A tribute to Cassius, the good-time boys of the French Touch

Plus Nilufer Yanya, Darkstar, Sangeeta and more

Basket weaving on the wall

If Daft Punk were the innovators of the French Touch and Air the dreamers, then Cassius were the good-time boys, their songs full of uncomplicated fun, house beats and huge samples.

This wasn’t, perhaps, the most complex mixture and you won’t find anything like a tortured Human After All or weirded out 10,000 Hz Legend among their work. But Cassius summed up that part of the French Touch better than anyone else - the part that took in carefree dancing, big disco hooks and celebratory release of great house music, done with style and soul.

And now Cassius are back, although I’m not entirely sure what “back” means, after Philippe Zdar, one half of the group, died in 2019. The group’s first greatest hits, Best Of 1996 to 2019, was released earlier this month and Hubert Blanc-Francard (aka Boombass, the other half of the group) performed as Cassius at the Paralympics closing ceremony this summer. 

Honestly, I’m not sure if Boombass himself knows what it means to be back as Cassius. In the years after Zdar’s death he told The Guardian that he couldn’t even hear the duo’s name mentioned. “If you even said the name Cassius, it was like someone stuck a knife in my body. I couldn’t even listen to a note of the music,“ he said. “I lost my friend and I lost the music, so I fell into a big depression.” 

Entirely understandably, Boombass told The Guardian he hadn’t started making new Cassius music yet, despite the high-profile Paralympics return. “I always needed Philippe to say, ‘We have to do music now.’ I was making music at home every day but he was the hurry man and I was the slow man,” he said.

When I spoke to Boombass in 2023, he talked about a writer’s block that he had experienced after recording Le Virage EP in 2020. “I had to learn to finish things because Philippe was doing it before,” he told me. “Most of time, I began something, he finished it and as he was mixing, it was like the finisher of the project.”

“I want to find back a way of doing this with friends,” he added, “because I miss the collaboration, you know?”

But if new Cassius music may not be imminent, for the moment we have the group’s greatest hits, which serves as a timely (if flawed) reminder of all they did best.

Cassius were absolute masters of riding a sample to its apogee, an after effect of the duo’s roots in boom bap hip hop production for the likes of MC Solaar. Boombass and Zdar met in 1988 at Paris’s plush studios +XXX, when Zdar came on board as an assistant to Boombass’s father, sound engineer Dominique Blanc-Francard. Together, the duo worked on the first three albums from French rap pioneer MC Solaar, a time that Boombass told me was vital for the group.

”It was really a total discovery for everybody,” he said. “Everybody was talented and discovering all the possibilities of working together and doing new music, in a way. Because, at the time, to sample and to have someone who's not singing on it, it was like, ‘What?’ So we had the feeling of living something really new, and it was very, very exciting and there was a lot of trust between everybody.”

Solaar’s first two albums, Qui Sème le Vent Récolte le Tempo and Prose Combat were huge sellers in France and cult hits in the US and UK, where Mo’ Wax founder James Lavelle was a fan. Impressed by their production, he invited Zdar and Boombass to make a record for Mo’ Wax, resulting in 1994’s Tribulations Extra Sensorielles, under the nom de plume La Funk Mob. 

Speaking to The Guardian, Boombass called the record an attempt “to have the EPMD, Pete Rock [hip-hop] sound but with no voice and slow, because I was smoking like a crazy man”.

Tribulations… did well enough, without breaking any boundaries, and Boombass headed off to New York to try to make it as a hip hop producer. While he was away, Zdar teamed up with Etienne De Crécy as Motorbass and made the stunningly European deep house album, Pansoul, perhaps the first classic record to emerge from the French House scene.

When Boombass returned, he hooked up with Zdar again, this time as Cassius. The group debuted in 1996 with Foxxy, a track that came about after Zdar convinced Boombass to use the samples he had assembled at a house tempo. (Foxxy doesn’t appear on the group’s greatest hits, which is a travesty, although its B side Dinapoly does feature. And Foxxy did make its way onto the group’s debut album, 1999.)

