>> Everyone’s knocking at the door of Chicago electro-pop producer Felix Da Housecat

by RAF KATIGBAK

Felix Da Housecat is pissed. Five minutes before I caught hold of the award-winning producer over the phone in Chicago, his manager had called and delivered the Cat some bad news. It seems his latest project, an all-female, electro-punk group called Glamorama, has turned into something more akin to a dramarama.

“One of the girls I flew down from Belgium told me, ‘I’m down, I’m in, I paid the flight,’” he explains. “Now all of the sudden she says she can’t sign the agreement and she’s out!”

For someone so obviously pissed off, he remains surprisingly soft-spoken, and I’m left wondering if I could have picked a worse time to call him. Thankfully, he cuts the tension with a burst of hearty and apologetic laughter. “You gotta excuse me, man,” he chuckles. “I’m trying to stay focused.”

Staying focused is something that comes naturally for the Chicago-born music producer, a quality that comes in handy when working on group projects like Glamorama or his last album, the utterly massive Kittenz and Thee Glitz. “I’m really good at bringing people together and bringing out the best in everyone. When I worked with Miss Kittin and those guys on Thee Glitz, it was treated like a group, but I was really just merging personalities.” One listen to the album and the synergy is obvious. With musical cohorts Melistar, Tommie Sunshine and Dave the Hustler, Felix’s album of tongue-in-cheek electro-chic and dancefloor-driven funkadelia has been getting props on both sides of the pond, culminating in an award for artist of the year from Muzik magazine.

Steering clear of the touchy subject of his new endeavour, we chatted about his early influences and how his father, a saxophonist, raised him on a healthy diet of clarinet lessons and soul à la Stevie Wonder and Al Green. The first album he bought? No, not James Brown. Nor was it Earth Wind & Fire. “Believe it or not, the first album that I can remember buying was Rod Stewart’s Tonight I’m Yours! I bought it because I used to love that track, ‘Young Turks.’ Y’know, ‘Be freeee tonight…’ I was really young.”

Purple reign

It may have been a brief encounter with the Stew that got him buying music, but it would be an obsession with the funk-pop fusion of a short Minneapolis musician/movie star that would keep him there, providing the blueprint for his future musical career. “I was a huge Prince fanatic. I try to avoid soundin’ like him, but it’s really tough ’cause it’s in my blood.
“What’s great about him is that he would make songs like ‘Sexy Dancer,’ ‘Controversy’ and ‘Erotic City.’ You can dance to these songs in a club and still like ’em in your car or at home. I decided then that I would do that, and that’s how I wanted to do it on Thee Glitz.”
With the deft combination of electro-pop-punk and techno on Thee Glitz, the Purple One’s influence on Felix is clear. “Prince had his own sound, he didn’t really sound like anybody. But if he did sound like James Brown, Rick James, the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix, he had a way of converting it to his own sound and style. Just like I do with Jamie Principal, Marshall Jefferson and DJ Pierre.” It was his relationship with that last influence, DJ Pierre, that would give Felix his first break in music.

Rewind to Chicago, 1986. Acid house is blowin’ up and a young Felix Stallings Jr. gets his first shot at fame working alongside a then-21-year-old up-and-comer named DJ Pierre. “We went into the studio when I was 14. Back then, when you recorded music, you went into this huge place—it’s not like today where you can do it all at home. It was special. We were dressed up like we were goin’ to a wedding or somethin’. Pierre looked like he could be Sonny Crocket on Miami Vice.”

Naïve but determined, Felix’s natural musicality, combined with the powers of Pierre’s relaxed-fit, pastel-linen suit, gave them the tools to face the imposing studio head on. The result was “Phantasy Girl,” a dancefloor classic that quickly burned up the Chicago dance charts, propelling the young cat to local stardom. “I would go around school and teachers would ask me to sign their folders. All these girls would go, ‘That’s the guy that made ‘Phantasy Girl!’ Can I be your phantasy girl?’ It was crazy, I was 15 and I wasn’t even into girls until I was 16.”

The Cat came back

In 1990, Felix took a leap of faith and bought a one-way ticket to England. “There I was, sleepin’ on the floor, walkin’ around in the rain with my demos and a bag full of DATs.” After a few slammed doors, William Orbit’s Guerilla records signed what would soon be a famous track entitled “Thee Dawn.” That quickly blew up in Europe, and under the alias Thee Madkatt Courtship, Felix started releasing records at a frantic pace, almost a single a week.

