The DJ List

Thomas Zweifel

Felix in boogie wonderland

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IN THE bar over a jug of saki, during a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him stopover in London, FELIX DA HOUSECAT is debating the current state of dance music. "It’s dead, man. House - dead. Techno - dead. Electroclash - was that ever even here?"

And here he is on the non-mystical art of the DJ, the bald/fat/ugly guys who spin records, pump their fists and charge concert prices for the experience: "It’s not live entertainment, not like seeing a real band - I’ve got to agree with that."

But if these are truly the final days for the world he inhabits - and I suspect he’s only playing with us, like a Housecat would with a stunned mouse - then Felix is spending them in Rome. That’s Rome, Italy, because it’s bound to figure somewhere on his mental itinerary, but more significantly Rome in a metaphorical sense: you know, bloated dominion heaving its last, emperor on his bed (emperor-sized), and demanding of his favourite slave: "Peel me a grape!"

When Felix is not gigging he’s partying, and when he’s partying he usually bumps into a Madonna or a Britney or an Iggy Pop who implores: "Remix me." Today, he’s in London, in a hotel just off Tottenham Court Road called My Hotel. The thing about international, glamorama, superstar DJ-producer-sound doctors is that they’re never home - they’re everywhere and nowhere, baby - so there’s a touch of irony about his current forwarding address. Maybe it was specially selected to give him the impression of vague permanency.

"My schedule’s pretty nutty," he says, slouched in sweatshirt, jeans and trainers, topped by hipster shades and hair the shape of an upturned ice cream cone. "Tonight there’s this party, and tomorrow I’ll be in Moscow, DJ-ing at this club I heard’s pretty hot. After that it’s Tokyo... uh, is it? Where have I just been? Uh, lemme see, uh… Paris! Before that, well, I’ve got some vague memory of the Cannes Film Festival and wingin’ down to St Tropez for Naomi Campell’s birthday party. It was amazing, man - everyone had to wear red or white. And was I in LA? Yes I was. The Playboy Mansion. We made a video game called The Mansion, me and all these girls in bodypaint. Man, I’m gonna be in trouble if my wife reads this. I’m gonna be dead. Hur-hur-hur ... "

Felix has a cartoon laugh, a widescreen grin and a keen awareness of dance music’s limitations as well as his own. "I think I’ve got one more good album in me," he confesses. He’s not about to pretend that, while all the travelling is tiring, hanging out with crazy supermodel types is an obligation akin to filling out tax forms or fitting bathroom shelves. Yes, it all sounds like a scenester’s diary, a dilettante’s life. But every now and then he puts in a shift and makes some music, his own music, and sometimes it’s quite groovy.

His 2001 breakout album, Kittenz And Thee Glitz, was a dance music classic and one of the sexiest records ever. It made trashy Euro-disco cooler than it was meant to be. It stirred nostalgia for Baccara’s ‘Yes, Sir I Can Boogie’, with its "Voogie, voogie-woogie" refrain, and you thought that was impossible. And if Felix didn’t exactly invent electroclash, then he certainly influenced the bandwagon-jumpers.

What, you mean you missed electroclash? Don’t worry. The synth-pop revival was all the rage in Hoxton, West London for, oh, a holiday weekend, and was only written about in the most esoteric of dance mags. Now the mags have gone bust, Hoxton is no longer the most painfully trendy corner of the metropolis and clubs all over the country have pulled down the shutters for good. The dance culture which has made Felix a studio-whizz-for-hire, one of Rolling Stone’s "10 musicians to watch", the man Sean "Puffy" Combs called to help revive his flagging career, is crumbling. Does he look worried? No, not really.

"Electroclash was a movement rather than an art form and lumpin’ me in with it was just lazy journalism," he says. "Those dudes hadn’t done their homework; they didn’t know that I started making house, then techno, then wow-pitch." (Wow-pitch? What’s that? Is it over yet?).

Felix’s new album Devin Dazzle & The Neon Fever is another change of tack. This one’s more of a… well, let him explain: "It’s Felix in the body of Devin Dazzle, who’s like this real spiritual cat and here he is on the cover, hur-hur-hur." [In gold jumpsuit, no less]. "Look at his keyboard, it’s got a big spike on it, and he uses this to slash at his bad-influence enemies like Neon Fever, who holds the key to the nightlife funworld. Devin and Neon both have a crush on Nina the Cyberwhore - ain’t she hot? But women are always your downfall because sex takes you away from the music."

So, a concept album? Kind of. Almost as radical for dance music, it’s an album of verse-chorus-verse choons, played on real instruments. "Kittenz had that trashy European vibe goin’ on, but this is more like an American-type album with live guitars and drums mixing with the synths and I guess its influences, apart from my main man Prince, are Talking Heads, B52s and Devo."

Felix - real name Felix Stallings Jr - is 32 and grew up a black kid listening to white man’s music because notoriously in the 1980s MTV play didn’t anything else. "In our neighbourhood in Chicago we were the first black family to get cable and my brother and I would watch the Playboy Channel when our parents were out and MTV the rest of the time. So we didn’t hear no Stevie Wonder or Barry White or the O’Jays - all we got were Duran Duran, the Eurythmics and A Flock Of Seagulls."

His strict saxophone-playing father made him learn clarinet as a means of instilling discipline, and his dad influenced his future life in other ways, too. "When I was five he smoked weed and blew it in my face and gave me sips of his Heineken. That got me kind of high and I used to put on a pair of shades and do a Stevie Wonder impression, so the black influence did get through. But the truth is my dad turned me off beer and I’ve never done drugs."

Felix tried to play guitar but didn’t have the patience. No matter, he didn’t have to; music was already changing. At 14 he scored his first hit, penning the Chicago house track ‘Phantasy Girl’ for DJ PIERRE using a drum machine, a cheap keyboard and a plodding single-finger technique. Now Puffy wants a piece of him. "He called me up and told me he wanted to do some really cool, sexy, twisted shit. But everything I was making him was so not pumpin’. It took for me to hang out with him for six months, partying and stuff, to get where he was coming from."

After Moscow, Tokyo and you-name-it, Felix pitches up at T in the Park. So will he appear as Devin, complete with band? "I’d love to man, but in band situations you have to deal with girls going loose, lost keyboards and splitting the money five ways. So I’ll be DJ-ing. Everyone’s doin’ it. I was talking to Tommy Lee and he’s doin’ it. Then there’s Paris Hilton..."

Loose girls (at least I think that’s what he means)... cyberwhores... supermodels - yes, it’s a tough life being FELIX DA HOUSECAT. "It is, man, because do you know this? Despite all the places I’ve been, I’ve never ever met Monica Bellucci, hur-hur-hur..."

FELIX DA HOUSECAT plays the Slam Tent on July 10

[ June 13, 2004 ]

Written by Aidan Smith

Courtesy of Scotland on Sunday (scotsman.com)

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