The time was ripe for French house music in 1996. Pansoul had made international waves, as had St Germain’s Boulevard, and Daft Punk were starting to attract serious record label interest. Cassius were similar to both St Germain and Daft Punk, in a way. But what they brought to house music, more than either of those two acts, was hip hop’s expertise with a sample and a smouldering sense of fun.

“Fun” is hard quantify in music. But in Cassius’s case it manifested as a kind of spontaneity in the studio.  When I interviewed Boombass, he talked about the “spirit of freedom” that the group had when recording their first album. 

“We had always been free but when it's your first record, you have special emotions, because you don’t think about the future or the past. You're just in the present,” he explained. “And when you do your second, third, fourth [albums], you have your past, your economic goals, your future, it's totally a different mindset.”

Later he expanded on the group’s early days. “We were in the studio, we had a few beats, with a few things. And we were producing and writing and mixing at the same time,” he said. “I did it very, very fast... And it was really fun, because there was no questioning, I was not thinking about releasing it. So [on] the first album, we spent time in the studio having fun, because we had beats, La Funk Mob was over and we said, ‘Let's spend this afternoon in the studio.’ And it's one of the best way to do music.” (This might, perhaps, explain why the group’s ultra-fresh debut album, 1999, is by far my favourite Cassius record.)

The group’s expertise with a sampler goes back to their roots in hip hop where, at least in the 90s, sampling was king and the same samples could crop up in a house track as in a hip hop song. (See: Foxxy’s use of Willie Hutch’s Theme of Foxy Brown, which also appears in songs by Big K.R.I.T and Smoke DZA.)

Boombass told me that sampling was - and is - his speciality. “I can have an idea of a sample if I listen to a song in a restaurant or in a bar,” he said. “I work on Spotify. Sometimes I say, ‘Oh, those two bars are really great.’ There's a way of doing it too, when you put on a record by total chance and find something with emotions, too. The idea is to always have a bit of emotion in the samples.”

Perhaps the best example of this is Feeling For You, a single from 1999 that also crops up on the greatest hits. The song is built around a sped-up Gwen McCrae sample, a kick drum and some additional percussion, which filters in and out of the mix. But even after discovering the McCrae original that Cassius used - and buying it on CD single, hello the 90s - I remained hooked on Feeling For You, which is basically flawless on its own terms: the perfect sample, in both melodic and lyrical terms, used perfectly.

Cassius conducted similar magic with a slice of Donna Summer’s (If It) Hurts Just a Little on Cassius 1999 (Single Edit), a phenomenal summer song whose exclusion from Best Of 1996 - 2019 is baffling (the compilation includes the original Cassius 1999, which is basically a different song and nowhere NEAR as good). And they did it again on I <3 U So with the perfect cut from Sandra Richardson’s I Feel A Song (In My Heart). It was I <3 U So that Kanye West and Jay Z would sample in 2011 on Why I Love You, transforming it into Cassius’ biggest track internationally. 

Following up something as magically spontaneous as 1999 was always going to be difficult. On Cassius’s second album, 2002’s Au Rêve, the duo moved away from sampling in favour of heavy guitars, from French musician -M-, and vocal collaborators, including Ghostface Killah, Jocelyn Brown and Steve Edwards. I initially found the distorted guitars - which feel very post Discovery - a little hard to take; but I have come around to them for the thrillingly metallic edge they give to Cassius’s slick house. 

On the whole, though, the strength of Au Rêve relies on the group’s collaborators. So Thrilla, with Ghostface, is a fantastic hip house record at a time when house and hip hop weren’t really getting on; and I’m A Woman with Jocelyn Brown is fabulously soulful.

Interestingly, when I interviewed him, Boombass chose Au Rêve’s The Sound of Violence as the one track that he would play to people to explain what Cassius were all about. “It's like, for me, the middle to explain between the past and the last thing we did,” he said. “It's like the middle musical period, one of the best tracks we had and the start of a new direction, after the period of the French Touch sounds with the first album and all the samples.”

15 Again, the band’s third album, which came out in 2006, returned to the sound of Au Rêve, with guitars and collaborators again to the fore, including Pharrell Williams (on Eye Water), Le Knight Club (aka Daft Punk’s Guy-Man and Eric Chedeville) and Zdar’s old collaborator Etienne de Crécy. By this time, French electronic music was back in vogue, thanks to Ed Banger, Justice et al, and the reviews were a lot stronger than for Au Rêve. 

