Louis La Roche

The first time we heard Louis La Roche (Brett) was his Kaboom track (featured right). That had us scrambling to hear more of his work and to track him down for an interview. All made a little easier when you can just search the customer database 🙂

 

Tell us about how you got into music ?

My name is Brett Ewels, I’m 23 and I produce Nu Disco under the name Louis La Roche. My sound is a mixture of the 90’s ‘French Touch’ sound and the 1980’s Boogie Funk/Disco sound.

Growing up in the 90’s meant that I was listening to a lot of dance music in my youth. I became fascinated by the DJ culture from a young age, purchased my first pair of turntables at 12 and loved playing around with my brothers 8-track recorder. It wasn’t until the mid 00’s that I started to play around with computer software.

How did you start using FL Studio & what does it mean to your productions?

I messed around a lot with other DAW’s first and found them quite frustrating in terms of speed. When I have an idea in my head, I need to get it down as fast as possible. I got hold of a demo of FL Studio, I loved the fast pace of everything and the fact it has such a unique layout, like no other DAW. I found my workflow a lot quicker and so I stuck with it. I’ve been using FL since 2006 and it’s still what 90% of my music is made on.

The Step-Sequencer is perfect for drum programming and it’s always the starting point of my productions. Likewise the Piano Roll is possibly the smoothest of any DAW because of it’s keyboard and mouse shortcuts. Once you know them all, things become natural and don’t require hours of head scratching!

What have you been working on?

My last two releases were an EP called ‘Composure’ and a double A-side single ‘Kaboom/Funk Trunk Skunk’. I’m currently working on a new EP that will be out by the end of the year. It’s going to be a lot more vocal than my past releases but that’s something that I love doing. Being able to cross the line of dance music enter pop music but still staying true to my roots. On the side, there’s a few remixes i’m working on and i’m co-producing a band called Crystal Bats, which you’ll be able to hear in 2014.

Tell us about your production environment & toys ?

It’s mainly all in the box. A 17″ Macbook pro with a Focusrite external sound card. A pair of monitors, and a APC40 for live use. I record my Juno 60 a lot and use the Microkorgs vocoder from time to time. I sample a lot of records and use a combination of vintage emulator VST’s and FL’s own plugins.

Do you have any links you would like to share ?

louislaroche.com

Louis @ Soundcloud

Louis @ Facebook

Louis @ Twitter

Louis @ YouTube/VEVO

 

Brett.