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Ark: Phoenixark
Want to know where dOP, Noze, and Circus Company come from? Look no further than Ark, whose freewheeling sound has had a massive impact on the French house scene. As RA's Oli Warwick finds out, though, mellow is now the norm for the DJ/producer. (Well, kinda.)
Guillaume Berroyer, both in his personality and his music, is every inch the naughty child in the house music playground. While the deep house kids chill out in the sandpit and the electro house crew play kiss chase, Berroyer would be the one setting fire to the seesaw. Whether wrenching out one of his hi-octane live sets or flitting about in his hotel room before a gig, a manic energy fizzes and crackles about the man better known as Ark. This month he returns full force with new album Arkpocalypse Now, his second long player for Perlon, and it could very well be the first many listeners have heard of his music. Look deep enough however, and you'll find he's been on a bumpy ride through subversive 4/4 that started way back in 1996.
Influentialark
While most know about the innovative take on house music that Guillaume Berroyer concocted in the late '90s and early '00s, few understand his enormous impact on the French (and international) scene. Below are a sampling of just a few of the artists directly touched by the producer's work.
Damien Vandesande (dOP)
An old girlfriend was really loving Ark's music, and I hated house at this time. One day she convinced me to see him play. Ark arrived on stage and I felt something I never experienced with a DJ. He reminded me a bit of a Jamaican soundsystem; he had a mic, he was giving so much energy, the boat start to rumble. It was amazing.
Le K
The start of my electronic music career is in a big way linked with Ark. For something like my third live set, we organised our annual party in my hometown Perpignan and we booked Ark. He heard my live set, told me he loved it, and the day after told Sety to check me out.
Nicolas Sfintescu (Nôze)
One of the reasons why I’m doing electronic music is because of Ark. When I was fourteen or fifteen, my sister made a party and she was dating him. He came with some friends and they played in the house, and I thought, I want to do it to! He is still a big influence now!
Sety
What touched us really deeply in the beginning of Circus Company was Ark. He was the one and only to act crazy on stage and it was a theatre in the end. All the other guys in electronic music you would see playing were way more serious and Ark was so intense when you saw him, like a mad professor!
Dave Aju
I never would have discovered or met Circus Company if it weren't for Ark. Both his music and direct friendly advice has had a great influence on my work over the years. The man has equal parts soul and punk, which is not easy to find. I have great memories of dinners, classic house records, and tequila sessions with the man.
Wendelin Weissbach (Das Krause Duo)
Ark has released so many funky big tunes in the past years. Oh man I can say 1000 times I see the people and us smiling while we play his tunes in the Krause Duo DJ sets. Ark is a great Ark!
"I think I can say I influenced the scene in France," Berroyer assuredly claims ahead of his album launch party at Rhythmatic in London. "All the Circus Company guys like dOP, Nôze; I'm the father of this fraction of house." At the same time that Trankilou was burrowing a distinct groove in France, Herbert was plying his trade in the UK with his 100 Lbs LP. A new generation of experimental house was emerging. "I'm really lucky," says Berroyer looking back, "'cos the guys I like making this kind of electronic music, LoSoul, Isolée, Matthew Herbert, Jamie Lidell, I have had a chance to collaborate with all of them."
After the second EP, Trankilou split, prompting Berroyer to adopt the Ark moniker, while Auger became Pépé Bradock. "When Ark was doing stuff with Pépé Bradock, they were like two opposite states of minds," recalls Sety, the label boss for Circus Company where Berroyer would later find a home for his music. "Pépé is really calm, and Ark is crazy and there is a great balance in their music. The raw punk style of Ark balanced by the deepness of Pépé."
Bradock went on to become a driving force in a more unusual brand of deep house, while Berroyer pushed the bricolage sample aesthetic of Trankilou to new extremes with a string of releases on Paris-based label Brif. His roots in funk, soul, punk and rock, informed largely by his father's library of music, were sliced and diced into a manic, jacking abstraction of what most people thought house music stood for."In the past I didn't think about anything in the studio," says Berroyer of his approach to production as his career took off. "I am 38 now, and I stopped my school at 16, just to make music. For a long time I was a punk. I'm from that punk culture like [The] Clash, [The] Sex Pistols. I love the extremist thing."
Having cut his teeth playing guitar for a number of bands before Trankilou, Berroyer always felt an inclination towards rock & roll excess both in his music and his lifestyle. This frenetic approach had a big impact on Sety, and Nico from Nôze, inspiring them to start Circus Company and leading to the release Alleluyark series of 12-inches that largely announced the label to the world. In 2005 the first Ark album, Caliente, hit the shelves. The scattershot ideas contained within the 13 tracks showed a more diverse side to the Ark sound, from the downtempo bliss of the Jamie Lidell-collaboration "R2D2" to the party-rousing dirt of "Sucubz."
