Freddy Lamotte is the creator of Flam Music, the first management company in France for engineers and producers. I heard about him through my interview with Pascal Garnon for Speakhertz and decided to reach out via phone. After becoming acquainted, Freddy was kind enough to invite me over to Flam’s offices for a two-hour interview about his career, his recording studio, Soyuz, and the French music industry in general.
– Hi Freddy. Thanks for having me over to chat. Let’s talk about your beginnings in the music business. Was music something you went to school for?
No, I didn’t study anything music-related, and despite my university education I was never much of a student. I didn’t really know what to do with myself back then but since I listened to punk and new wave music everyday, I was always open to working in the music business. I got my first chance in 1994 when I became the manager of a small band called Le Train Fantôme who were signed to FNAC Music. I didn’t know much about management at the time but the band was happy to have me work for free, and the job gave me a chance to learn about the business since it put me in touch with labels, publishers and tour managers. So I stayed working for them until 1996.
– And how did you end up working as a Studio Manager?
The band members had a friend called Daniel Brunetti who we used to have drinks with after their shows. During one of those nights, Daniel said to me, “I’m going to open a new recording studio in Paris. You should come and work with me there “. I had no experience working in studios at the time but I still answered, “Sure, why not? “. To be honest, we’d both had a few drinks at the time, so when I showed up at his door the following morning to talk about the job offer, Daniel had already forgotten about it (laughs). But after three hours of insisting that I wanted to be involved, he said, “Ok, you can work at the studio but I won’t be able to pay you anything at the start “. So three months later when the construction was done, I became the Studio Manager for Les Studios De La Seine in 1992.
La Seine started off with one control room, an MCI desk and a 24-track Studer tape machine. It was a small studio but the size actually made it easier to focus on learning my job. I would shadow the engineers to learn as much as I could about recording and I even read books about audio in my free time. As La Seine became more well-known, we opened a Neve control room after two years and an SSL room two years after that. After five years we were the best mid-sized studio in Paris. The larger ones were Studio Plus XXX, Studio Mega, Guillaume Tell, Davout and Ferber, but we were next in line after them.
– What was the biggest benefit of working at La Seine?
It was the networking opportunities. Having three control rooms that ran day and night meant I learnt everything about the business within two years and it was largely thanks to the people I met there. In the 2000s, most of the composing and production work was done during the recording sessions rather than at home. This meant that writers, producers and engineers had to be present in the studio when the artist was composing and rehearsing, which gave me the opportunity to meet lots of people in the business. For example, Parlophone booked Studio A for Radiohead to perform for the label staff during their album run for “Pablo Honey” in 1993, and I met a lot of people through things like that.
– What did working at La Seine teach you about the work of the producers?
I was always impressed by their work ethic because helping an artist to find their vision isn’t easy. You first have to understand how the artist thinks in order to communicate effectively with them, and since some artists don’t handle stress well, you might also have to play the role of a psychologist. You’re also the guy who stands in-between the artist and the record label, and even though the label pays you, your primary job is to serve the artist. So I learnt a lot about that process and I think it helped me understand how to better represent producers once I set up Flam.
– And how did you go from studio management to setting up Flam Music?
I created Flam because I’d befriended a lot of producers, mixers and engineers over the years. It started with Jean Lamoot asking me to help negotiate his major label deal, which I did as a favor. Once I realized there were other producers who needed help with similar things, it gave me the idea of starting my own agency. Subsequent clients would include people like Stephane Alf Briat and Laurent Guéneau, who was one of the top mixers of the 90s.
– Why did you leave La Seine?
Because of work commitments. During my ten years at La Seine, I also became an artist manager for Matthieu Chedid. This was during his first album run in the late 90s; he wasn’t famous yet but he became big soon after that. Additionally, I had more producers asking me for help with their contract negotiations and it consumed a lot of my time. I realized that I couldn’t manage Flam, La Seine and Matthieu simultaneously, so I decided to focus solely on Flam since it was my own company, and I stopped with the others.
