Etienne de Crécy

Deep house DJ and producer Etienne de Crecy was a key figure behind the French capital's rise as one of the world's dance music hubs during the 1990s. De Crecy 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 Phillipe Zdar. Born in Lyon, de Crecy began his music career in the late '80s with the band Louba in Versailles, on the outskirts of Paris. When the band folded, de Crecy 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 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 Crecy 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.