French blog Voluume asked me to do an exclusive mixtape that would be given away on Christmas day. So I spent the whole weekend before Xmas putting together a 30’ mix, half-way between club mix and fashion show, I tried to come up with a blissed-out soundtrack, evocative and feminine, with attitude and funk.

(Download the mix below!)

More often than not soundtracks for the catwalk are beat-lead (although there’s no rules, everything goes really), it makes sense beats gives pace to the catwalk. But that’s where the similarities with deejaying in clubs end. Indeed there’s no live-mixing at fashion shows (the mix has been finely tuned in the studio)… and there’s no pressure to make people dance – although the audience’s all ears and can really go for it. So the music scope you can explore is way wider, almost limitless (in the case of Vivienne Westwood).

And why not dream the craziest combinations of music? Tools have evolved so much since the days of disco and djs beginning to mix, remix and edit, with technology evolving so fast, you can know do in 2 mns what took you 2 days then…

The tracks are shorter too, because a show is about 10’ long so you’ve got to pack them in so to speak if you want to build different moods. They’re more re-arranged too with lots of effects to create more extreme transitions. It becomes less about the individual tracks standing out and more about what each of them can bring to the overall equation.

I selected a mixed bag of dancey indie, balearic moods, robofunk, italo, discopop… a couple of them from my label Continental, Shindu (last release) and Jolie Cherie (next release). Some of them new and some of them not so new.

I feel as long as you don’t pick up too obvious/popular tracks, it’s more fun to delve into anything you feel like to and gather some kind of patchwork set than limit yourself to this week’s latest promos. It’s interesting to have several decades of electronic music now flirting with each other on the dancefloor, from new-wave to electro via house, and still morphing…

What’s the point of spinning exclusively new tunes anyway? There’s great stuff that was overlooked 6 months ago, 10 years ago… as long as it makes sense to you and works the floor.

I re-edit most of the records I play, new or old, it’s an obsession, guess all dj’s have become like that, it’s so hands on, it’s like playing a kid’s game, doing a puzzle, but you’re manipulating songs and tailoring them to your dj needs, how amazing is that?

I could just get up every day and do edits for 8h like in a factory, I’d love it.

Picture Courtesy of: Elsa Okazaki.

Jerry Bouthier wears the Maison Kitsuné Spring-Summer 2013 Classic Shirt BD Solid.