INTERVIEW WITH DIMITRI TIKOVOI

⭐𝑫𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒓𝒊 𝑻𝒊𝒌𝒐𝒗𝒐𝒊: „𝑳𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒒𝒖𝒆, 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒏 𝒐𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒊𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒌𝒆𝒆𝒑 𝒆𝒗𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅.“⭐

Photo credit unknown

🔹𝐃𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐫𝐢 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 - 𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝐬 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞 (𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐈𝐭)🔹

Dear friends, I have no complicated Placebo theme for you tonight. I have found an amazing interview for you that Dimitri Tikovoi gave to a Hong Kong Nightlife Guide Magazine in 2004.
We already know who 𝐃𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐓𝐑𝐈 𝐓𝐈𝐊𝐎𝐕𝐎𝐈 is. A prominent French DJ and producer who has inspired many of Placebo's works with his amazing talent and thanks to him, the MEDS album is still one of the most exceptional Placebo creations.
In 2002, Dimitri formed a group of artists for his solo project called
𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐒𝐇 𝐏𝐀𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 and released a single and completely unique album called 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 under the auspices of this project.
Among the most famous artists from this album are 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐭 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝, 𝐀𝐬𝐢𝐚 𝐀𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐌𝐨𝐥𝐤𝐨.
⭐🔹⭐
I have a very nice Instagram experience with Dimitri. Last year I shared a video on my IG account from the performance of his project Trash Palace in Saint-Malo, France in 2002, it was the song The Metric System, on which Brian Molko was invited to collaborate.
I tagged Dimitri in this post and he didn't hesitate and commented early in the morning that it was a blast of the past for him and that he had played this concert but never seen it again. He even asked me to send him a video to DM, which I was very happy to do.
Dear Dimitri kindly exchanged a few sentences with me and shared this video on his profile with these words:
„𝐴 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝐼 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑚𝑦 𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 (𝑦𝑒𝑠, 𝑖𝑡'𝑠 𝑚𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑟 :-)) 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑠ℎ 𝑃𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑜𝑡 𝐵𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑀𝑜𝑙𝑘𝑜 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 𝑢𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 30.000 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒.“
👍Thanks man, I appreciate that you are not only a great musician, but you also like your fans.😊


So, take a nice moment at my post and read Dimitri's view of sex as part of our lives and his amazing mentions of working with Brian and the beautiful Asia Argento, who added her sexy vocals to the song
𝑱𝒆 𝑻'𝑨𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝑴𝒐𝒊 𝑵𝒐𝒏 𝑷𝒍𝒖𝒔.

Trash Palace. Photo credit unknown

📌 Sitting in a west London bar on a sunny afternoon, Trash Palace main-man and former Parisien producer Dimitri Tokovoi, speaks softly as he outlines the centrality of sex in his electronic rock band and more specifically the importance of real sex behind Trash Palace's aesthetic.
„There are so many programmes about sex on TV here but when you watch them you feel like you're at school studying a subject such as how you should give a blow job,“ he snorts.
„Sex is not about that in reality at all; it's fashion, perversion, love, whatever; it's much more complex than just the image that's portrayed in the media at the moment.“
He equally opinionated about Trash Palace's perfectly formed fusion of rock & roll and electro-disco, which he created with the help of a highly impressive cast list of collaborators.
„I deliberately set out to find different people to collaborate with because sexuality is about a relationship between two people, it's very hard to have sex by yourself,“ he points out.
„I wanted to have different views, different moods and different sorts of perversions on the album and that's why there are so many different people involved.“
That Dimitri is as persuasive as he's well-connected is clear from the characters he tracked down, who include Velvet Underground legend John Cale and Placebo singer Brian Molko. He also managed to seduce Italian sex siren Asia Argento into performing a version of „Je T'Aime“, though admits he didn't actually know her until she walked into the studio to lay down her part.
„I had this idea of doing Je T'Aime because I've always loved the track, but my idea was to invert the characters roles,“ says Dimitri.
„In the original track, Serge Gainsbourg is fucking Jane Birkin, he's doing the act of penetration and I wanted to invert the roles; to have Asia doing the role of penetrating someone else. Brian (Molko) said he would do it so I asked Asia by sending her an email. Immediately, she sent me an email back saying 'yeah, I really want to do it' so I flew to Italy to record her voice.
She was very nervous when she did it because she's not a singer and she didn't know what I was going to ask her to do, she was still shooting movies at the time,“ he continues.
„We did it in a small room with a very basic recording set-up and I remember her chain smoking with me sitting in front of her. It was a little bit of a tense atmosphere but that was good for the track. She didn't know me, I didn't know her so it was a slightly bizarre environment.“
With Asia being generally acclaimed as one of the world's sexiest starlets, the resulting track is as salacious as Dimitri presumably hoped it would be, reflecting the overall highly polished standards of all 11 tracks on Positions. Musically, he's succeeded in tapping into the talents of all his various collaborators, to produce an album of punk, funk and electro songs that genuinely (and unusually, in this day and age) truly rocks.

