Etienne de Crécy

Deep house DJ and producer Etienne de Crécy was a key figure behind the French capital's rise as one of the world's dance music hubs during the 1990s.

De Crécy has peddled his talent under several different guises, including Motorbass, La Chatte Rouge, and Super Discount. He has also worked closely with French new wave honoraries Air, Alex Gopher, and Philippe Zdar. Born in Lyon, de Crécy began his music career in the late '80s with the band Louba in Versailles, on the outskirts of Paris. When the band folded, de Crécy set up shop in the capital and gravitated toward studio work with hip-hop and house, a move that swiftly earned him plenty of street cred. His first major undertaking, deep house project Motorbass, grabbed a cult following soon after its launch in 1991. The project, a collaboration with Zdar (who went on to release the chart-topping album 1999 with Cassius), was what first alerted the world to the rapidly evolving dance music scene in Paris. It spawned such underground favorites as the Motorbass EP and "Transphunk" single, and climaxed with the release of the Pansoul album in 1996.

Only a few months later, de Crécy served up the very popular Super Discount album, offering his own house tunes (including the standout "Prix Choc"), as well as remixes of Air and Alex Gopher works. Dance music critics around the globe were again praising the Parisian in late 2000 courtesy of the Tempovision album -- a collection of disco house and downbeat tunes, such as "Am I Wrong?" and "Scratched" -- released under his own name. In 2004, de Crécy released Super Discount, Vol. 2, again featuring help from Zdar and Alex Gopher. In the years that followed de Crécy stayed busy remixing a wide variety of artists; he did a mix CD (2005's House Party for the Most label); and he released a number of singles under his name for various labels, including his own Pixadelic. In 2011, Dim Mak issued Beats 'n' Cubes, Vol. 1, a collection of these singles. The next year, de Crécy released an ambitious career-spanning collection of his work, My Contribution to the Global Warming. Featuring guest appearances from Alex Gopher and De La Soul's Pos and Dave, Super Discount, Vol. 3 followed in 2015. ~ David Peter Wesolowski, Rovi