You don't often hear about fashionable titled DJs do you? Dimitri From Paris was one of the first Electronic artists to be awarded by the French Government the title "Knight of the Arts and Letters." With his work with fashion houses and remixes of everyone from Quincy Jones to Bjork, Dimitri was part of the first wave of French house DJs/Producers to break out on the international scene. Dimitri's artist albums and eclectic mixed compilations have built him an eccentric following throughout the world.

With the release of his new remix of 80s pop dance group Imagination, Dimitri shows that he continues to bring the sound of the past into the future.

DJ Ron Slomowicz: Tell us about the new remix that you have coming out exclusively through the online store at juno.co.uk.
Dimitri From Paris: It's a remix that I've made of an old classic track by Imagination, the 80s pop/dance group, of a song that was probably their most cult song, "Burnin' Up." I got the opportunity to choose which single I wanted from them and since I'm a big fan of that band and that particular track was never reissued and it was never properly remixed at the time either, I thought it was a good opportunity to redo what had been done at the time. I had access to all the original master parts as well, which is something that I always want to do just for myself, to actually listen how they made the actual the record. I worked from there and only used what was there on the tape, so it's a pretty old school-sounding remix.

RS: That cut and paste aesthetic really translates through a lot of your work, do you do most of your remixes that way?
Dimitri From Paris: When I get to work on old songs that have been recorded in the 70s/80s, it's because I like them, and since I like them, I don't want to start adding stuff that's not needed. A lot of the songs that I choose to work on didn't have a proper twelve inch or a proper extended version at the time and that's what I'm aiming to do. I want to make something that for some reason didn't happen at the time, but use the same sort of philosophy that they were using at the time which was using what was there rather than just taking a snippet of the vocal and remaking the whole track. That, to me, defeats the whole purpose of a remix and that's not what I call a remix. A remix for me is still the old way which is remixing what's been recorded.

RS: Instead of reproducing it with a totally new sound.
Dimitri From Paris: Yes, I mean you can do that and I used to do that as well but I realized that I'd rather work on something that I've chosen and that I like and work from what was there and try to take it to another level. It's a bit more of a challenge to actually use what's been recorded and try to make it sound different and more clubby than it was initially. So yes, if I add something it will be so light that I hope people won't be able to actually notice what I've added.

RS: When you're doing your remixes do you use software or mostly hardware?
Dimitri From Paris: I use software. One of my dreams was to be able to have an analog twenty-four track machine so I would be able to listen to all those records that were recorded in the 70s and 80s because that's what they were using. Then when the music software became as powerful as it is today, it allowed me to have that and much more and I moved on to software. I may occasionally use some analog outboard because I started in the game about twenty years ago so a lot of the equipment I bought I kept. The flexibility of software is not is not equaled by anything else. I'm a big ProTools freak actually. I do use a Mac though, but I use ProTools. I'm very interested by Logic but more as a music composition tool as opposed to an editing tool. I think as far as that goes, I think ProTools is still the brightest one out of them all.