Photo credit: Claudia Schmölders

𝑺𝒌𝒓𝒖𝒇𝒇𝒇: 𝑯𝒐𝒘 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒖𝒊𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒔?
DT: „It was mainly down to luck. I was working with those people in different ways as a producer or programmer, and most of them I was introduced to them through my work. I told them about my project and usually I got a really enthusiastic response from them.“
𝑺𝒌𝒓𝒖𝒇𝒇𝒇: 𝑰𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒂𝒎𝒃𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒂𝒎𝒐𝒖𝒔, 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒂 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇?
DT: „No, I like to be in the shadows, I'm quite happy to be the man behind the keyboards and the computer, I prefer that, I find it more exciting not to be seen.“
𝑺𝒌𝒓𝒖𝒇𝒇𝒇: 𝑰𝒔 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒔𝒉 𝑷𝒂𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒆 𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆?
DT: „No, they're two different things, Trash Palace is my fantasy, it's something that I'm taking out of my mind. Sometimes I come very close to living it as well (chuckling) but essentially I don't want it to be an explanation of my life. If I try to recreate my life through Trash Palace it will have limitations, whereas my fantasies or those fantasies that I'm generating with other people, are limitless. With fantasies there are more possibilities.“
𝑺𝒌𝒓𝒖𝒇𝒇𝒇: 𝑯𝒐𝒘 𝒅𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒓𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝑳𝒐𝒏𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒔 𝒗𝒊𝒃𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒔𝒆𝒙 𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒎𝒔, 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒔?
DT: „Sex is more diverse here and more pretentious in Paris. There are a lot more taboos in England which makes it a lot better because it makes everything a bit more perverse, so more interesting. There are more rules to break and places to go in the dark to break them, which I find really interesting. One of the aspects of sex I like is its danger; that makes it more exciting. In France, people are more upfront; there is less perversion in France, I think, perversion is more a part of the English culture.“📌
♦You can read the whole interview here:
https://bit.ly/3nx6B5l
⭐🔹⭐

The shared video is the only live version 🔹"𝑱𝒆 𝑻'𝑨𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝑴𝒐𝒊 𝑵𝒐𝒏 𝑷𝒍𝒖𝒔"🔹 from the Trash Palace performance, where Brian sang this beautiful song live and Asia Argento was projected from a video on the screen behind him.
As we already know, this song is a cover version of the immortal song of 𝑺𝒆𝒓𝒈𝒆 𝑮𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒈 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑱𝒂𝒏𝒆 𝑩𝒊𝒓𝒌𝒊𝒏.
It was put out as a single in 1969 and reached no. one in the UK, but it was banned in several other countries due to its overtly sexual content. Gainsbourg wrote “Je t'aime moi non plus” for the famous actress and sex symbol Brigitte Bardot with whom he had a short love affair in late 1967.
Like many of us, I have known this song since childhood because my father loved it.
Dimitri's idea of overturning the roles of lovers then seemed brilliant and very amusing to me, and Brian's live performance just took my breath away🔥💗.

Personally, I wish Dimitri many more successes, because he still has a head full of ideas and shares posts about his musical collaboration with many young artists on his IG account.
⭐And who knows, maybe there will be another collaboration with our beloved band?⭐🥰


Post by Marti