Talking to my friend Amiral has been a pleasure as
he is one of those people you can talk to for hours and always find another
interesting topic. I myself learnt a lot from him and am happy to have met him.
We hope you will find something worth reading in our talk about music, Paris,
Morocco, and all life is about. Or just enjoy one of Amiral’s aka Loveplex’s
mixes that you can find on the link:
https://soundcloud.com/search?q=loveplex
Connected:
What would you say about your life now, considering things that you have been
doing so far and things that you've committed yourself to be doing in future?
Amiral:
My life now has a meaning. I suffered deeply from having to do office work,
even if it was highly paid. I first started my own company to make money and
eventually retire young (laughs).
After a while I realized it was better to go straight to the point and do what
I really love.
Connected:
You're Paris-based at the moment. What kind of vibe does Paris have? You've
been living here for quite some time now.
Amiral:
Paris is a tough city. People are not very open at the beginning and you have
to know people to get introduced and invited to the right places. Also it is a
very expensive city, which does not enable an underground and free art life to
arise easily.
Connected:
Is Paris a friendly place for everyone?
Amiral:
Certainly not. But if you stick long enough you end up loving it anyway. People
may seem snobbish and unpleasant at times. But when you get to know them more
they open up, though they are clearly not as warm-hearted as people from other
places (North, West, and South, for example) .
Connected:
How complicated is it to blend in there?
You told me some interesting stories about your initiation into the night life in
Paris, just after you'd arrived there from Morocco.
Amiral:
My first memory from the night life in Paris was to get bounced from the
entrance of many clubs, because I did not fit in. I just came for the good
electronic music whose big fan I’d already been. The only clubs where I got
accepted were underground techno clubs, which made me love this music even
more.
Finding a decent place to live is also a
complicated and tricky issue. Landlords ask for tremendous guarantees, and if
you are not lucky enough to have rich French parents, you might have to
consider striking the center of the city off your list, and go for more
affordable places in the outskirts.
Connected:
What does music mean to you? Have you always had this passion for it?
Amiral:
When I was a kid, we did not have TV, so I used to sit with my mom in the
living room in front of the Hi-Fi System with two big speakers that were bigger
than me, and listen to vinyl records of Jazz & Blues Classics, Classical
Music, Traditional World Music, French Pop, Rock Hits, and many others. My
mother did a very good job in giving me a broad music education.
Later on when I was a teenager I founded one of the
first rock bands in Morocco. We immediately got very successful and the feeling
of playing in front of hundreds of people and the shouting of the front crowd
left an unforgettable imprint on my memory. Today, when I play in clubs, I
still feel this same pure excitement of sharing and communicating emotions to people.
(All photos are property of Amiral aka Loveplex.)
Connected:
Has your life in Paris contributed to
that?
Amiral:
Coming to Paris gave me access to artists I could not dream of meeting in
Morocco, like Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, but also Metallica, Iron Maiden
and many more. All the notorious artists of the moment come to Paris. However,
even when I was in Morocco, I was able to find all the records I wanted, in a
few specialized shops for connoisseurs. But now, with the Internet, everything
is at hand for anybody no matter where in the world they are.
Connected:
What about your life in Morocco? Let's start with all that diversity there -
what does that feel like?
Amiral:This is a complicated question. I don’t know where
to start. There is social diversity (the very rich and very poor, the educated
and the illiterate), cultural diversity (Berbers, Arabs, people from the north,
from the south). The Moroccan identity is not monolithic. It is more of a
mosaic.
Connected:
How is the situation now? Are there
people who want to flee to Europe?
Amiral:
People who praise Morocco are very rare and most Moroccans hate their country
and stay there because they have no choice. It is a common belief among young
people that „there is nothing to do in Morocco“. And if they had the chance
they would all emigrate for sure. Except for the happy few. I myself tried to
go back there a couple of years ago, but I could not bear the shock, so I came
back to France.
Connected:
You come from Casablanca, how would you describe it based on your feelings for
it? What are your earliest memories of it?
Amiral:
Casablanca is a tough city. It grew too fast and the rural exile made a lot of
agriculture workers come to the city. Mostly uneducated, they were not prepared
to face the city and the result was generations of young casawis that are
„angry by nature“and aggressive, both physically and verbally. The very rich / very
poor contrast causes this to be even more extreme at some point.
But, just like Paris, you end up liking the places
you spend long time at. After all, I grew up there and the weather was very
warm all year round, and there were a lot of surfing spots along the beach.
Connected:
How does tradition affect life there?
Amiral:
It is impossible to live out of traditions. I feel a lot of youngsters want to
break out of it, but conservative views and practices are still
imprinted on society so hard that it is almost impossible to escape from it. And it is
also often mixed with religion.
Connected:
What do you miss about Morocco?
Amiral:
My family, the very tasty Moroccan food with oceans of spices and herbs, the
sun, and the beach. Life is easier there, in some way. Much slower. Even if
cities like Casablanca are not representative and tend to sometimes drive
people into the big city life, like in Europe.
Connected:
Has it been difficult to make friends in
Paris? Can you say that you have close friends there now?
Amiral:
Yes, I have close friends but it took me more than a decade to build strong
friendships.
Being an Arab is definitely not a good starting point to
make true friends, because people are full of prejudice.
Connected:
And what about food? (again : ) )
Amiral:
Moroccan food is tasty; it is an explosion of flavors, spices, and herbs. We
have so many different specialties and listing them would take an encyclopedia.
From sweet to savoury, it takes a lifetime to make a good Moroccan cook. This is
why grandmas are the best cooks usually.
Connected:
What is your life philosophy?
Amiral:
Love, Compassion and Self-Correction. Material life is an illusion, a
projection of the Mind.
I could speak about this for years.
Connected:
You are a good DJ – what are your further plans there? You have this new
project Deep House Paris – can you say something more about it?
Amiral:
I came to DJing as it seemed to be a „passage obligé“ for making it as a
producer.
I have been producing all kinds of electronic music
since I came to France in 1998.
I first wanted to keep playing rock guitar but as
it was hard to re-create a group in Paris, I started recording my own samples,
and arranging them in my home studio.
DJing makes it easier to get a grasp of a genre as
a whole, and understand how the musical grammar and vocabulary work. It helps
making music for clubs and it enables the DJ to communicate in a specific way,
via intros, rises, breaks, climax, etc. The DJ then communicates it to the
crowd. It's a very interesting process.
Deep House Paris is a project I started initially
in order to create a tool that would help me promote myself. After I’d published
my first mix, it got immediately successful, and I started receiving mixes to
upload from DJs all over the world. Today Deep House Paris publishes content by
DJs from over 15 countries in the world, after a few months only.
I also created 24 Heaven Records, a Deep House
Label to release tracks from producers I support.
(All photos are property of Amiral aka Loveplex.)
Connected:
Who has been the most inspiring person for you?
Amiral:
Me. (laughs). I never found somebody
I could really rely on so basically I had no other choice but to believe in
myself. I always felt that nobody could really guide me.
Then I met Spinoza, and Buddha. The latter had a
tremendous influence on me, and helped me discover an inner universal meaning
to life.
Recently I've met a lot of inspirational people who
helped me believe that it was possible to make it without a regular job and I
decided to give it a go and live off art.
Connected:
Thank you, I’ve really enjoyed this one and thank you for making an effort to
write all the answers by yourself! :-)