But Toop Toop aside - a weirdly alluring rock / reggae / house fusion that Madonna used on her Sticky and Sweet tour - I didn’t pay much attention to 15 Again. Listening to the three tracks that represent it on Best Of - Toop Toop, See Me Now and Rock Number One - I don’t particularly regret the decision. They’re all perfectly fine, in their Rolling Stones-go-disco-type way. But they feel a little mature and even moderate for what I look for in Cassius.

It would be 10 years before Cassius would release another album, 2016’s Ibifornia, with Zdar’s increasingly busy production schedule taking up much of his time. But the band did release a couple of EPs in the interim, the second of which would prove vital. 

Before that, though, we had Youth, Speed, Trouble, Cigarettes, a decent three-track EP, whose title track figures on Best Of, its fascinatingly chopped guitar riff and siren drone undermined by what felt like a band trying too hard to be youthful. 

By contrast, The Rawkers EP, which came out in 2010, sounds genuinely fresh faced. The record came out on Ed Banger, giving Cassius the backing of the mew Kingmakers of the new French scene, and the EP was also home to the transformative  I <3 U So, a grungey house beast that destroyed clubs and pricked the ears of Jay Z and Kanye.

If I <3 U So was good, though, Skream’s remix was astounding. Its official title is Skream's Made Zdar Feel Like He Was 20 Again Remix, which is the perfect title for such a rejuvenating musical experience. The song drips with the brilliantly nervous energy of youth from its opening piano chords to its chipmunked vocal to Skream’s galloping Amen break. It is clinically impossible to hear this remix and return to the original song with much more than an uninterested shrug and it is criminal that Skream’s mix doesn’t feature on Best Of.

Ibifornia could have been brilliant. Cassius intended to make “fun electronic music without making it cheesy” - which was exactly what they achieved on 1999 two decades previously - and Zdar’s blossoming production career meant he could attract A list musical guests, from Pharrell to Mike D to Cat Power (the latter two together on one song: Action). 

Instead, though, the record ended up a bit confusing, amid Blurred Lines-alike Ryan Tedder features (The Missing), underwhelming R&B pastiches (Love Parade, on which Mike D sounds - and I apologise - horrible), portentous heavy rock numbers (Hey You!) and whatever the hell the title track thinks it is.

Dreems, the band’s fifth album, was an understandably back-to-basics record and far better than Ibifornia but it was overshadowed by the news of Zdar’s death, two days after Dreems was released. Dreems is a party record that came when Cassius fans least wanted one and I have barely listened to its since its release. None of which is Dreems’ fault, of course, and I hope that Cassius re-appearing may shine a light on the band’s very decent fifth studio album.

And now we have Best of 1996 - 2019, a record that manages to map out fairly accurately what Cassius were about in 20 songs, which zip by in a sprightly 95 minutes, while still ignoring at least three of the band’s most important songs. (That's Foxxy, Cassius 1999 (Single Edit) and Skream's remix of I <3 U So, although DJ Falcon's head-banging Metal Mix of La Mouche should also definitely have featured instead of the original.)

Best of … is far from perfect. But it does show how Cassius kept moving forward in their career, rather than resting on their filtered house laurels. I didn’t love all the directions they moved in; but I respected their desire for change.

Cassius never quite topped their debut album, then. But they are a genuinely essential band for anyone who wants to understand the French Touch, French House and French music in general. Amid a Parisian scene that could sometimes takes itself a little too seriously, Cassius were soulful party starters who ignited the dance floor without recourse to cheap tricks, a dazzling example of dumb (but smart) perfection.

Some listening

Nilufer Yanya - Just A Western (Boy Harsher remix)

Nilufer Yanya’s new album My Method Actor is everything a modern rock record should be: adventurous, melodic, heartfelt and always interesting, a rock record that firmly exists in 2024, rather than wishing we were back in the 70s. (Is My Method Actor really a rock album? I guess so. I’m not quite sure how to define it, really. Which is obviously a good thing. Anyway…) Boy Harsher keep the melodic foundations of Just A Western, already one of the album’s best songs, in place but build up from them in vaguely spooky, minimal electronic fashion that works absolutely perfectly.

