Yakking With Yelle: Hitting the Road and the Remix Route
We run our own small operation now, all A&R decisions are truly ours, no middle man was involved.
Yelle creates the kind of impossibly infectious electronic pop that’s equally effective in drawing bodies out onto the dance floor and sending ears into a state of aural ecstasy. Their second album, Safari Disco Club, provided a definitive example of this duality when it was released earlier this year, and now Yelle is offering audiences an opportunity to take a whole new perspective on their most recent batch of tunes via their new remix album.
Safari Disco Club Remixes finds the likes of Madeon, BeatauCue, Dactylo, Juveniles, and others taking the tracks from Yelle’s latest album to a more beat-based place without abandoning the melodic hooks that helped earn the French outfit a worldwide audience in the first place. Yelle the singer (otherwise known as Julie Budet) explains Yelle the group’s reasons for releasing a remix record, noting “We realized we had so many remixes, good ones we truly loved... we wanted to ‘officialise’ the ideas and push them more, put the spotlight on those producers who we consider have done a grand job with our songs!”
Budet says the whole process was pretty organic. “It's very natural,” she explains, “we love when there’s a true interaction...no real 'decision' or master plan, just feelings. One of the first mixes came from Madeon; this 16-year-old little man literally amazed us with his version of ‘Que Veux Tu.’ We run our own small operation now, all A&R decisions are truly ours, no middle man was involved."
Of course, even before the Safari Disco Club remix record came along, Yelle had some interesting experiences in the remix realm, courtesy of none other than Katy Perry. “Katy’s been following us since the beginning,” explains Budet. “She is really into what we do, so she asked us to remix ‘Hot N Cold.’ We said yes even if we were touring at this time. We did it on the road, recording the vocals in Dallas in a hotel room and mixing the track in Boston! Then she invited us to tour with her in Europe. We said yes, only for the UK tour, because we had our own tour ongoing at pretty much the same time! We spent three weeks touring with her and her crew, in front of her stadium-sized crowd, and it was super cool!”
Speaking of touring,Yelle is hitting the road throughout November and December, making their way around South America first, and then playing a string of shows across the U.S. According to Budet, the group tries to maintain a balance in their live shows between being faithful to the original recordings and keeping things fresh and a bit unpredictable. “We kind of try some things, like mixing original versions and remixed versions,” says the singer, “building the live set somehow as a DJ set in terms of tempo, crescendo…incorporating bars of other versions...but we like to reproduce most of the songs as they are on the records, because we love them that way!”
