| Dimitri from Paris |
 Dimitri from Paris (born Dimitris Yerasimos in October 1963) is a
French music producer and DJ of Greek origins. His musical influences
are rooted in 1970s funk and disco sounds that spawned contemporary
house music, as well as original soundtracks from 50s and 60s cult
movies such as Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Party. Dimitri fused
these sounds with electro and block party hip hop he discovered in the
80s.
Contrary to his musical pseudonym, Dimitri was born not in Paris but in Istanbul, Turkey. Born in Turkey to Greek parents, Dimitri grew up in France where he discovered DJing at home, using whatever he could find to "cut and paste" samples from disco hits heard on the radio, blending them together to make tapes. This early experimentation helped him launch his DJ career. He started out by DJ'ing at the French station Radio 7, before moving on to Skyrock and finally to Radio NRJ, Europe's largest FM radio network, in 1986. There, he introduced the first ever house music show to be broadcast in France, while simultaneously producing runway soundtracks for fashion houses such as Chanel, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Hermès and Yves Saint-Laurent. He also released two solo EPs from 1993 to 1994, and contributed to the Yellow Productions compilation La Yellow 357.
In 1996 Dimitri became world famous with the release of his first
full album, Sacrebleu, released on Yellow Productions. A blend of
diverse influences including jazz, original film soundtracks, samba,
and organic house, Sacrebleu sold 300,000 copies worldwide and was
named Album of the Year by UK's Mixmag magazine.
There was a rumour that he worked with Sophie Ellis-Bextor on her
third album, as she said she worked with "a French guy called Dimitri",
but this was later proved false. |
