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Cassius
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Cassius was a French duo active from 1988 to 2019, consisting of the producers Philippe Cerboneschi and Hubert Blanc-Francard, better known as Zdar and Boombass. They met in 1988 at the +XXX studios in Paris and first worked together on albums by the French hip-hop artist MC Solaar. In 1991 they started the project La Funk Mob and began to experiment more and more with electronic sounds. The duo is counted among the French touch movement, the French electronic music of the second half of the 1990s.
Music and breakthrough
In 1996 they made their first house track under the name Cassius, Foxxy. After that they remixed for, among others, Air. In January 1999 Cassius 1999 appeared, their first real hit, which entered the British chart at number 7. The debut album 1999 followed, with Feeling For You and La Mouche. The second album Au Rêve came in 2002, with I'm a Woman featuring the singer Jocelyn Brown and The Sound of Violence. In 2006 came Toop Toop and the album 15 Again.
Influence
Outside Cassius, Zdar was a sought-after producer and sound engineer and recorded, among others, albums by Phoenix, Chromeo, Franz Ferdinand and the Beastie Boys. His own studio was called Motorbass. He died in Paris in 2019. The music of Cassius blends house and disco with funk and hip hop, and shows why the French electronic scene of those years gained such great influence.
Listening
Cassius 1999 · Cassius, 1999Apple Music ↗
Discography
Studio albums
Mentioned in other articles
- French house Genre
In France, producers such as Daft Punk, Cassius and Étienne de Crécy made French house from the mid-1990s: house tracks with filters and samples from old disco and funk.