Small talk with Jan Loup

memòri : What is your earliest memory of falling in love with electronic music?

I'd rather say imo that I was born in an era where electronic music was already a component of the mainstream spectrum. I don’t recall coming from any pure form of instrumental music, and electronic influences had already been seeping into pop for a while. I think my early fixations were Moby or Depeche Mode, Daft Punk, Birdy Birdy Nam Nam. Later on, more dubstep/electro tunes from bloody betroots, skrillex, deadmau5,.Falling in love is not the right term, it was more a sudden addiction as I was discovering my own sensitivity to sound. Like escaping after class to listen again and again to those tracks which made my skin shivers and sort of climax my brain.
But if I were to recall a moment that opened the door of bass music and syncopated beats, that was probably when I first listen to this track “Blanked” by Pearson sound. From than moment, I’ve fallen into the rabbit hole and i've never looked back

memòri : Which track in your discography are you most proud of, and what makes it stand out for you?

I don’t think I’ve ever hold feelings of pride towards my works, I mostly feel a relationship with them. The primary desire to produce have always been sort of “for me”, to fulfill a need of emotional release, not to achieve something in the outside world in the first place. It’s an affectionate, cherishing bond, I call them my babies, and I’m constantly evolving and seeing them through new angles.

There is one tune though I’ve come back to a lot, as I feel it was one of a kind, and I still have no recollection of how I’ve achieved it, like in those kind of magic window moment. It’s called “quad-core”, it’s a very emotional tune, in my mind. There's also 'Slavery of Mortality,' my only released collaboration with A Strange Wedding, which holds a special place too in my heart.

memòri : Your EP on Nerve Collect "In My Fury" was described as music that serves as a soundtrack to a therapeutic warrior dance. Can you tell us more about what that actually means for you personally?

Most of my tracks, until very recently, were driven by a difficult emotion that had surfaced I would then focus on, with the purpose of releasing it. To let it go, by using its energy to fuel the creative process, kind of transcending it. I’m a very “head in the clouds”, hyper-analyzing and day-dreaming person. I use fantasies or dive into a daydreaming state, as a coping mechanism, often for hard situations that would be unsolvable. Those fantasies are automatic, it happens even without a conscious decision and they carry a deep expression of my needs, and what I want to bring into the world.

So, I started to make the tunes of this EP during my first gigs and first confronting experiences of the local scene, having to face immediately sexist and dominating behaviors from the folks. Back then, when I first arrived in the city, I didn’t feel any sense of care or community there. Everything seemed pretty much in the intention to make each other struggle, and I felt like people were perpetuating and feeding tensions, unhealthy competition, gatekeeping, and confusion. And of course flinta peeps were the most affected by this context, silenced or offscreen. Even themselves seemed to have accepted this non-existence, of never to be acknowledged. I felt so in rage and powerless, as comprehensive support and mutual respect were far from being a given.

My fantasies appeared then naturally, envisioning a way out. The music came through as well, carried by this anger and sadness, accompanying the images. It was this sort of a dream I was having, where women would gather in an apocalyptic warehouse and making this empowering ritual around a fire, pagan rites, hitting on barrels, mad max vibes, reclaiming their strength. Performing this ceremony, guided by their fury, they would raise their energy and power for then to go into the world and reclaim the space. The EP was the music that happening in there, like its soundtrack.

memòri : How would you describe the Jan Loup way of DJing?

Jan Loup's approach to DJing is driven by a desire to bring manic energy to the dance.. While I perceive the DJ as simply a part in a much bigger ecosystem, a role in a whole theatre piece, I embrace it by picturing it as a guide of ceremony. Sounds are my spells and tools, each contains emotion and a piece of a story. Brought altogether I want to weave a bigger tapestry, and dive into a complex world, an atmosphere than im co-shaping with the dancers, in relation with all of its context. It becomes an egregore, a shared energy that takes on a life of its own, with the effort of each, a shared fiction, collective time and space piece of art, in which great emotions, and pain releases can happen. In that sense I resonate a lot with the words and visions of Eris Drew.

