After years well-received EPs and singles, Valentino Canzani Mora has finally released a full-length album as French Fries.

Since debuting in 2010, French Fries has been a crucial part of the Parisian club music scene, first with the YounGunz collective and then as a co-founder of ClekClekBoom. Bounding from tropically-tinged electro-house to shifty techno-house hybrids to ballroom beats, he’s never let a sound wear out its welcome. His next adventure, the Kepler LP, goes in another new direction: spaced-out, Classical Curves and Chicago house-inspired nightstalkers. We spoke with French Fries about his background, the making of Kepler, and the surprising reaction to his single ‘Yo Vogue’.

From the title on down, Kepler seems to have this loose theme about space exploration. What inspired that? Is there a story or narrative to the record?

The idea was not necessarily to be about space or something. With ClekClekBoom, in general, we try to mix old school stuff with futuristic stuff. Obviously, when you want to create something new you think about that doesn’t exist, right? So there’s some sci-fi and space stuff, because every time I think about something new, it’s sci-fi [themed].

I didn’t sit down and say, “I need to have a story and make an album.” I was just talking randomly with Bambounou, and I had this crazy idea. I had sounds in my head: every time I go to the movies, sci-fi ones specifically, there’s always crazy sub-sounds, like weapons from the future, stupid things like that, but it sounds amazing. We both like sci-fi movies, mostly because of the sound, but I’m not a sci-fi movie geek [laughs].

There’s a saying like “you wait your whole life to make your first record.” How was your process different this time, compared to writing a single or an EP?

It was very different, because first of all, I didn’t think about the club. I didn’t want to do club tracks. I’m usually thinking about the crowd, the soundsystems, the venues and stuff like that. So it was very different: it was just from the idea I had, the movie I had in my head, and with each track I was just making chapters to the movie. It was more like sound design for me. It was really different. At the same time, I wanted the album to be [homogenous]; I knew I didn’t just want the album to be three EPs in one LP. I wanted there to be interludes, some ambience.
 

 
What was your recording process like on this? What equipment do you use?

It changes all the time. I’m using really strange software called Sonar. The only guy I know that uses Sonar is Untold — I’ve never met anyone else who uses it [laughs] so it’s pretty strange. I use a lot of synthesizers, drum machines and there are a couple of tracks on the album where I used one synth and nothing else. Otherwise, I really like analog compressors and stuff like that. When you’re in the studio, you just try new stuff, it happens naturally.

Kepler reminds me of Jam City’s Classical Curves and some of Night Slugs’ Club Constructions tracks, which we’re hearing a lot of recently. What music or experiences influenced the record?

I listen to a lot of different genres. The thing with Night Slugs is we’ve been friends for a really long time. We both love old school Chicago and Detroit techno, but we want to do something strange that doesn’t exist yet.

Since the Arma EP, your sound has certainly evolved and changed with the times. One word that comes up in your press is “chameleon” — is that accurate?

I guess so. Like a lot of people in the scene, I don’t come from techno. I grew up listening to hip-hop like Three 6 Mafia, and so much different stuff. I respect the people that stay in one thing, like Drexciya, but at the same time, I think it’s really boring. I always really want to try new stuff, new hardware, whatever. I listen to new stuff everyday.

What’s your musical background? I’ve read that your father worked in a studio.

I did drums for like 10 years. When I was really young, like 8 or 9, I was just going to the studio and watching him work. There was a hip-hop part of the studio, and I was just hanging around all the time. During the night, I would go there when it was empty and try stuff. I didn’t really have lessons from him, I just went there with a pen and paper and wrote everything I didn’t know about. Then I started making rap beats and music projects for school. Some kids played with toys, I played with the studio, basically.

ClekClekBoom has been a big part of the Parisian club music scene. How has Paris changed since you started?

It was really different at the time; Sound Pellegrino were doing their thing, Bromance didn’t exist then. That was the moment when I started meeting people in UK and doing stuff with Rinse FM. We were inviting UK artists and it really difficult to do it in Paris — they were used to straight kicks, disco vibes or really metal-electro, or whatever you call it [laughs]. I didn’t know about the techno scene in Paris; I was only going to those clubs for Chicago house parties. Then Rinse FM started to get big in France somehow and that helped what we were doing.
 

 
What has been the most difficult thing about running a label?

When we started the label, the most important thing was making vinyl. It was difficult to do it in Paris because all the big labels had shut down because vinyl wasn’t selling. To me, spending a lot of time in the UK, when you release something only digital, it wasn’t a proper release. It’s a lot of work, just working every day. I didn’t really know about it when I started, it’s really complicated to run a label [laughs].

FACT once ran a feature about advice for running a label, and the main advice could have been “don’t bother.”

[laughs] It’s amazing though, you know? Running the label is my favorite thing, looking for new artists and new music. It’s given me a new vision of music since I started working on the label.

Some people have suggested that with ‘Yo Vogue’ you were borrowing from a scene that you weren’t a part of, and that calling something “ghetto” was not appropriate. What was your take on that?

When I made the track, that’s when I discovered vogue and ballroom, obviously. I put some vocals on it and gave it to some friends, Oneman, Bok Bok and friends from France. No one said anything, until it got to America, and everybody told me that it doesn’t say the same lyrics in America. A lot of people were like, “You can’t say it’s ghetto,” but in French, when you say it’s ghetto, it’s talking about the groove, it’s not talking about a movement or anything. I was really surprised by that reaction because I didn’t know about that part of the world, you know? For me, it was just to do a different type of dance track. I got really impassioned about the vogue scene. That’s when I met MikeQ; he was really happy with the track and he did a remix of it.

The funny thing about it, it was supposed to just be a track for Paris. For French people, the groove was really strange — they weren’t used to it. It actually started to get pretty big, and I didn’t know about it, but people started to talk about it like it was a pop song or something [laughs]. The lyrics were on TV which is obviously nuts, and everybody was talking about the lyrics and my personal life, saying this straight, white guy made it when they actually don’t know anything about me – they don’t know I’m Latino [and have Uruguayan heritage]. It was just a lot of people talking on the Internet and they don’t know anything.

Kepler is out now on ClekClekBoom.