HOCUS POCUS: Hocus Pocus is a unique experience on stage with 6 musicians on stage.

A lot of people in the Czech republic knows you only since "73 Touches" onwards. What were you working on before that?

It is totally understandable that some people may only know us since the album "73 Touches" that was the first album to be released nationally in France for instance. Before that several self produced albums have been released like "Premiere Formule", "Seconde Formule” and “Acoustic Hip Hop Quintet” considered as the firsts “magical formulas" of the band. Many 12 inches have also been released: "Malade" and "Conscient" and many more since 1995. 73 Touches was released in 2005 so as you can imagine, quite a lot happened during those 10 years.

You released "16 Pieces" last year. What do you think about it after a year have passed?

Yes it´s already been a year indeed, time flies by so fast. We are satisfied of how this album turned out and the many great feedbacks we had about it. We toured all over Europe all year long and really had great times. If we had to do it all over again, we wouldn´t change it for the world.

Only a minimum of people speaks French in the Czech republic, could you shortly describe what are the individual songs about?

Beautiful Losers feat. Alice Russell

This song is a summary of many cliches we now are face to face with everyday with the uprise of the New Technologies amongst other things. It is a critical and ironic enumeration of well-known images and a critic of today´s modern society. We are all beautiful Losers….

25/06

The name of this track is the date of Michael Jackson´s death. This track is a tribute to this great artist but also a critical point of view of this mediatic exposition due to his death covering all other mediatic events. We really had an example of the press exposure that can be manipulated to give to the public selected informations.

A Mi-Chemin feat. Akhenaton

First, this featuring was a dream come true for the band knowing that Akhenaton (of the famous hip hop band “ IAM“ has been a big influence all along the years. This song is best explained by the Chorus : “ What you think you are, What you really are“. A-Mi-Chemin means “In Between“ and develops the specific attributes that define us even if they can be self-contradictory. Who do we think we are, and what is the image we project.

Putain De Melodie

This track is an ironic critic of the music which reaches a real significant commercial success today, taht often doesn´t bring anything original with their instrumental of vocal parts. It deals with the “crazy“ melodies that can get into our heads just because we heard a track in a shop or in any public places for instance. This track also contains a melody that easily ges into our head that we might be singing just like that….

Papa?

Papa means Father. This music presents somebody who is wondering if he is going to take the step to be dad anytime soon. He is already imagining how he or she could be like, what would become of his offspring. Is it a good time and an appropriate society to do so ?

Piece N 6 (Papa Skit By DJ Atom) / Piece N10 (Marc Skit By DJ Pfel) / Piece N 14 (Portrait Skit By DJ Greem)

Those three musical pieces have been played by two members of C2C and DJ Greem (also part of it). There are interludes (between performances), hooks from one track to another. C2C have always collaborated in our albums.

Signe Des Temps feat. Mr J Medeiros & Stro The 89th Key

Signe des temps means sign of the ages and generally deals wih the present events and important changes in our community. We are crossing new eras very often and innovations and changes into any form have a real impact on our life wether we want it or not.

Equilibre feat. Oxmo Puccino

Trouver l´Equilibre means to find balance into one´s life wich can be a life long fight. Oxmo Puccino, one of the most respected Mc´s in France joins the track and highlights many aspects of life and the search of one´s self.

Marc feat. Gwen. D

Marc is a first name but when written differently (marque) it means brand. This text deals with the omnipresence of brands in our life and how it became so normal to be wearing fashion clothes today. It´s no longer possible to avoid logos where you can walk or surf on the web today… It´s also an ironic caricature of some of the most famous and most consumed brands.

I Wanna Know (Je Voudrais Savoir)

As it´s easy to imagine with such a title that the lyrics talk about all the questions we may often be asking ourselves for which we don´t have the answers and will certainely never have for some. It happens to everybody to wonder about this or that…

Wo:oo

This track talks about the routine we can all of have all fell into one day. We are all faced with some similar choices, products, ways of living. There are some things we just can´t have an impact on. The W0:00 can be perceived as a bell ringing making us crazy sometimes because of its recurrence.

Portrait feat. Elodie Rama

This song is kind of a self portrait of 20syl, Beat-Maker and Mc of the band. His narrates his journey as a composer and producer but also which artists gave him the desire and inspired him to do so.