Its a very interactive art. I also see it as a game, exploration of territories. I’m trying to make it more and more playful, intuitive and improvised, crowd responsive, while still pushing my exploration, and challenging genre, intensity variations and emotions. I’m trying to open new doors, combining textures and grooves, blends and twists, stretch and shapeshift.

I’m always over preparing as some might say. I feel super dedicated as I rly want to bring bits from many life-layers. From what I know the space will be, from what I imagine the people to be, and the ideal space I would love to take them to, my feelings about the world, current political states, crazy blends, fresh gems, traditional music, strange samples.

It’s “over prepared” in the amount of music and spells and magic I’m assembling, as I want to be able to switch and wander anywhere, the direction and intensity to be decided on the go, make the blends as they are guided by intuition and focus born from this instant. I’m also taking care of my mood, before the set, to have bigger chance of finding the zone, this state of synchronicities and resonances.

I feel very grateful and in a big responsibility every time I play, as im responsible of a certain amount of time of this gathering. I want to take care of this moment in which those peeps have assembled, and decided to get together temporarily. I see it as a chance as well, to switch paths, to bend realities, or to offer them a opportunity for healing, or for rest. Seeing music as art that activates your whole body and nervous system, in which exist very much the possibility of transcendence, has increasingly shaped my ear and my selections.
Gatherings are seen as a given, but to me its also a very precious time, and seeing the world shift right now, we may not have this luxury forever.

I’ve started to see parties as modern rites in which a global spell is unconsciously designed. Within it lies the potential for healing, for rediscovering one's inner creativity, inner child, breaking the barriers of the mind, of the societal world mold, of the injunctions of capitalism. At the end of it, if led well, I imagine a giant wave that might shake the world a little, push it somewhere a little better, and the dancers going home maybe carrying a little bit of this warmth and magic, still emitting the same precious vibrations.

Doesn’t matter if it’s wrong, if it’s my own hallucinations. What matters is : what if this was true? If so, what music would I play?

memòri : And producing ?

My producing has reached a new page. I‘m releasing this EP on oscilla, dropping around September, and it marks for me a turn and an ending of this “dark emotional release” driven creativity I mentioned before.
I mean, it's not a total shift, because there is still the belief of sound having qualities of “healing” and “transcendence” obviously, and I still have this crazy sound-design love, as well as this perception of my production being a collage or an assembly of noises harmonized together.

That said, I see now this therapeutic quality to be actually inherent of music making and music listening, and I’ve sort of l've left behind the need to explore through shadows. Kind of like a therapy breakthrough, I’m now focusing more on bringing light, warmth, groove and psychedelia. It’s also very connected to my recent perception of the body to be the ultimate doorway to healing, and how dancing unlock the brain and release blockage. I’m having this recent excitation in my creativity, imagining those party spaces and what sounds would guide this shared night choreography and the blossoming path of body unleashing.

Little by little, I’ve observed how certain frequencies, modulation, and type of sounds
have certain effects and I’m incorporating this in my practice. I craft spells with more knowledge but also more trust in my intuition.

Technically its a lot of experimentation, I record a lot with my phone, I work a lot in the daw to tweak sounds and find new textures and colors and rhythm. I perceive my self as a searcher with serendipity as the ultimate goal. The processes are always in metamorphosis, got to keep it playful to tap into the source

memòri : You describe yourself as a "digger of transcendental, cross-generational bangers" Beyond the humor, is there something genuinely precise in that description?

I’m glad you understood its humor and truth at the same time. I truly desire to find gems of craziness, those kinds of tunes that pop in the middle of a set to blow the brains out. I have this tag in rekordbox called “MAGIC !!!”. It’s those sort of moments which need a carefully crafted path to finally land, built toward that impact. I found it funny to display it like so on my Soundcloud, like an eternal quest I’m on, picturing in my mind this character wandering around the world, wild anthropologist or hunter of sounds ( as hunter x hunter character)...

memòri : What's your thing right now? Any sounds or genres you've been digging into and excited to play?