– Was there a reason no-one else had set up an agency like Flam prior to you? Is this a business that struggles to make money?
I don’t know why no-one did it before me given that similar agencies existed in the UK already, but making a living with Flam hasn’t been a problem for me. Sure, I wouldn’t earn enough money with only one client, but it’s fine when you have ten to fifteen clients who work everyday. Managing producers and engineers is totally different from managing artists – artist management sometimes requires you to work a whole year without seeing a penny whilst producers and engineers work everyday, and even if they make less money per project than an artist, it’s still consistent money. So I’m not rich, but I’m able to pay my bills and raise my children with the percentages I get off that.
– What kind of work does your job involve?
My work involves everything from negotiating the best possible contracts for my clients to helping them with the everyday problems of their job. I talk to them almost every day about any issues they’re having with their projects, and they know I’ll do everything I can to help resolve them.
– Do you have any theories behind why Flam became a success?
I think Flam turned out well because I do business on the basis of trust. For example, I don’t tie my clients down to any contracts, and if someone doesn’t feel like working with me anymore they’re free to walk away. So we operate with hand-shake agreements, which is how the business used to be in decades past; it worked fine back then and I see no reason why it shouldn’t work today. But not having a contract means a manager has to be more diligent than otherwise, since the client can leave at any time if he’s not happy with the arrangement. So I tell my clients that they can call me day or night if they have a problem, so they know I’m here to help them.
– Who were some of your first international clients?
The first one was a Japanese engineer and mixer called Goh Hotoda, who mixed Madonna’s “Vogue” and Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus“. He was also the personal engineer of film composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. We did lots of albums together and I really enjoyed working with him.
My next international client was Markus Dravs, who I met at La Seine. He booked time at the studio to mix Émilie Simon’s first album for Barclay. Before we met, he’d already worked with Björk on albums like “Homogenic“, but his career in the UK was slowing down so he came to France in search of work and became one of my clients. After about three years of producing and engineering French albums, Arcade Fire asked him to work on “The Suburbs“ and his career exploded thereafter. Since then he’s worked with acts like Coldplay, Florence & The Machine, Kings of Leon and Hozier. Obviously he doesn’t have the time to do French albums anymore, but we’re still friends and I continue to pitch him projects whenever I can.
I used to have a client from Sweden called Lati Kronlund who I met whilst working on a Khaled album. He was the bass player of Brooklyn Funk Essential when he lived in New York and became a popular producer there too. Once he relocated to Paris, we worked together for three years, after which he moved back to Stockholm.
– Is there a reason why you haven’t expanded your international roster? It sounds like most of your past foreign clients have left the company.
In the 90s and 2000s, it was common for French record labels to commission foreign producers because they had the budget to pay them. But once the industry’s revenues shrank, it became difficult to hire foreign talent because labels not only had to pay for the flight ticket, but also for food and lodgings. So if a producer from the US is staying in Paris for two months to produce an artist, you can imagine how expensive it becomes. As a result, Flam only has two international clients at the moment.
– I saw a lot of interesting names on Flam’s website. We don’t have the time to cover all of them, but can you tell me about working with the following two:
Antoine Gaillet: I met him through a residency he did at my recording studio, Soyuz, and we became friends after some months. He later asked Flam to represent him for an album he was working on, and we worked together for the next ten years. Antoine eventually became one of the most popular producers in France, and was so in-demand that his schedule was always booked three to six months in advance. He’s a great engineer, and is one of the best I’ve seen at making artists feel comfortable. All of his past clients have asked to work with him again, and not just artists but labels too, which says a lot. He’s taken a break from producing because of how hectic his schedule became, and currently works as an A&R for PIAS. Based on his recent artist signings, I think he’s going to be one of the best around.
