Philippe Cohen Solal & Mike Lindsay
Biography Philippe Cohen Solal & Mike Lindsay
Philippe Cohen Solal
For more than two decades now, Philippe Cohen Solal, founder, main producer and composer of the famous GOTAN PROJECT has been making his mark as an electronic music architect, having worked in many different areas of music production: from A&R and musician director/music supervisor at Virgin in France in the 90s to several film music projects and soundtracks, as well as producing his own records at , ¡Ya Basta! Records.
Of course his main success was Gotan Project, formed in 1999 alongside Eduardo Marakoff and Christoph Müller. The trio initially released three 10” singles, which were a huge success with DJs across the globe. From these early experiments, an ambitious balance of electronic music and tango, the group evolved and were joined by a large group of musicians. This concoction went on to produce the -must have- album, La Revancha del Tango. Gotan Project has sold more than three million copies to date worldwide and played over 450 concerts from Rio to New York, Montreux and Tokyo, not to mention in some of the most prestigious venues in Europe.
He founded his own label, ¡Ya Basta! Records in 1995. The label’s avowed aim is to give free reign to his passion and vision. This passion and vision is infused with a mixture of genres.
Parallel to his recording activities, Philippe Cohen Solal continued working on a number of side projects such as Métamorphose, the Pierre Henry remix album, which he A&Red in addition to being one of the contributing remixers.
¡Ya Basta! also provided the platform for all his projects, such as The Boyz from Brazil and Stereo Action Unlimited. Meanwhile Philippe Cohen Solal wrote and composed his solo album, which he recorded in the countryside near Nashville, Tennessee. This country/bluegrass album, Solal presents The Moonshine Sessions, is made up of personal, acoustic songs, and upon its release in 2008 was praised by international press from Paris all the way to Sydney (over 40,000 copies were sold).
Philippe loves nothing more than freedom to write and produce the music he loves. While he was touring and releasing records with Gotan Project, his label signed David Walters, who sings Caribbean-inspired electro-folk; Féloche, who released the first Cajun electro album in collaboration with the legendary Dr John from New Orleans; and El Hijo de la Cumbia, one of the founders of the new Latin American electronic sound, “Digital Cumbia”.
Over the last years he was producing many different records for “the golden voice of Africa” Salif Keita, Horace Andy (Jamaica), Mo Laudi (South Africa), Angelique Kidjo (Benin), La Dame Blanche (Cuba), Los Calchakis (Argentina/Chile), Adrian Brody, Roberto Fonseca, Dorfmeister and many many others…
He’s recently released a new solo album called Paradis Artificiel(s), inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s poetry and the 19th century Hash Club of Paris.
He is currently also working on OUTSIDER, a visual live project together with Mike Lindsay (Tunng) based on the history and output of the American outsider artist Henry Darger.
For 2020 and later several recordings are in the making: MIND FOOD which was composed and recorded some 20 years ago (release date: 21/02/20). In 2021 a huge compilation of all his recent cooperation is planned to be released!
Philippe’s credo is making records that play on cultural diversity that are designed to please the whole world, not just the French. He sees it as not just being about borrowing from different musical traditions, but sending back a transformed vision of their music. He explains: “True diversity, is sending your music on a journey through other styles, rhythms and tones!”