I’ve recently crush on Juke. I always had difficulties arranging my tracks by genre, also because I play them more regarding their texture, intensity or mood, but a year ago a friend of mine played a juke track and then told me what genre it was and of course that opened a whole new door for me. I have been digging restlessly ever since, all tunes from chicago, rRP Boo, Taxman, DJ Manny( teklife crew and all) etc… as well many stuff in the UK, Arma, Itoa.. and also scattered across the globe, Pura pura, DJ strawberry, DJ Fulltono…

More broadly I feel like we’re exiting an era of cold, minimal, cerebral music and entering a moment of warmth, generous and luscious body music. It reminds me of the shift Simon Reynolds describes in Hardcore ( 2022) from neurofunk and techstep which had reached a dead end of extreme darkness, brainy, agressive, and solo bad-trip. The way it was depicted conveyed a very masculine, hetero vocabularies, display of virility.I also see a parallel with Descartes's mechanistic philosophy, the vision “the machine man” or “man created to rule over nature”. From this dead end was born in opposition “uk garage” and “2step”, depicted as sexy and sensual revolution, which is I kind of what I feel is happening again here and am pursuing greatly myself. Its a revolution of the sound and the mindsets.

In that spirit I’ve been deepening into juke, house, bass, dubstep built on generous groove, sexy samples, entrancing vocals, and percussion that makes every part of the body vibrates, syncopated subs pattern where the fall-and-catch of the groove leads to a feeling of flying.

And the psychedelic sounds are there too, for the mind to suddenly allow itself to become part of the fiction, restless goblins.

memòri : Any upcoming projects you're excited about and can tell us a little about?

I’m having a few collaboratives projects right now I’m super excited about. I’m working now with Ojoo with this duo called 108 bones, we're still in the exploration phase, tuning this machine live set together. Also in the Idea to bring more props, DIY instruments to get more physicality on stage. We have this upcoming residency in Brno during October to dig deeper into that.

I’m also recently very into my collab with georg-i, whom I met last November. We dived really crazy into sound design eccentricities and mashed-up rhythms and mad track structures, and we both feel super happy about the results so I’m very excited to share this.
Also tracks projects with Cinna Peghamy with his beautiful toumbak samples.

memòri : Comité des Fêtes, Aïra, Dimanche Onirique, the 10K soundsystem: you seem to move more naturally in collective structures than in solo ones. Is the collective a creative necessity for you?

I would say it is a back and forth movement. I invested myself a lot in collectives and DIY organisations over the last years, up until I reached my limit. I have now left most of those groups and kept “Comité des fêtes”, but distantly. All of those projects were taking more and more of my space, and I was growing frustrated. I had no more solo time, and didn’t have the space to process and reflect on those group experience, allowing me to understand what would I want to stop, develop or reiterate, which is crucial. In fact with comité des fetes we took lots of time to feedback every occurence and invent better tools of efficiency and communication between us. I made this subchannel called “emotion” in our discord, where we could come vent, or share an emotional difficulty that might affect our work throughout the night, and it allowed us to share one’s burden and ease it for everyone.

But yeah I consider collectives structures a much precious space for learning, and so yes its a necessity for me to learn to play a part in collective creation. If you do it right and consciously, its a natural teacher in community caring, active learning to exercise living together, putting in practice the commons theory.

Teaches about people, metacommunication, conflict resolution, better living together, supporting and being there for each other, holding yourself accountable and also helping others carry the weight of their own mistakes in restorative and collective way. On a more artistic aspect, collaborative work often act as world mergers in which you are force to embrace resilience, openness, curiosity and trust toward yourself and others.

Its a reminder to tame egos, and train mental flexibility, preventing from rotten mindset. This playing is precious and bring so many “sparks”. Like nuclear fusion, in creates enormous energy, which also fuels more personal works. And of course the beauty of building a together piece, and sharing the pride to see it bears it fruits.

memòri : Your ambient projects feel quite different in intention from the dancefloor work. What does that space allow you to explore that a club night doesn’t?