Stuart Bruce: He’s a producer from the UK with a studio in Bath, and he worked a lot with Peter Gabriel, including being an engineer at Real World Studios. He’s one of the best producers I know for acoustic projects and he’s very well-versed in different kinds of music. We worked on a lot of things together but it’s lessened over time because the type of music he’s doing now isn’t what’s trendy, and most artists don’t want to work outside of the commercial market, which means less work for non-mainstream producers.
– As an agency, how are you able to find work for your clients?
After working in the industry for over twenty years, I have relationships with a lot of A&Rs in France and most of them know about Flam too. They usually call me if they have a project they want one of my clients to work on or they call the producer directly if they already know him.
– Can you give me an example of how that works?
Sure. I recently organized a meeting between one of my producers and an A&R who has a new female artist. He mainly signed her because she’s a young vocal talent that he wants to develop, but he didn’t know which direction to take her in. So I called one of my producer clients and said, “You should meet with this A&R and see what happens “. By acting as a middle-man in that way, I give my clients the opportunity to get hired, although they have to close the deal themselves.
– If the label calls the producer directly and offers him a job, does Flam still get a commission?
Of course. Flam doesn’t just broker the initial deal, which is something any agent could do; we manage whatever projects our clients are a part of. Once my clients tell me about the project, I have to work out the deals for their flat fee, their contract, their studio time, organize the session, and sometimes even book the musicians. Most of the time I manage the budget too. I also have to help with issues like broken gear, a late artist or a misunderstanding between the producer and the label.
– You recently created another division of your company titled Flam Soundtracks. Tell me about that.
Flam Soundtracks was set up last year with Pierre Cattoni. Flam Music always had two or three composers at a time on its roster and we did lots of film soundtracks together. But it gets very time-consuming when you represent more than ten clients, as I was never able to spend the proper amount of time on my composer’s projects. So each one of them left us after five years, and I realized that I needed to employ someone who’s full-time job would be to manage composers exclusively. I met Pierre soon after that and pitched him the idea of Flam Soundtracks. He already knew the music business after having worked at labels like Tôt ou Tard, and he agreed to come onboard. So we currently represent five guys again, and Pierre is working on expanding the roster.
– Does managing producers and engineers differ from managing composers?
Yes, it does. The job tasks may be similar but the clients aren’t. Flam Soundtracks’ clients are film directors and producers, which is a different world from artists and labels. It’s very hard to jump between both worlds, which is why Pierre handles one of them full-time.
– Can you tell me about your staff at Flam?
There are two other people at Flam excluding Pierre and myself. I work closely with Elga Dobong’na who I met about twenty years ago. We know each other well and I couldn’t work without her at this point; she started off as an assistant but things have grown into a partnership. She handles more admin stuff than me but also has her own clients and A&R connections.
We also have Marc Debout who’s been with us for three years. He’s the Technical Director of Soyuz as well as a mixer. He knows a lot of people in the business and is a great IT guy too, which is handy when I have computer problems (laughs).
– And what about your international staff? I see names like Stéphane Grégoire and Götz Gottschalk on the Flam website as your foreign team members.
We opened a Flam office in Belgium five years ago and Stéphane was our representative there. We were dealing with a lot of Belgian artists, labels and studios, but we closed the office once the projects died down, although we occasionally worked with Stéphane on other projects.
We had an office in Germany as well and we collaborated with Götz for our work there. We would send him producers for his projects and he would provide the artists, but that office is closed now too.
– Speaking of offices, what’s the story behind your Paris office and the Soyuz recording studios you have here?
We initially rented a tiny red house near Père Lachaise Cemetery as our office. The adjacent building was occupied by other tenants, but when the first floor became available I decided to rent it for Matthieu Chedid. As I mentioned before, we’d split amicably because he became too big of a star and I didn’t have the time to manage him anymore, but he called me four years later and said, “Hey Freddy. Would you be interested in working with me again, but this time as an executive producer on my music projects? “. He’d become his own industry at this point and was working on both his own record and albums for others, plus doing music for film. I accepted his offer, and part of my job was to help book him recording studios, which wasn’t easy. He’d become so famous that privacy and comfort were important considerations, so I told him that a floor had just opened up next to Flam’s offices and he could set up his own studio there. That’s what he did, and for years it was his private studio; he even produced an album for Vanessa Paradis there. That was in 2010 and it was a great period of my life. Business ran smoothly because of how popular Matthieu was and everyone wanted to work with him, so the studio was always full of clients.
