Olivia Mendez, summer festivals, nature, our friends, our gig in Italy for NYE, and most of all, our dogs <3


Camion Bazar


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