back in the days - interviewing the outrunners

the outrunners are one of west coast valerie's new darlings. consisting of pierre de la touche and stephen falken their 80ies inspired style and sound is something to show off with. so we took the chance to interview the two french synthfanatics and they told us about old habits, how important arrangements are and that porn indeed's got something to do with it.

you obviously seem to be into old console games and stuff. your sound though seems to be something completely else. speaking of sounds and moods, what exactly - except from the name - got from those games into your music?

stephen falken: style over substance! names, universe and characters of those games of the past are often connected to the rest of the subcultures of that times. the superb cyberpunk game snatchers for example, or i would mention the great last resort. general flavour of these titles matters more than the games themselves.

pierre de la touche: old video games are a part of our influences. but it’s not all. i think that we are also very influenced by movies and soundtracks of the 80s. maybe we are making music for a movie that doesn’t exists.


the outrunners - these girls are dressed to kill (minitel rose remix) (ysi)


when i listen to your music i personally feel reminded of artists like moroder, soccio, flirts, faltermeyer or cerrone. like the basic videogames, they're from the 80ies too. on the other hand you seem to be heavily influenced by late 90ies filter house. how do you personally combine these two present "philosophies" within your music?

s: maybe they combine themselves. the key is he heavy use of some typical kind of analogue synthesizers, used in the 80’s and in the 90’s too, arrangements do the rest.

p: all that is a part of our influences of course! but all those influences have already been mixed by artists like alan braxe, fred falke or lifelike. we didn’t invent anything. of course we are not making a cut and paste of their music but they are, i think, a big part of our sound.

you guys are part of valerie, that famous west coast collective of friends and musicians. everybody seems to be loving what valerie is doing, but after all it hasn't yet developed into something bigger, like - let's say - a label. are there any plans for the future or even something more concrete?

p: for the moment some of us are thinking on how we can create this label. it’s not very easy as we need to create a company for that. well, as you can see the problem, as always, is administrative. it takes a lot of time to do that and we just want to make music together and not losing time with shit.

s: but, first of all, we really want to make a lot of gigs together. that’s where it all starts! having fun and sharing our music with people!

other than that, how is it to produce music as a part of this collective? do people help each other or give ideas? or simply: how do you guys network?

p: the way we interact is not as close as producing together or directly giving ideas each other. we just share the same influences. having a look at valerie blog is mandatory to understand that. here we can share tracks we love and also our personal productions.

s: i wish i could steal the ideas of maethelvin during his sleep.


the outrunners - cool feeling (ysi)


are there any plans on doing live shows for the "far" future, cause i read you're only djing right now. and if so, have you got any special plans on how to get these shows as epic as your sound?

p: we didn’t have time to work that out. for the moment we are not planning to do live acts as our studio setup is very heavy. making our first ep (which will be released in the middle of december) takes us too much time.

berlin is somewhat all about fashion. so there has to be a question concerning your styles. your music is a mix of 80ies and 90ies propelled to the beauty of nowadays modern dance music. do you dress accordingly?

s: we are talking about creating a „outrunner“ collection for next summer. (laughs) i love clothes, especially english ones and i never have a gig without „sur mesure“ leather tie.

final question, you once said that there's a big part of your music that is inspired by 80ies movies. you're mixes - see the stephen falken monthly choices - are always very sexual. what do you think about high quality 80ies porn and its very special aesthetics?

s: last selection was characterized by saxophone delights i must admit, but pierre is more specialised than me concerning that kind of aesthetics.

p: my first project ("pierre de la touche") is very influenced by this "fluo 80s porn" aesthetics. but stephen’s monthly selections are smarter. his mixes remind me more of michael douglas than tracy lords!

more outrunners can be found on the valerie blog. stephen's mixes are there too and i guess when their ep drops information about that will show up there first. other than that, show some myspace love. thanks to pierre and stephen!