– Matthieu Chedid is one of those artists that’s super famous in France but hardly known elsewhere, similar to Johnny Hallyday. How big would you say Matthieu was at his peak?
He was one of the biggest artists in the country, both commercially and critically. To give you an idea of how popular he is, he sold out Bercy Arena for an entire week, which seats about 20,000. That’s a lot of people (laugh).
– Why do you think he didn’t become big internationally?
Well, it’s quite hard for French artists to become global superstars. All the ones who had international careers, like Vanessa Paradis or Phoenix, made music for a global audience by singing in English, whereas Matthieu sings in French and his sensibilities are French too. Granted, other French-singing artists like Maurice Chevalier and Mireille Mathieu were able to achieve international success, but I wouldn’t say they became superstars.
– You talked about Matthieu’s studio, but how did that develop into Soyuz? Are they the same studio facility?
Not really. I needed a studio for my other clients to work in, but Matthieu’s studio was always in use because of his busy schedule. So when the building’s ground floor became available, I used it to build Soyuz. Business went really well for the next three years until my partnership with Matthieu came to an end in 2013. He left for different reasons and it marked the start of a difficult period for me. The music business had been losing money since the 2000s but the revenue decline became even more pronounced after 2011. However, I didn’t feel the effect of that because of Matthieu’s continued success – clients just kept booking studio time with us because of him. When my peers in the music business would complain about their financial difficulties, I’d shrug my shoulders and say, “I’m not really experiencing that…“. But it all changed when Matthieu left. Building a proper recording studio is very expensive, and all of Soyuz’s rooms have a box-in-a-box construction that costs a lot to make. It also requires that you commit to installing the necessary acoustic treatment, which we did for the whole building. The financing for that came from bank loans that I had no problem paying when Matthieu was around, but the income dried up after he left. I could only watch as the loan payments became harder to meet, and to be frank, I thought my business was over.
– So how did you survive?
I had to change my business model by making the film industry my primary clientele. We rented all of our smaller rooms to film editors, which worked well because they would rent three rooms for five months: one for the Chief Editor, one for his assistant and another for the voice-over editor. Comfortable studio rooms were hard to find in Paris at that time and ours were not only acoustically isolated but also had daylight coming in through the windows, which our clients appreciated. So we attracted enough editors to fill up the studio schedule for a year, and we also brought Flam and Soyuz under the same business model, which meant keeping at least one company busy so we never lost money, even if we had to accept small projects. So that’s how we survived.
Within Soyuz we have both commercial studios for artists and labels, and post-production studios for film editors. We also have all-year residencies for Flam clients like Alexandre Zuliani, a producer, and Ludovic Bource, a famous film composer. This allowed us to create an ecosystem of facilities where it’s easy for people to meet each other, which became one of our strengths. I also prefer having a studio where we have different kinds of projects going on rather than relying on just one industry for clients. It’s more secure for us in the long term.
(Below: Some rooms at Soyuz)
– I’ve heard that you also have your own music festival. What can you tell me about that?
Sure. The festival is called Les Pluies de Juillet and was started three years ago. It’s afforded me the chance to work alongside people a lot younger than myself, which as a 50 year-old has been quite a refreshing experience (laughs). The event aims to raise awareness about today’s ecological challenges, so we use different genres of art to attract people for a three-day event in Normandy where we offer conferences and activities regarding the subject. Indoors, speakers are invited to share their expertise with audiences that we switch every three hours, and we also invite 50+ sustainable development start-ups to showcase their work. Outdoors we have everything from concerts and gastronomy classes to theater and guided tours in the countryside that end at an organic farm where the farmers talk about how they grow their food.