For four years afterward Ark could only be found collaborating with other artists. The list is impressive, a veritable who's who of the French scene he helped kickstart: Mr. Oizo, Cabanne, Mikael Weil, Mossa, Dolibox. "It was a time when it was impossible for me to make music alone," Berroyer explains, hinting at the chaotic world he inhabited.
"[But] one year ago, in early 2009, some people burnt my studio and I lost everything," Berroyer explains. "I lost all my instruments, guitar, bass, my DAT archive of all my music of the past, everything was burning." It would be understandable for a musician to quit the game altogether when faced with the daunting prospect of starting again from scratch. Now, though, Berroyer looks back at the experience with a philosophical perspective. "At the time I was totally destroyed," he reveals, "but now I'm thinking it's perfect, because before the fire I was in a bad way. I didn't have energy or inspiration, I was too busy with parties and playing gigs, and the fire totally stopped this spiral."
Talking a little over a year after the fire, Berroyer certainly seems more settled. The wicked glint is still in his eye, and the dirty jokes still fly thick and fast, but they're balanced by an inner calmness which positively radiates out of him. "I'm on a really good way at the moment," Berroyer beams. "I'm with my girlfriend, and she takes care of me. When I made Caliente, everything was chaotic. I was on a destructive path, but at the moment it's different and I try to take care of myself, which I think comes over in my music. I think my music right now is not just a crazy guy. Now I'm a human guy and I have my sensibility and I'm fragile. My body told me, 'Hey, take care, man! You're not God or Superman, you're just Ark!'"
 Ark's studio, early 2009.
Berroyer's appreciation of other music has mellowed as well: He may not be zoning in on chart-topping pop nuggets just yet, but a recent (albeit relatively late) revelation suggests that he's not as detached from the majority of modern culture as we may have once thought. "One of my favourite discoveries is The White Stripes," he gushes. "Normally I love [a] project and it's Thelonious Monk or Frank Zappa, and the people don't understand. It's the first time I say 'The White Stripes' are great, and everybody in the world says 'It's great!'"
The accessibility of Arkpocalypse Now is perhaps down to his new approach in the studio. There's little doubt that his punk attitude had a part to play in his reluctance to embrace modern production methods, but after the loss of his old equipment in the studio fire, change was inevitable. "In the past I used Cubase on my Atari and I had a lot of machines," Berroyer explains. "It [was] great, but it [was] really complicated! Right now I'm using Cubase on the Macintosh, and it's more easy and I have fun. In the past with a lot of my music I tried to say something, but there was too much chaos. With Arkpocalypse Now it's funny, because apocalypse normally means chaos, but I really think I managed to express things in a more quiet way."
While house music, and hence the dance floor, still steers most of the tracks on the album, Arkpocalypse Now suits the home-listening experience perfectly. Case in point: "Deep at All," an epic, brooding collaboration with Dolibox that originally surfaced on an EP for Karat Records last year. "When I listened to my album," Berroyer explains, "I thought, 'This track is perfect to go on the CD.' Maybe I'm wrong because some people said in reviews that this track is dipping down too much. I really wanted this album to be...good...for listening in your flat or wherever, and I think 'Deep At All' is perfect for that."
As the conversation draws to a close, Berroyer turns to his laptop to play a sneak preview of his latest creation. A light, skittering beat trickles out of the speakers, accompanied by a soft, lilting flute. If Arkpocalypse Now was made for home listening, this track was made for hammocks on deserted beaches. "As time passes I'm making really deep music," Berroyer says as he desperately tries to tease a decent volume out of his laptop. "This is the track I made last week with a friend of mine. I made all the beats with my voice except the kick and the tambourine, and the friend plays the flute. It's not for the club, but it's my way right now."
The trademark playful sound is still present, but the musicality he's always flirted with seems to flourish in these more downtempo moments. It remains to be seen whether the music of Ark will follow in this direction, but what is obvious is that Berroyer has finally found a balance in his life which is slowly revealing another dimension to his music. "You need, on the artist's way, the up and down," he ponders. "Before the fire I didn't have a dramatic way. Everything was going smoothly for my career, and then with the fire I was going down. After that, I'm coming up now. Like a phoenix!"
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Published / Friday, 14 May 2010
 15 Comments
Photo credits /
Ark's burned studio - Etienne Racine
Ark climbing the wall - Christian Romy
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