Le Majeur Qui Me Demange

It deals with the fact that sometimes you really want to throw it all away and say “fuck“ to everyone when something is going wrong…but indeed what you can understand from the lyrics is that we don´t do that ! The general idea is to help people to react to the fact they don´t have to be afraid of affirming themselves, their ideas, their passion…

100 Grammes De Peur

This text deals with the fact that if we really open our eyes to see and listen to every media informations that´s basically thrown at us every day, it´s really easy to fall into the trap of not being able to recognize wether it‘s important or not, true… The fact that there is a media manipulation of the informations in not discussable and many feelings, positive but mainly negative can be felt (being afraid…)…

I read in an interview that you have been quite successful in Japan and that Nujabes "discovered" you there?

Yes we do have a real decent fan base in Japan and we always have such great moments on stage when we are over there. We have indeed connected with Nujabes because he ordered our first 12 inch to have it in his Vinyl Shop. It was from there the adventure begun over there and nowadays we have real team there with a label, tour agency and an audience which is the most important thing. We won´t thank him enough for discovering us and bring our music there, it was a real sad news when we learned its dicease last year, he was a great producer and a good person.

Since there is not that much live bands that play hip hop, I have to ask, what´s the song-making process in Hocus Pocus?

The Making process of a song starts in Our studio in Nantes where I, 20syl kind of make the raw arrangements before the musicians come and all bring their own ideas and instrumental parts to the project.

It was mentioned somewhere that the harmonica in "Smile" was recorded by a musician that you found out on youtube, which is kinda funny. Are there any other collaborations that were made in a simillar way?

Yes that´s true, the internet allows us today to discover artists everyday and to get in touch with so many different people being one of its many advantages. We had to chance to communicate with Fred Wesley and record this collaboration this way. We only met him physically one year and half after in an hotel corridor in Japan as we were playing on the same festival !

For example, how the collaboration with Melodiq was made, which is on the "Far Away" single (with the beat from your 3 yr old beatmaking video) with "A Mi Chemin". Why isn´t this song on the album?

Melodiq in an artist we also have met via the web, we liked what he was doing and proposed to collaborate. He was really into what we were doing on our side so the collab felt really natural. He recorded himself rapping on the track he took on YouTube from the beatmaking video and send it to us. We decided to record for real the track with him and we have chosen to release the track on a limited edition 12 inch and not on the album to keep it exclusive.

You release your records on your own label. There was a single on vinyl before 16 Pieces, then the album was released both on vinyl and a CD. Are you happy with the sales? Could you tell us if the digital distribution works better than the physical sales?

Yes we are happy with the sales even though the album hasn´t yet like “Place 54“ being proclaimed a gold record. Today the sales context is different that two years ago but the physical sales still are predominent on digital.

What is now "in" in France? It seems like 90% of French rap is "political rap". Everytime I´ve seen some French rap magazine, there usually were some guys holding burning molotows with burning buildings in the background.

Today´s rap in France is more of a materialist rap than political. We are very few bands over here that have political comitted lyrics. I think a lot of people do have this image of a Hardcore kind of rap but it´s really not always the case it´s just that the most renown rapper over here tend to be. When you ask what´s ”in” today i understand what has a commercial success : to tell you honestly i won´t quote no name but it´s not what we would like it to be that´s for sure.

How is it going on with the C2C album?

Things are going really well, The band is in studio this year working on it. Many surprises to come ! The album and the tour will arrive early 2012.

Are you already thinking about some new songs at the moment?

I´m always thinking about new songs and taking notes whenever i´m inspired, i never stop making music because i do participate into many projects.

You were already doing the show here at the HipHopKemp f.ex. Did you enjoy that? And is there some similar festival in France?

We did do the Hip Hop Kemp festival once and it was such a great experience ! the audience was great and it was so full. We have a funny anecdot because there was an electricity problemn one hour before the show and we thought we may not be able to play but we did ! In France, we don´t have any Open Air festival really dedicated to Hip Hop or at least not big ones.

If someone heard about you for the first time because of this interview, what would you say to make them go to the Prague show?

Hocus Pocus is a unique experience on stage with 6 musicians on stage. We have toured all over the world and really had so many good feedbacks about the quality of the show, one thing we are really proud of. As we could say it´s not only a Dj set and Mc´s, it´s a real live show. If you love Hip Hop, Jazz or Soul you´ll find satisfaction out of the show and we´ll prove it to you on the 5th of May.