In his real name Francesco Consolini – half Italian, quarter Ivory Coast, quarter French – DJ Pupupuzu produces a totally hybrid music. Most of his tracks are scattered on micro-labels, such as Boucan records, Highlife Recordings or Hylé Tapes. A kind of mix of lo-fi and footwork, among many styles, but all obsessed by the loop, all made in DIY moods on old synths and cassettes. A feeling perfectly resumed on this home-made selection of awesome tapes from everywhere.

Patricia
Josephine

 
«Taken from “Body Issues” and released on Opal Tapes, Josephine is perhaps Patricia most emblematic work. Since the release of this tape, Opal Tapes has took some distance from dance music, and lo-fi house has become a copycat genre of its own, mostly produced by white guys with ironic names on their Macbooks – sweet irony. But even now, this tape is what made me switch from ambient to house music, and I still find the ghostly atmosphere and subtle groove really sensual and modern.»
 

Ata Kak
Bwome Nom

 
«I suppose that most of the readers on Superfly know Awesome Tapes from Africa, and the story of this tape (re-edited by ATFA founder’ Brian Shimkovitz after one of his numerous trip in Ghana, the tape was originally released totally under the radar in 1994, and now Ata Kak is headlining huge festivals such as Villette Sonique or Smmmile Festival in Paris). But, behind the nice fairytale – like story, there is one thing that I particularly love on this tape, a unique blend of subsaharian Africa and Western influences, something between house, hip hop, highlife, all made by this cook by day with a cheap synth in his room in Toronto. I feel really close to this way of making music, influences and bricolage style.»
 

Noir Boy George
Les Masques à Gaz

 
«Nafi is an influential figure of the French underground scene: founder of La Grande Triple Alliance de L’Est, he played or plays in bands like The Dreams, Scorpion Violente, Bras Mort, etc… He has a huge fanbase, plays a lot with the East of France / military aesthetic cliché, but I personally think he’s a sweet person and a real poet. It’s always about love (“Mein schatz” means “My dear / mon trésor”), and he’s one of the few guys able to make me cry with music. Moreover, I really respect his DIY way of doing everything in music – he could have a huge success but the guy is doing things his way. Punk.»
 

Baye
Tinariwen

 
«I have just a few infos on that one: I used to buy a lot of these cheap tapes that Sahel Sounds / Mississipi Records used to sell for 3$. They were home-made and thematic compilations, with the b&w cover printed on basic paper, and you could barely read the artists names sometimes. The tapes were duplicated from one to another, so if you were out of luck you could have a tape nearly unrecognizable, Saharian music mutated to harmonic drone – which is cool actually. Everyone should dig these comps : Music from Saharian cellphones, guitar is my best friends, Bollywood influenced film music from Nigeria, synths from the Sahara, classical music for & by the people, pop music from republic du Niger… Shout out to these guys (or girls).»
 

TG Gondard
Avontuur

 
«Not Not Fun is the cool label by excellence: founded by a member of hip hop / drone duo Robedoor and Amanda Brown (equality, yay!), they were releasing tapes way before the tape revival (that already seems ended now), and issued stuff from cool-guy-in-chief Sun Araw among others. Their weird and queer dance music subdivision, 100% Silk, suffered tragic losses recently in a squatt fire in Oakland, and it’s a tragedy. Anyway, TG Gondard is one of the less played project of Thib (Colombey, Pizza Noise Mafia), a Frenchman living in Belgium: repetitive synth music influenced by modern RNB and Dancehall, one of my main influences.»