Tucked away in a quiet district of Paris lies InFiné, one of the cities flag-ship independent music labels. With an old corner-shop now-turned office as the unlikely-headquarters for the label, they work mostly with electronic and dance music. Sitting down with Alexandre Cazac, we spoke about the origins of InFiné, and what it is like to be a part of their family. Photos by Tom McGeehan
How did InFiné come to exist?
The first time we (myself & Yannick) saw Francesco Tristano in 2005 playing classical music like Debussy, and then switching to a classic techno track like “Strings of Life” by Derick May, we were both inspired. Simultaneously, we saw a path form before us; a path consisting of working with hybrid projects, music that is not restricted to one genre, passing boarders between cultures, and trying to mix with them rather than be blocked from one to another. Music that is not predictable…this is what we are trying to stick to.
What does a regular day in the InFiné office consist of?
There are not many of us in the office, so we try not to work on too many artists and projects at the same time. This allows for much more dedication and following of one endeavour, rather than scattered projects that we try and keep tabs on. We release around four albums and six EPs a year in order to give all our releases the same time and passion to make them grow. So a regular day is pretty much about organising and scheduling all the information we are dealing with from production and manufacturing, to promotion and releasing, and then following it with an entourage, booking and publishing. We are running after the artists, after the press people, after the good contacts for each project.
Is InFiné based around a big team of personnel, or do you prefer to keep it small and dedicated?
..and so that’s why we could need more people of course, but we work well like this and we are not pretending to not be what we are…artisans of the music industry.
A city as vast as Paris, do you find that it is accommodating to independant labels such as InFiné? Or do you still come into competition with majors?
There is enough space for everyone, as long as you just stick to your beliefs and what you think the market needs..majors are not a shadow over our heads. We work on a smaller scale, but we are essentially trying to do the same job. We’ve actually noticed a growing trend of majors wanting to work more and more with the independent labels like us, to try and develop ideas and artists side by side, rather than against each other. It’s a technique to help everybody win; an artist who begins their career in the industry has the opportunity to work with the same people from their first EP, to a major release of an album.
Can you explain a little about the process of how an artist gets signed to InFiné?
As we don’t sign many artist per year (because as I said before, we prefer to really dedicate ourselves to lesser people)…new-comers to the label tend to be more “friends” or artists we already know a little bit about. It’s a bit like a family..there is your immediate members, then your cousins, second cousins, some form of connection usually stems from artist to artist.
So it could be a current artist on our roster who presents us another artist (for example, one our bigger artists Rone who told us about his friend Gaspar Claus, the cello player who ‘s got a project with his Dad who is a a flamenco guitarist..and so on…). We also come across a lot of talent from asking artists that we are interested in to do a remix of someone else, to see if they can bring something original to a currently existing piece of work.
Or it could come from our workshop. Every summer we organise a small workshop/ festival in the countryside in France. One of the key ideas of the workshop is to give artists from different backgrounds an environment to be creative, and to work with other artists who they normally wouldn’t have the chance to collaborate with. This period of collaboration takes part from Monday to the Thursday of the workshop. We have rehearsal spaces and a big stage for the artists to work together, as well as the added benefit of a swimming pool, spa, and open countryside, to give the artists the best surroundings for them to feel comfortable. Then we open the doors to the general public from the Thursday night to the Saturday night, for the newly created work to be played live. We’ve seen some really amazing work come from this format, with some of the collaborations which began as a once off then turning into permanent partnerships. Said partnerships are then usually being looked after by us.
What can we expect from InFiné in the future?
Many more ventures with a simple rule; that they are projects that we are truly passionate about, and that we can’t wait to share with the world 🙂