The main festival staff consists of eight people, including myself, with four of us working in Paris and the rest working in the town where the event takes place, Villedieu-les-Poêles.
– And how does the festival make money?
It doesn’t really make money. But it’s not all about money anyway.
– But don’t you have overhead costs? So you’re losing money?
No, I don’t lose money. Our overhead is covered thanks to the partnerships we have; the only thing I lose is time, which I don’t mind giving up. But since the day-to-day business of the festival can function without my input at this point, time is no longer a factor. But staying involved brings me a lot of joy, so I’m in touch with the team on a regular basis.
– Let’s talk about the job of a manager in general. Why are managers even necessary when an artist can just manage himself?
It would be difficult for most artists to manage themselves. There are so many things to deal with that you’d need three clones just to get your daily tasks done. Ideally, someone else should deal with your publisher, the label, your commercial deals, your image, your sponsorships, etc. None of that includes having to answer all the people who ask you for favors every two minutes. A manager doesn’t just handle your business – they also act as a shield from the people who want to exploit you. I don’t see how an artist can manage all of that alone, much less create art if their head is full of business issues that have nothing to do with the song they’re writing. As a matter of fact, I don’t know of any artist that doesn’t have a manager.
– Really? Not one?
Not really. Here’s an example of what I mean: I know of an artist who had a lot of success with her debut album and all the signs indicated that she was about to become a star. But as a result, she started to feel like she could manage her own career and decided to fire her manager. I remember thinking she was going to have a hard time, and that’s what happened. Once she was on her own, she lasted two weeks before realizing that the workload was impossible to handle and she had to hire a new manager.
An artist is only one person, but there might be several tasks that need to be done at any one time for their career to do well. For example, if you’re giving an interview during your press tour, you won’t be able to take calls about your sponsorship deal. So you’ll have to call your sponsors back after the interview, but what if you also have to meet with your tour production company in half an hour? And what if your stylist wants to discuss the wardrobe for your upcoming show in a few hours? And when you finally get home, you remember that you haven’t made any social media posts today. I mean, will you even have time to sleep with that kind of workload? So every artist needs someone who’s full-time job is to not only handle stuff like that, but also motivate and inspire the other people that work for you, from the A&R guy to the press agent. Any of those people could lose interest in your project for different reasons, but you can’t make music all day whilst keeping tabs on them. So a manager matters.
– What’s the main difference between management in the 2010s versus the 90s and 2000s?
The business has changed a lot. When I started off, industry roles were more clearly defined. It used to be that an artist had a manager, an agent, a label, a publisher and a tour company. Everyone stayed in their lane and worked towards a common goal. Nowadays you have publishers who want to be labels, production companies who send their artists on tour and touring managers who want to be producers. So everything’s become jumbled and it’s quite different from how it used to be.
– Does that make your work easier or harder?
It’s just different. In the 2000s, 90% of my client’s work came from major label employers. Nowadays the employers are majors, indies, publishers, touring companies and more. In one sense it’s better because it means more work for my clients, but in another sense it becomes complicated because of how recording budgets have diminished. In the 2000s, the budget for a debut album was €60,000 – €70,000, whereas it’s around €40,000 now.
– €40,000 doesn’t sound so bad. I thought you’d say, “It’s around €10,000 now”.
Sometimes you have to manage with €10,000 too, and frankly, it’s possible to manage better with €10,000 than €40,000. When the budget is €10,000, everyone tends to adapt their expectations pretty early, which makes my life as a manager much easier – everyone knows the production can’t be extravagant with only €10,000. But what if the label provides €40,000 and then asks the producer to record an orchestral arrangement because they think the budget can afford that? Now I have a potential nightmare on my hands because I know how much money that actually costs. So part of my role is to manage expectations on both sides.