The collective Aïra was born in this very moment where Toulouse night life felt really dark and cold. Most of the events happened in distant and raw warehouses. The social world only happened in those extreme environments, rushed in this high consumed state, with loud music, and this vague sense of being in somewhat danger for most flinta people. And then of course everyone bad tripping and lonely on Sundays, in their little individual student apartement.

We started Aïra with the intention of creating spaces and moments in which people could meet in softer environments, where music is no longer aggressive or imperative but caressing and embracing, to be actively listened to ( as a conscious choice), and dreamed with, oneiric landscape inducing. We launched this serie of events called “dimanche onirique”, to catch peeps on the last day of the week-end, as a soft landing for the party people, and a calmer space for those who didnt want to party and still have a social life. Those events allowed us also to explore different kind of interactions with a crowd. Of course through music, with selections that go in opposite direction from “effectiveness”. But also to think and design together this experience as a whole, what we could bring there to foster this little cocoon universe. We brought mattresses to cover the floor, cushions, hammocks, books, boards games, papers, pens, colouring, retrogaming. We build 3d landscapes for videoprojection, organic artefacts, plants, sigils and architecture, varying throughout time. We went to gather leftover veggies and fruits the day before from the local market and invent all sorts of dishes ( mostly apple pies, carrot cakes and giant curry). It was fun just to start to think everything on how to make people more cozy. All of this took place inside 'Azul Portal,' a DIY venue on the top floor of a plant-filled house. And yes this territory of “anti-bangers” in a way allowed or open naturally potential for more experiments, and different goals, different scenery. which ended up deeply influencing how I perceive club nights.

memòri : FLINTA representation is explicitly part of your commitment in the scene. What does that look like in practice ? and where do you feel there's still real work to be done?

I feel in general opening those discussion with people around you in the scene, every occasion there is, is one of the most important work. It’s kind of constant. I often end up asking to group if they have a girl in their collective lol. Then also explaining what are the flinta difficulties encountered by flintas in the scene, and what message a cis-male-only collective conveys.

In practice i also ended up up doing much of mediation, education or didactic conversation with actors of the scene, or accused people. Guiding accused male collectives to how to properly repair and take responsability, and put some radar system in place. All of this honestly consumed so much of my energy in toulouse. its also a constant job of raising your voice and open discussion about your concerns.

On the organisational aspect, the work is opening eyes of our own blind spots. Often guys in collective say “we dont know any female DJ” or “we dont see any”. The truth it’s true, we don’t see them. But they do exist. We don’t see them because we are systemically conditioned to make them invisible, and doubt their work and capacity. So of course the work of including them seems counter-intuitive. It is our social construct.
I also used to take more part in this association called GRRL SESS, started primarily by Melocoton as a weekly gathering in non mixité, to share our sound knowledge. Through that structure I ran free Ableton courses several times.

Is there still real work to be done? Hilarious. Dont be silly. We are not anywhere near the end. You know I have been touring for two years with a sound system. You wanna know the number of collective I cross with at least equal amount of flinta in the crew? Zero. You wanna know how many times people naturally perceive me as the sound technician of the sound system I was literally bringing, and carrying, and mounting ? Zero. But all of them assumed my male friend was. I’m no longer counting the misogiynist casual remarks I’ve received in my DJ life, at this point it became a survival necessity to laugh about it, or this would have consumed me entirely. All of those remarks, piling onto each other, if we dont fight them In my mind, are there to force shape flinta people into diminished place. Its not conscious attacks, it's just an unreflective, reproductive patriarchal behaviour. it contributes to its place and deflecting, a quiet mechanism of suppression. That’s why I often say in feminism, either you actively an ally ( informing yourself, changing..) or you’re against us. Because by default the natural way to be in the system is already putting my FLINTA peers in danger. If you dont do the work you will end up being sexist without you even wanting to hurt nor realizing. The “natural” positioning will implicitly contributes to this framing and be complicit of this system.

