It seems oddly, ineffably French that one of the best albums of the French Touch era isn’t really an album at all. Or not in the way that we commonly think of them, anyway.

Super Discount, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, was the record that cemented Étienne de Crécy in the public consciousness after the underground acclaim that greeted Motorbass, his duo with Philippe Zdar. And yet, in some ways, it isn’t really his album. 

Technically, Super Discount is a compilation of songs, most of which are by de Crécy himself (sometimes operating under different nom de plumes) alongside Air, Alex Gopher and the enigmatic DJ Tall / Mr Learn (both pseudonyms of one Laurent Collobert). Many of these songs - or perhaps all, history seems a little fogged on the matter - were released on a series of EPs by de Crécy’s Disques Solid before being put together as an album in 1996. (I’ve also seen 1997.)

To add to its unlikely appeal, Super Discount is also a concept album of sorts, based around the idea of shopping. Each of the four sides of the vinyl is marked with a different currency, while the song titles translate to phrases like “everything must go” (Tout Doit Disparaître) and “the boss has gone mad!” (Le Patron Est Devenu Fou!). It’s kind of silly, when you think about it. But who would want to think about it?

“Super Discount is a really chaotic story,” de Crécy told Vibe in 2013. “It began in 1994, the Paris techno scene was pretty small and took itself very seriously, which is why I chose to release EPs under a non-credible name like Super Discount.”

De Crécy wanted to produce “thoroughbred house that is both abstract and elegant”. But the release schedule he had agreed for the four EPs forced him “to produce music under constant pressure” and he says he “completely failed” in his ambition to make thoroughbred, abstract music.

“I was so late I asked my friends Alex Gopher and Air to give me some demos I can finish for the release, that’s why I choose to use many alias to make people believe we are an army,” de Crécy recently explained on Instagram. “The EPs’ success gives us the idea of putting them together on an album, which, to our surprise, soon goes on sale in supermarkets! We’ve come full circle!”

I mention this chaotic background not to take an ounce of acclaim from de Crécy, who has a hand in six of the album’s 11 tracks - really nine, plus two brief interludes from Collobert - and who is one of my favourite producers. 

Quite the opposite, in fact: Super Discount’s fluid positioning is evidence of a warm and relaxed creative spirit that is not too bothered about traditional music industry norms. Super Discount is a record that bathes in the confidence of the new, a record that doesn’t really care what you think about it. So maybe it’s an album; maybe it’s a compilation - who cares? Just sit back, relax and enjoy the grooves.

This spirit extends to the 11 songs on Super Discount. When I recently interviewed de Crécy for Line Noise, he lamented the fact that he could no longer make music as simple as this. 

“I love it [Super Discount], it’s really fresh… it’s innocent music. I wish I could be that innocent when I start a track now. That was just fun like, ‘OK this sample is good, OK with a kick, OK the track is done, you know?’ I’m still seeking this kind of freshness and innocence when I am doing music. Which is pretty hard when you have 30 years of experience.”

De Crécy’s idea of “just a sample and you’re done” both totally underplays the genius of Super Discount and really hits the nail on the head. The album is built around samples, filters and drum machines, which de Crécy puts together in a way that suggests you could do it, as long as you found the right sample sources.

But this, of course, is total nonsense. Because not only does de Crécy have a brilliant ear for a sample, he also folds them together in wonderfully unlikely ways, the clips often vaguely out of frame in a way that just works. 

Take, for example, Super Discount’s opening track, Le Patron est Devenu Fou. It is built around a haunting sample from Isaac Hayes’ Runnin’ Out Of Fools, which wails like a ship siren announcing the end of humanity. In de Crécy’s hands it sounds like the perfect hook for a rousing, if slightly melancholic, house song and an easy win - that is until you realise that the Isaac Hayes original is in 6/8 time and de Crécy has somehow inserted it into a 4/4 house slink in a way that really shouldn’t work but does - and in a particularly elegant fashion too. 

Added to this is a vocal from an interview with Prince Tebah, taken from a documentary called Roots Rock Reggae - Inside the Jamaican Music Scene; plus a wonky sounding piano riff from Stevie Wonder’s Send Me Some Lovin’ - again, employed slightly out of time - and a perfectly distressed bass groove from Earth Wind & Fire’s Brazilian Rhyme (Beijo Interlude) and you have a beautifully curated selection of samples that only a seriously inspired music producer could put together. 

Le Patron est Devenu Fou is a strangely obtuse piece of house music wrapped up in a late-night anthem: silly, funny, sad and entirely unhurried, content to let a sample just play for two glorious minutes if that’s what the song demands. I think of it like a swan, gliding along majestically on the surface as its feet frantically paddle below.