Another challenge with higher budgets is managing the amount spent on personnel. In order for a music professional to deliver their best work, you need to pay them accordingly; there’s no point in low-balling someone to work with you. You can do a lot of productive things with €10,000, but hiring four session musicians for two weeks probably isn’t one of them. So it’s important to know the financial consequences of your decisions, and I can assure you that it’s something not everyone thinks about, so my job is to keep an eye on that.
There’s a lot of talented young producers who’d be very happy to accept a budget of €10,000 to work with an artist because they recognize it as an opportunity to advance their career. I’d advise new artists to consider that option rather than chase after a more experienced producer that requires twice the budget. I’ve seen situations where the producer only accepted the job because he was at a downswing in his career and just wanted the work. But now you have someone that’s working for you reluctantly, which means he won’t deliver his best. So the bigger budget, the more you have to manage.
– In a world where artists are often marketed as being supremely talented and fiercely creative, would you agree that producers don’t seem to get much credit for their work?
Yes, I agree with that, and I tend to speak up about it because I’ve seen how producers get treated by the business. First of all, not enough is said about their input on records, especially when most artists can’t make their albums without help. I’ve seen producers who do majority of the creative work but hardly anyone in the industry wants to talk about it afterwards. When the time comes to do the royalty splits, people conveniently forget who did what. I think it’s a mistake on the part of the artist and the label when they conceal the true story behind an album’s production. As soon as the producer’s job is done, people want to forget that someone else helped out, which could include anything from composition to instrument choices. The French music awards, Victoires De La Musique, are a good example of that; they hardly mention producers or engineers in their ceremony, which is a shame.
– What are some points of disagreement that can arise between a manager and the label?
Disagreements happen all the time (laughs). For example, the label may commission several mixes of a track with the intention of selecting the one they like the best, but that means only the selected mixer gets paid and the rest essentially wasted their time. If one of those guys is my client, I’m going to have an issue with the label. I understand that it’s a grey area because the label doesn’t want to pay for something they won’t use, but I sometimes get impolite when my clients are asked to work for free.
Another area of conflict could be when a mixer makes significant improvements to the arrangement of a song. If they ask for some of the song’s publishing as a result, it usually creates a challenge for me since publishing probably wasn’t in the original contract, and now I have to work out a new deal.
– Who would you say is the most powerful manager in the French music business?
Hmm, I don’t really know. Everyone is powerful in their own way.
– Okay, but let’s say a producer wants to work with A-list artists like Beyoncé. Isn’t he going to pursue the manager most able to get that kind of artist on the phone?
I’m pretty sure I can get Beyoncé on the phone if I have a producer with the right talent and reputation. But I wouldn’t make the call unless I was sure he had those qualities (laughs).
– Okay, let’s switch from “power” to “respect”. Tell me about the music executives that you respect.
I have respect for Laurent Bizot, the founder of No Format!. He works in this business solely for the love of the music and only signs projects that he loves, which is why he works tirelessly on them. He’s the type of executive who makes things happen that otherwise wouldn’t have happened without his initiative. So as a reward, ironically, he hasn’t gotten rich for it, although I hope that changes (laughs).
Another guy I respect is Antoine Bigot, the founder of microqlima, which is a label with great artists like Isaac Delusion, L’Imperatrice and Fils Clara. Antoine has a nose for talent and a knack for developing them. His reputation as an executive is still growing, but I hope it gets bigger.
You may have noticed I didn’t mention any big names in the French music industry, and it’s because some of the executives at major companies have forgotten why they got into this business in the first place. The only way to have fun in the music industry is to work with artists you’re fond of, otherwise it becomes a nightmare of dealing with people you don’t like, and I sometimes see that happening at major companies.
– Last industry question. I’d like you to share your thoughts on some popular French record labels. Can you tell me about the following:
Virgin France: That was a very creative label in the 90s, with an impressive roster that included acts like IAM and Les Rita Mitsouko. Even Daft Punk got their major label start Virgin. A lot of nice people with original ideas came out of there like Laurence Touitou and Luca Minchillo, which is why the label had so many great artists. Virgin also had a sub-label called Delabel that Matthieu Chedid was signed to.
