His real name is Pascal Arbez-Nicolas, although everyone (yes, almost everyone) knows him by his alias Vitalic. The phenomenon boomed in 2001, and we could say that the Poney EP was its Big-Bang. That release included “La Rock 01”, a track that left its mark on electronic music at the turn of the century and was soon considered by critics an anthem of the genre. Many believe that it was there that the Frenchman began to write his story. They are wrong. The story began a few years earlier.
It wasn’t as Vitalic, it was as Dima. It happened in the ’90s, when the rave scene was booming in France. The energy that was breathed in those parties was, according to those who were there, from another world, unimaginable in current times. In fact, Pascal himself says that his project as Dima was based on energy: “It was a kind of crazy project with dark and cerebral music.” He was living near Dijon, a city that saw its An-Fer club become a trend on the scene thanks to the visits of Jeff Mills or Laurent Garnier, great influences for Pascal.
Dima published 3 records between 1996 and 1999 and quickly became an important icon of the French underground. However, his passion for the rave world and all that wild stuff around it was fading away. Dima evolved into Vitalic, relaxing his techno proposal and making it converge with pop and disco influences. In just 2 years, Vitalic was already a reference.
Almost 2 decades, 4 albums and countless festivals later, Pascal has decided to give Vitalic a break and resurrect Dima. The goal, he says, is to reactivate his own label, Citizen Records, by releasing several albums. The first of them is called Sounds Of Life and, in its 4 tracks, the current sounds produced with modern machinery (synthesizers Modal 008 and Arturia MatrixBrute) and the structures of 20 years ago are clearly combined. With Dima live, Pascal recovers his wildest and most energetic tone, his most rave version, his original sound, the one that led him to become an electronic music producer.
Pascal is currently on the Vitalic presents DIMA live tour. With it, the French artist wants many of his fans, maybe too young to know his history, to discover where his music comes from, what his movements were and, why not, find in the sound of Dima a proposal that, who knows, they like more than that of Vitalic.
(Cover Image: © Citizen Records)
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