Darkstar - Graucha Max

With the news that Darkstar are playing TWO DATES at London’s Alexandra Palace this week I was all ready to crown Nicolás Jaar’s band the Grateful Dead you can listen to. (Look Americans, British people just don’t like the Grateful Dead, much as you don’t like Suede, so let’s not argue.) And then I realised they are in fact playing the much smaller Alexandra Palace Theatre, which doesn’t quite support my theories of grandiosity. Still: Graucha Max does kind of sit in that weirded out and mellow psychedelic rock space that kept Jerry Garcia and co. in ice cream flavours for so years, albeit dirtier, more angular and generally satisfying.

CASISDEAD - Steptronic (Conducta remix)

Conducta has been moving away from his nu-skool 2-Step sound of late, branching out into drum & bass and 80s electro. But I am very glad he came back to base (bass?) for his brilliant remix of CASISDEAD’s ominous Steptronic, in which he puts a rocket under the original song’s tempo without entirely betraying its lachrymose feel. The bass line alone is a work of art.

Sangeeta - Calling (Turbotito and Ragz remix)

Naya Beat Record’s latest release is Naya Beat Volume 2: South Asian Dance And Electronic Music 1988-1994 and stuff like this - i.e. a compilation exploring lesser-known (by me) corners of the electronic music world - is absolute catnip to my tastes. Calling by Sangeeta, a singer who combined “soft Bhangra beats with Hindi lyrics” in the 1990s, sounds absolutely how you (or, perhaps more truthfully I) want it to sound, combining the most gorgeous vocal line with a bumping breakbeat house rhythm and Italo house pianos, to create what was, apparently, a Balearic anthem. I can well imagine it. Back in the days my friends and I used talk a great deal about what song we would play during a solar eclipse, when the sun just started to peak out again from behind the moon. Well, Calling goes right to the top of my list.

ZOiD and Steve Welsh - ZVSW

I love electronic music and I love jazz but when the two come together the results are often abysmal, largely because they ignore the spontaneity at the heart of jazz. ZVSW, from Irish musician ZOiD’s very long in the making ZOiD Vs Musicians Vol 2 album, is an example of how to do it right, with Steve Welsh’s saxophone tumbling melodically around an occasionally frantic drum machine beat, its lively feel suggesting the two musicians eyeing each other over a bank of smoking vintage equipment, trying to guess where the other will go next  and delighted by the possibilities. (That said, I do also love a lot of dance records that straight lift a jazz sample and make merry hell with it so what do I know?)

Brain de Palma - Cardiopalma

Can one particularly appealing sound make a record? I guess it can, when that sound is a kind of charmingly wet cheek-popping plop, rendered in a vaguely Percolator-ish way by Gudu’s Brain de Palma and I can’t get enough of it. 

Things I’ve done

Line Noise - With the Blessed Madonna

As part of the ongoing series of Line Noise episodes to celebrate Nitsa’s 30th anniversary, I spoke to Marea Stamper aka The Blessed Madonna. We talked about her memories of playing the club, Mid-West raves, being massive by stealth, calls from Kylie and taking Chicago house into the major-label system. “I might be early but I’m not wrong,” she says.

RPS Presents - Jane Weaver

Jane Weaver has been making music for three decades now and her excellent new album Love in Constant Spectacle is her 12th solo record. I caught up with her after her Barcelona gig this autumn to talk about Australian punk, bohemian households and constant inspiration.

A Playlist Plea

If you've ventured this far, a loyal soul, 

I salute you, your heart pure and whole. 

Perhaps, like me, music fills your day, 

A melody's magic, come what may.

So, I offer these playlists, a musical treat, 

A curated collection, truly complete. 

The “Newest and Bestest”, a three-year span, 

A sonic journey, hand-in-hand.

And its 2024 sibling, a fresh delight, 

A variation on the theme, pure and bright. 

Every song, a treasure, a gift to you, 

A musical escape, ever new.

But know, this task, a writer's bane, 

To pen these words, such needless pain. 

So, if you've read this far, a favour I'll ask, 

Please follow these playlists, a noble task.