Because Music: That was founded by Emmanuel de Buretel, who ran Virgin France for years. He’s a guy capable of forming an international vision for his artists, which is something he deserves a lot of respect for going consistently. It’s the reason Virgin had such global success when he was there.
Wagram: Stephan Bourdoiseau is the CEO. He’s a clever guy who started with a small distribution company and built on that until he ended up with a successful label. I don’t know him personally but I think he’s a smart guy.
Barclay: I’m a big fan of their work and I think they’re the smartest label out of Universal’s acquisitions. So many classic artists have built their careers there, like Lou Doillon. Barclay were known for having artists whose lyrics came from a personal need to share something, as opposed to just singing about whatever was fashionable. That goes back several decades with names like Jacques Brel, Alain Bashung and Noir Desir. Those acts were already good when they signed with Barclay but the label made them into stars, for which I credit their A&Rs and the executives who hired them.
PIAS: Kenny Gates is a co-founder of the label and he’s a very smart guy from Belgium. I’m quite fond of PIAS because Christophe Miossec was signed to them and he’s the best lyricist in France in my opinion; he’s the kind of musician who can tell stories using just a few words. Maybe it’s because he worked as a journalist before the label signed him. I had the chance to work with him on one of his tours when he was signed to PIAS and I had a good time working with the label.
– Thanks for talking to me Freddy. It was a great chat. So what’s next for Flam in 2020?
We intend to continue representing our producers and engineers whilst running our studios, and we try to have fun whilst doing it, which is important too.
– After 25 years in the business, do you still enjoy your job?
Yes, I do. My job has given me the chance to create experiences with creative people, which I really appreciate, especially when I think back to less fortunate times. For years I worried about paying back those loans, and things were stressful for about a decade because I didn’t know how I’d fare from one month to the next; I was even worried about having to sell the studios. But most of the loans have been paid since a few years back, which has changed my life and allowed me to focus on enjoying my job again, which is great.
Below is a list of Flam’s current roster of producers and engineers.
Alexandre Zuliani (Thérapie Taxi, Leonie, Efflam…)
Dimitri Tikovoï (Placebo, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, The Horrors, Ed Harcourt, Kill the Young, Skip the use…)
Clément Roussel (Møme, Voyou, Agua Roja, Cléa Vincent, The Alchemist … )
Adrien Pallot (Requin Chagrin, Grand Blanc, Blind Digital Citizen, Moodoïd, Cabuco…)
Samy Osta (Feu! Chatterton, Juniore, La Femme, Aliocha, Rover …)
Omoh (Julien Doré, Alex Beaupain, The Pirouettes… )
Stan Neff (Polo & Pan, Lilly Wood & the Prick, Brigitte, Camille…)
Florian Monchatre (Blick Bassy, Clio, Tinariwen, Arman Méliès, Make the girl dance…)
Jean Massicotte (Patrick Watson, Arthur H, Lhasa, Alexandre Désilets…)
Robin Leduc (Gauvins Sers, Marie Flore, June et Lula, Revolver, The Rodeo, Tony Allen…)
Markus Dravs (Coldplay; Björk, Brian Eno, Mumford and Sons, Peter Gabriel, James, Emilie Simon …)
Fred Deces (Jeanne Added, Izia, Calypso Rose, Grand Blanc, Bagarre…)
Ian Caple (Tindersticks, Tricky, Alain Bashung, Cocoon, JJ72, Yoko Ono, She Cries Mary…)
Lucas Chauvière (Winston Mc Anuff, De La Soul, Java, Claire Diterzi,”Toto Bona Lokua”, M, Julien Baer, 26 Pinel …)
Stuart Bruce (Susheela Raman, Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin, Kevin Ayers, Maxime Le Forestier, Jean-Felix Lalanne)
Stéphane « Alf » Briat (Air, Phoenix, Flavien Berger, The Pirouettes, Isaac Delusion, Arnaud Fleurent-Didier…)