In his homeland however, he still remained somewhat of an unknown. That all changed when he signed to the U.K.’s Bush Records under the name Afrohead. “I remember Dave Clarke wanted to do a remix for his new label, Magnetic North. I said, ‘Dave Clarke?! I know you, you’re the guy who dissed my record in Mixmag!’” Despite this fact, Felix agreed to let the British technocrat put out a remix. Good thing too, as it was this remix as Afrohead that completely destroyed dancefloors Stateside, kickstarting Felix’s multiple-alias syndrome. “Everyone in Europe knew me as Thee Maddkatt Courtship, at home it was Afrohead. I wanted to see if my music was better than my name. It was like a test, and it worked.”
Fast-forward to 1995. Tired of using the same 909 drum machine sounds, four-on-the-floor beats and build-up snare rolls, his sound changed. His album Metropolis Present Day? had a sci-fi electro feel that caught the music world off guard. But it was his brilliant John Carpenter/Giorgio Moroder-inspired concept album, 1999’s I Know Elektrikboy, that took that style to the next level.

Cat call

Just then, as Felix starts to delve into the subject of the IKE album, his wife interrupts our conversation with an emergency call on his other line. It was Dave Clarke. “He’s working on a new album,” chuckles Felix, “and he wants me to help him with it. He better get in line—Marilyn Manson wants me to work with him, Soft Cell, Human League, Kylie Minogue…”

His dilemma is a common one for producers in the game. “It’s so tough, I wanna do my own thing but at the same time, like with Dave Clarke, he was there to help me.” Then he offers a cunning solution: “He thinks I’m trying to avoid him. I wanna call him on a three-way, just so that he’ll believe me.” After a brief pause, Felix returns to the phone and the line starts ringing.

Dave Clarke: Hello?

Felix: Dave.

DC: Who’s this?

F: It’s Felix. I got my man on the phone, he’s interviewing me now and I said, let’s call Dave Clarke because he thinks I’m avoiding him (laughs).

Mirror: Hey, Dave.

F: Dave, man, I’m sorry. I’ve been like, so slammed. I was in New York workin’ on this girl band stuff and they burnt me out.

DC: Was that the band you were telling me about last time we met, Glamorama or something?

F: Yeah, Sophie gave me your number but it wasn’t right.

DC: (indignant) But you called me on this number, so you had it all along!

F: Yeah, I got it off an e-mail you sent me.

DC: (relieved) Oh, cheers to that! God, you got me worried there.

F: I haven’t been avoiding you, I’ve been giving you props in every interview, like the one I’m doin’ now.

DC: Who’s there?

M: Raf from the Montreal Mirror.

DC: Yeah, Montreal, I was there like, two weeks ago!

M: Yeah, I saw you at the Bal en Blanc a couple of years ago. Maybe you remember, I was the guy who went up to the booth and held up a “booty!” sign.

DC: That was you?

M: Yup.

DC: Felix lives in Chicago, ask him what happened to booty! It’s all the same shit nowadays!

F: (laughing) Yeah, Dave loves his booty!

DC: Hey Felix, call me later.

F: No problem, Dave.

Clarke’s famous remix may have spawned their friendship years ago, but when it comes to reworking other artists, Felix is no slouch either. His credits range from Garbage and Pet Shop Boys to Giorgio Moroder and Diana Ross. But it was the natural vibe attained while working on a song with Miss Kittin that would plant the seed for the critically acclaimed Kittenz and Thee Glitz.

“The first song we did was ‘Madame Hollywood.’ We did it in like, an hour. I played the music in 10 minutes, and we wrote it together. It was almost too good to be true, the songs just came out so quick. With this group of people, it was just magical.”

It was this song that gave him the inspiration for the direction and title of the faux-glam album. “She was Miss Kittin and I was Felix Da Housecat—so we were kittenz; and Tommie Sunshine, Dave the Hustler, Melistar—they were the glitz.” But unlike the playa poseurs and iced-out bling-bling rappers still living in their parents’ basements, this group had no delusions of grandeur when they wrote songs about living the high life. “Our whole thing was to make fun of glamour. But the real ironic thing was that, in making fun of glam and fame, the album just blew everybody up. Now we’re living the glitz from makin’ fun of it!” :

With Miguel Graça, XL and Mark Dillon at Sona on Saturday, May 25, midnight, $25