Teenage Bad Girl

Teenage Bad Girl Interview

Bumping into each other in an a la page way somewhere in Paris 3 years ago, Teenage Bad Girl, Greg Kazubski and Guillaume Manbell have been creating music together ever since, and released a number of remixes including the well-recognised one for the Scissor Sisters and also their own debut album "Cocotte" on Citizen Records in 2007. They bear an important part of the new French electro scene, along with the likes of Justice, Para One and so on. Their recent and reputable stint went over beautifully, the original music for Nike Windrunner 82 PV collaborated with Jonas & Francois. Together with Guillaume's artistic attainments trying to overlap between music and art, their unique artwork should also be emphasised, never mind their warm and distinctive sound.

youtube : COCOTTE

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- Could you give us a breakdown of what you do and also introduce each other to us? How would you describe your partner?

Guillaume : We're making electronic music for 7 or 8 years now, and we created Teenage Bad Girl 3 years ago. We released a first record on Archibell, our own label, then a remix for Scissor Sisters, and an album project with Citizen Records a little bit later. I would describe Greg as somebody extremely creative, who lives music till the fingertips of feet, and who master keyboards perfectly. He also has a great feeling of harmonies and melodies.

Greg : Guillaume is both performant in music creation and art design, he knows how to associate artworks and music, and that's really important.

- How did you two meet in the first place and start doing music together?

Gui : We met on the internet about 3 years ago. We started to share some music with Soulseek, and chat about the first EP I released on my label. I loved his sound so I asked him for a remix, and later we made a track together, just for fun, sharing parts with msn messenger. And we decided to release it into the name ''Hands of a Stranger''.

- How come you decided the band name Teenage Bad Girl?

Greg : as we finished that song, we wanted to find a band name, and we found randomly the cover of a videotape of a 60's movie called ''Teenage Bad Girl''. We found that name was funny, so we kept it without asking too much question.

- What kind of stuff has inspired you so far?

Gui : Many things! Like all the music we listened to as teenagers... like Rage against the Machine, Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Nirvana, Radiohead, Cassius, Motorbusﾕs, and Daft Punk of course. Our big brothers fav music, like Queen, Police... our parents fav music, like Gainsbourg, or the Beatles, and also many 70's Funk bands like Rene & Angela or Gene Dunlap for example.

youtube : Montpellier 2007

- It seems you use a lot of samples which sounds like analogue and also try to create a fusion of digital and analogue sound. Could you tell us a little about that?

Greg : yes we use lot of old vinyl samples to create a warm atmosphere, and we use these samples with analog synthesizers or digital effects like VST plug-in for example. We love to melt different types of sounds in order to obtain something weird and particular at the end.

youtube : Pantiero 2007

- I like your collaboration work with Nike. How do you feel about working with other media, such as films, compared with when you create your own music?

Gui : It's not really different, because we were really free do to what we want, except to stick with Jonas & Francois ideas. So we did our music with a 4 guys chat at the beginning instead of 2 usually. We just heard a few weeks later that Nike were very happy about it... but we never had any word with them before making the track, so we guess it was not that different that making a remix or something.

youtube : USB dick 2007

- Your music has a great mixture of various dance music aspects. How do you create your music? Do you have roles to share the production?

Greg : We're still working as we start at the beginning: somebody finds an idea and sends it to the other by the internet. This one add some new ideas on it and send it to the first one, etc... We have been working like that for 3 years in separated studios, and we love that, it's really stimulating.

youtube : Agoraphones 2007

- Do you have any favourite equipment or software?

Gui : We like to use our oldies stuff, like Cubase VST 32 or Cool edit pro and also vintage synths like Juno 106, or old Casio keyboards toys.

- Choose one word best describes your sound.

Greg & Gui : ''French'' (haha!)

youtube : Teenage Bad Girl live 2007

- You have been to Japan for gigs. Have you got any good tales from there?

Gui : We went two times to Japan. The first time it was just to play at Fuji Rock Festival. It was so amazing to play in such an extraordinary place that we forgot we just arrived in the afternoon and were totally destroyed. Then we came back for a little tour, which is our best memory of our short DJ's life. The audience was so receptive and willing to party till the end.

- Lastly, do you have a message for your fans?

Gui : Arigatooo Gazaimassssssssssss!!!
Greg : Ta !!!!

myspace : www.myspace.com/teenagebadgirl

Citizen Records : www.citizen-records.com

Written by Chika Aoki

All photos copyright by Citizen Records