Chip off the Brique

>> French jazz-house newcomer Llorca big-ups his folks

by KRISTA

"I'm really pretty lucky," Ludovic Llorca explains from his apartment in Paris's 20ième arrondissement. "Most of my friends grew up with mothers who listened to Julio Iglesias. I grew up with a mom who listened to disco and funk and early house music. I guess you could say my mom is club addicted. She loves music, and she still goes out to clubs."

He also happened to have a pretty cool dad. "He was always bringing home new computers and letting me try them. He gave me my first computer, a Commodore 64. So I have been experimenting with making music since back then."

So, Mom likes to go out clubbing and listens to dance music at home, Dad is into computers, son grows up to be very adept producer of funky tech-house and soulful jazz-house music--it's not rocket science.

Llorca was born and grew up in a small, sleepy town in France called St. Quentin, located somewhere between Paris and Lille. Not the ideal place for a young boy, given the lack of recreational outlets, but despite the boredom Llorca managed to find a hobby as well as an ally.

"It was very hard to live there, but I found a way to hear music from other places and I got really into hip hop. Then I met David [Duriez]. He was really into techno at the time, and we hit it off. He got me listening to techno, I got him listening to hip hop, and we started to make music."

Together Llorca and Duriez formed the label Brique Rouge and started to release their own productions, variations on the theme of funky French house and tech-house. A year or so later, Llorca sent a demo tape of some other stuff he was working on to the F Com label and within weeks he had an album deal.

The outcome of that deal is Llorca's debut full-length album New Comer, a deep and soulful collection of dancefloor-oriented jazz-house with very sophisto-funky basslines and cabaret accents. But no comparisons to St. Germain, please! "I can see why people would be quick to compare our two albums," says Llorca of F Com's other jazz-house artist. "Journalists need a point of reference to explain things. But we are quite different artists."

At Jello tonight, Thursday, Sept. 13, 10pm, $8