And i’m not even talking abt the inclusivity for races, LGBTQ+. Dudes dominate the system, and you can be booking flinta peeps all you want ( and by the way progress has stalled — the latest reports show we're going backward in some areas, see 2025 study from USC Annenberg), at some point, you will need to let some of the control and major position to us too. Or there will be no consistent, actual change. And when I say change, I mean real positive change. we know how much better the scene becomes when more FLINTA people are in it.
So you know, read books, ask your friends around you, inform yourself, share your discoveries to your peers. Repeat.

memòri: What aspects of the scene today would you like to see change?

I’d like to see more flinta people handling decision-making positions, being more often in AD chair or having greater roles in teams that are handling spaces/events/organisation.

I’m a bit tired of how the scene kind of stop its evolution to book perfect 50/50 gender line up ( with the 50 % being in the end shared between all minorities, and often the question of “racialized” people is also disregarded or pushed to second place, and no questioning of “poor/working class” disadvantages, or also disability.. ) while the crucial positions are always ultimately prioritized for cishet white men.

FLINTA end up being “buffer” roles ( artiste care, safer team) on the pretext that they are naturally better suited to those roles, but this vision contributes to keep flinta in the permanently in caretaking, nursing, nurturing roles , depriving them of the opportunity to experiment and develop more in leadership/technical roles, even if they also excel at it. Of course on top of that, its contributing to make them perceive themselves illegitimate to take those roles.

Those buffers/ caretaker role are also often disregarded, same as the mother pattern in families. From the festival crew, only the “president”, or the AD will be remembered, and this prestigious role is the one attracting the envy and power seeker, often the dudes put there will have difficulties to share the power and fame privileges it holds.

Also in general I would be happy to see more horizontal/ or aiming to be/ mixte or flinta groups/collective handling together clubs/festivals/events. With big decision-making and direction roles split in between the members. So that we stop embracing this one and only repetitive pattern of capitalism hierarchy with a boss on top of other smaller boss and its minions at the end. Again we will not escape the eternal cycle of “samsara” by mimicking its shape within our own ranks.

It does require a lot more communication work, but better responsibilities sharing during crucial time
Often when chiefs start to deconstruct themselves and their role quickly realize when transmission have been efficient that they were also carrying enormous mental load which becomes easier once it's shared, and often the project is no longer their mirror but a far more beautiful living and breathing ecosystem, and they didnt lose a single point of fame in the process, even though some around them gain acknowledgement.

Stop those senseless one man show on a club and start actually having spaces handled by communities. I dont believe in one man project, little boy’s-club project can build an actual healthy community. You will end up making people sheep and being a screaming shepherd asking forever to shut up in the club to people that conform in what you made them to be, cattle.

Put fences, and they will push them. Remove them, and they will have to learn accountability.

memòri : Are there labels or collectives whose approach genuinely resonates with yours right now?

Right now I can think of PSST who have been making sound system and organizing event and workshop as flinta only and horizontal collective. Really love what they are doing.

I can think of FBM who also made a sound system flinta only and are fighting to give access to knowledge to many flinta peers.

I feel lots of connection with the approach that Waking Life seems to have towards their festival, and generally everything that gravitates around it, also their way of spreading infos and knowledge outside of party. “Seems” though, as I’ve never actually seen it.

Free rotation, as I have seen and met Suzibee who really embodied the care of the community coming to her festival, truly inspiring and fulfilling.

Also thinking of my friend Mattia De virgiliis, he is not really a label or a collective though haha, but he also embraces a role that I like to call in French a “tisserand”, a weaver, making bridges between people of the scene, supporting artists in many ways, buying records, hosting people, finding gigs, using his network. Truly actively investing in the community.

memòri : Any controversial opinions you'd like to share with us? or joke ? or a secret people don’t know about you ?

Oh I have plenty lol.

Here are two :
One-man leader of space/club/events will never lead to a healthy flourishing community.
And, ethical fighting alone, as a leftist trying to rebalance power dynamics and overthrow the system will lead us nowhere.

So, scream, be loud, hit hard, then hide, always with joy and jokes, value rest, spread love, repeat
The more you fuck around, the more you’ll find out
And of course, Free palestine.

memòri: You're playing memòri. Is there a track you'd want to share that captures the energy you're planning to bring that night?

Susumu yokota - Spectrum of love