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Le

Dom

DJ, Producer, Label Owner, Paris

It's time to get to know Le Dom, a Parisian producer of an innovative French club music who is part of the most forward-thinking sounds in contemporary dance music: Bérite

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Head into any half-decent basement in Paris tonight and you’re likely to hear DJs working through Afrotrap, Baltimore house, ballroom, kuduro, gqom and grime, without missing a beat. Make sure it’s a really good basement and more often than not you’ll find Domenico Bercelli and his Paradoxe Club cohorts behind the decks. Bercelli, better known as Le Dom, is at the forefront of a revolution in French club culture. A success story born from hardship and misfortune, the Bérite club music scene is one of the most exciting things to happen to dance music this decade. Coined by Parisian powerhouse and Sound Pellegrino boss Teki Latex, Bérite club music is more of an ideology than a strict sound; it is the logical endpoint of how music evolves in a city where cultures clash commingle, where DJs are exposed an endless array of genres, a place where Daft Punk records go with the latest MHD joint like good red wine goes with cheese.

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When we chat, he cites “Errorsmith, Para One, and Drexciya,” as influences on the production front. Listen to any of his productions for Paradoxe Club, the label he he runs alongside fellow Parisians Birol, Sunareht and De Grandi, and you’ll hear jagged, mutant, ragged club music that sounds like the hitherto unimagined midpoint between those acts. Teki’s online show Overdrive Infinity—filmed at the Dailymotion studios on the Rue de Bérite—was where the movement began to take shape. “We would listen to great DJs while drinking free beer, and then go out to a club,” Bercelli tells me. “Then in 2016, the building right next to the studios had a gas leak and basically exploded, so the studios were touched and these meetings had to stop. But the Berite idea was already launched.”

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While it is evident that Bercelli’s proud of his role in the reshaping of Parisian nightlife, he’s keen to stress that the anything-goes approach that Bérite relishes in, isn’t limited purely to French shores. “I think there definitely is a connection between us and labels like Nervous Horizon, Crazylegs, guys from Acid Fantasy and many UK artists and DJs these days,” he says. “I feel like we share some tastes in rhythms, sound design, a sense of club music in general.”

February 2018 will see his next EP drop titled ‘Castle Owner’ on Paradoxe Club. Exciting approaches to sound need exciting parties, and despite it being hard to fill the bigger clubs where house and techno still have a stronghold, Bercelli feels upbeat about where clubbing in Paris is headed in 2018. “Nights like Bonus Stage, Teki Latex’s residencies, La Coucou at le Klub, Bye Bye Ocean at La Java, Rinse France parties,” are just a few of the examples he gives of the spaces that seem most receptive to the music that he and other DJs like Betty, Sylvere, and TGAF are playing out. The future is here: embrace it.

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