The saint goes marching in

Ludovic Navarre first came to my attention during the first French dance music invasion. Contrary to popular opinion, this did not take place in 1996 with the release of Daft Punk’s Homework or Etienne De Crecy’s Super Discount series, but during the early to mid nineties, when Laurent Garnier’s label, which was then known as FNAC, started releasing tracks by Navarre. Names like Deep Side, Soofle, Modus Vivendi, LN, Nuages, and DS may not be as familiar as his current St. Germain pseudonym, but his championing of deep Detroit techno and Chicago house certainly set the foundation for his later, more jazz fuelled work. Speaking to the ever thoughtful and modest Ludovic through a translator, he explains that, although his earlier releases were techno based.

“It was during a period when techno was very heavy and hard. We didn’t really fit into that criteria and we thought that there would be very little interest for what we were making. I didn’t even think I could make a career out of music at that time. At the time, I preferred house to techno because it ( techno) had run out of ideas. My work at the time may have had an influence, in terms of making France known as a place producing modern music, but I do not think I had a musical influence on the acts that subsequently came from France.”

As Navarre moved away from his techno roots, he increasingly embraced jazz and blues, albeit within the context of house music. Releasing a series of Boulevard EPs that saw his experiments turn into fully fledged, deeply sensuous house music, classic tracks like ‘Walk So Lonely’ these singles were brought together on Navarre’s debut album, also called Boulevard.

Released in 1995, Boulevard sold close to a quarter of a million copies and topped many end of year polls. Unfortunately, while his countrymen were storming the world’s clubs, Ludovic’s career encountered an unexpected set back.

Attempting to extricate himself from his contract with Fnac, which had by then become F Comm, Ludovic encountered legal complications, which put his career on hold as well as destroying his relationship with label boss Laurent Garnier.

“It’s true we parted on bad terms,” Ludovic says, adding that the time in between Boulevard and his second album, Tourist was spent “trying to get out of the contract with F Comm. Most of those five years were spent with lawyers. I experimented a bit with music but not that much. Only when the termination of my contract with F Comm, did I start working on Tourist.”

Despite this hiatus, when Navarre finally released the follow up to Boulevard it was like he had never been away. Picking up where his debut album left off, Tourist, released on seminal jazz label Blue Note, it solidified Navarre’s Euro-centric spin on older black American music forms like blues, jazz, soul and funk, while advocating a less house led sound than its predecessor. With his contemporaries ongoing obsession for filtered disco house, surely Ludovic felt that he was very much on his own, wholly responsible for bringing older musical forms to a new generation.

“A little bit, “ comes his well measured reply. “My work is a different way to listen to or be introduced to jazz and blues, but music is a like chain. We only had a link to an existing network, and understand what has gone before. In fact, interacting with musicians is what is the most difficult, and also what brings innovation. I also use references to the past to communicate with the musicians I work with. As regards house music, Tourist doesn’t mean I have grown tired of it at all. I am just going with my present feelings, and this time I wanted a bit of variety. The next album could have more house music, or no house music at all.”

While Navarre suggests that it could take “another five years before the third Saint Germain album,” he says he would also like to work with his idols, players like John Lee Hooker, Bobby McFerrin and Herbie Hancock. Ludovic freely admits that all these musicians helped shape the St. Germain sound, and that he may be partially returning the favour by working on Hancock’s new album. However, apart from some sound track work, Navarre’s main concern at the moment is his live dates. Joined on stage by seven live musicians, Ludovic believes the meeting of the organic and the synthetic, the live and the computerized is the ideal setting for the St. Germain sound.

“This combination of live instruments and computers is how I have always perceived music,” he says. “ I don’t find it hard because it is what I love to do. I may be eternally unsatisfied, but that is part of the process. There are seven people on stage, but I do not find it complicated. At the start we had to find a common ground, agree on things, but I actually leave a lot of freedom to the musicians. We try to look at live performance as moments to be cherished and enjoyed, rather than a demonstration of technical prowess.”

St. Germain plays The Olympia, Dublin on May 5th as part of the Heineken Green Energy Festival