Montreal electrofunk stars Chromeo take stereotypes and turn them into funky beats

by Nadine Silverthorne

It sounds like the start of a bad joke: A Jew and an Arab walk into a club. But the explosive sound of Chromeo, a.k.a. P-Thugg (Patrick Gemayel) and Dave 1 (David Macklovich), is nothing to laugh at. The humorous electrofunk duo from Montreal often joke that they’re the only successful Arab/Jew collaboration since the beginning of time. All kidding aside, the music is seriously good. Case in point: their 2007 album "Fancy Footwork" received a JUNO nomination for Dance Recording of the Year.

Making music in Montreal
The pair met in a Montreal high school when P-Thugg was looking for musicians for his budding band. “Dave was a guitar player and we were missing musicians,” explains P-Thugg on the phone from New York. “You know -- small high school, little band. You try to find whoever you can. And Dave was there, he was a good guitar player, so we picked him up in the band.”

The young band soon started the groundwork to becoming self-proclaimed walking hip-hop encyclopaedias. “We started producing hip hop at around 16 years-old,” recounts P-Thugg. “We started collecting records to sample. This is mostly how we learned about music anyways. Just collecting records, we sampled some stuff; you read who’s playing on which record and so on. That’s kind of what influenced us.”

Video made the electrofunk stars
Their first album, "She’s In Control," debuted in 2004. At the time, there were few video-sharing sites. Yet their 80s-era Prince-reminiscent video for “Needy Girl” got a lot of buzz. “’Needy Girl’ was big for us because that video went so many places. The guys who did it were amazing and I really like the video,” says the Lebanese-born keyboardist.

Their unique look and old-skool-rooted sound make them a prime pick for YouTube-friendly videos. Their videos have been watched millions of times on the popular site. “We make a point of really being involved in the videos. When we make a video we want to make sure we like it – that we love it -- and we want to make sure that people will like it. We’re not just gonna do a video for the sake of it. It has to represent something to us. Like the ‘Bonafied Lovin’ video, I’m really proud of that video. It has to be entertaining.”

Famous Fans
When not making music and performing, the band occasionally does favours for other acts. Most recently they remixed “Sealion” on Feist’s multi-JUNO-nominated "The Reminder." “Fiest was a fan. She met Dave in France, and she was like, ‘Hey I like your music. I like what you do.’ And they kind of became friends and she asked us to do a remix of ‘Sealion’ and we did it. We don’t do much remixes unless the artist personally asks to or we like the song, etcetera, etcetera. We’re not a remix band.”

In early 2007, Chromeo opened for UK supergroup Bloc Party across the pond. “It was cool. It was a whole different audience that picked up on us. It was younger kids. It was a good match. Their audience was really into us and I think it brought us a bunch of new fans.”

P-Thugg seems most pleased with the seemingly effortless and karmic nature of their success. “What’s really cool is that everything we do, all the opening acts that we’ve done, all the remixes that we’ve done, everything’s completely organic. I’m really glad that everything just happens naturally. We don’t have some big shot manager who’s forcing us onto big opening acts. It’s just fun.”

Another exciting example of the artist-love Chromeo receives occurred when the Beastie Boys asked them to open for their shows in Montreal and Toronto. “The Beasties were like our teenage years, you know? And they personally wanted us to open for them and that was so flattering. It’s just amazing.”

New York, New York
The Montreal-based band is spending a lot of time in New York City these days. Macklovich is currently working towards his P.H.D. in French Literature at Columbia University and teaching some classes. P-Thugg heads down on weekends so the duo can collaborate on new music. “New York is definitely very inspiring,” says P-Thugg. “There’s a lot of everything here. I can go walk in the club and on the right night I can hear some good funk. On other nights you can hear some more recent stuff. It’s just a lot of activity here.”

As for the JUNO nomination, the guys are thrilled. “It’s great. I’m really glad. You know it’s a lot of years and hard work rewarded – well not rewarded yet, because we didn’t win anything yet,” he laughs. “But it’s just cool to be nominated. It’s like Canada is showing us that ‘Hey we like you guys. We know you exist and we like you.’”

Official Site: Chromeo
MySpace: Chromeo