The same is true of the album’s next song, Prix Choc, which is the record’s other huge house highlight. Not only does the interview with Prince Tebah turn up again - in this case, de Crécy samples just two words, “sinsemilla” and “marijuana”, giving Prix Choc its iconic hook - but de Crécy once more teases a fistful of samples into precisely wonky and hauntingly melancholy shapes, notably employing a piano and drum riff from Hurt So Bad by US jazz guitarist Grant Green and a bewitching vibraphone sample from Johnny Lytle’s Street Scene. 

Lifting a couple of vocal clips from Prince Tebah, a drummer and Rastafari elder, might perhaps seem like a slightly cheap way to borrow from Jamaican music. But elsewhere on Super Discount de Crécy shows a willingness to engage with reggae and dub production. Tout Doit Disparaître is skeletal deep house dub that makes an excellent use of reverb, echo and space, with a filtered funk sample buried right at the bottom of the mix, while Liquidation Totale has a bass line so deep it sounds like it has escaped from a rogue Lee “Scratch” Perry record.

Le Patron est Devenu Fou and Prix Choc might make you think of Super Discount as a French house album. But it’s not really, veering instead towards the more open-ended sounds of the French Touch, à la DJ Cam, Le Tone, Dimitri From Paris et al. 

The most obvious sign of this is the presence of Air - who definitely aren’t French House but couldn’t be more French Touch - who contribute Soldissimo (Étienne de Crécy remix) to the album. Soldissimo is a lightly remixed version of Les Professionnels, from Air’s Casanova 70 12 inch, which de Crécy produced, mixed and released on his Solid label. Proving that you can’t keep a good idea down, Les Professionnels later became All I Need on Air’s Moon Safari. 

Soldissimo (EDC remix) isn’t as brilliant as that song - because, frankly, what is? - but it does add a beguiling Nina Simone vocal hook, while lifting Super Discount into a thoughtfully downbeat moment. And there it remains for Affaires à Faire by La Chatte Rouge (aka de Crécy and Motorbass partner Philippe Zdar), a downbeat hip hop number that is both mournful and surprisingly snappy, like Air meeting A Tribe Called Quest.

Air’s presence on Super Discount is evidence of de Crécy’s strength as a curator, dot joiner and scene builder. It’s also a neat link to his recent past: de Crécy attended the same school in Versailles as Air’s Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, as well as Alex Gopher.

Gopher - real name Alexis Latrobe - is an unsung hero of the French Touch. He co-founded Disques Solid with de Crécy and Pierre-Michel Levallois in 1994 and it was his Gopher EP that christened the label. On Super Discount Gopher contributes two songs: the castanet-clacking deep house of Super Disco and the jazzy swing of Destockage Massif, as well as mastering the record. 

Today Gopher largely concentrates on mastering rather than making his own music. But in the 90s, he was a minor star of the French Touch, his excellent 1999 album You, My Baby & I home to hits like Party People and The Child; and his presence on Super Discount is evidence of a scene that nurtured like-minded artists for the common good.

Even Laurent Collobert’s two contributions to the album, DJ Tall’s Tout à 10 Balles and Mr Learn’s Fermeture Définitive, are important in this context, even if neither weighs in at more than 15 seconds or contains a great deal of music. Collobert has a small but important history in the French Touch: he remixed a track on Alex Gopher’s classic Gordini Mix EP in 1997 and later worked with Cassius, alongside a (perhaps unlikely) career as a classical vocalist, painter and electronic composer.

Super Discount, then, is de Crécy’s record; but it is also a community record,  the product of friendship, tight deadlines and collective inspiration. Because that’s the thing about the French Touch: to an outsider it looked as cool and stylish as all hell, a peak of chic disco-house sensation. But, as Super Discount shows, the French Touch was also warm, friendly, sometimes silly and a lot more musically diverse than many people would have you believe. And surely we can all drink to that, as the record hits its 30th birthday.

Some listening

Dave Angel - Réflexion ft. Steve Waterman

British techno icon Dave Angel heads back to R&S for a piece of summer house so smooth you could lay tiles on it. Réflexion, with trumpeter Steve Waterman, is like the ocean lapping at your toes as a breeze flutters your bellybutton hair with just the right amount of summer melancholy to see you by, a solitary tear salting up your martini. The trumpet solo, in particular, is sublime, floating over the shuffling, shaking beat like the saddest little cloud in the sky.

Arca - Syncope

Arca’s new album arrives like a bolt from the blue and a slap in the face: 16 tracks of twisted and twitching rave energy that scorch past in an hour of weird industrial fun. XXXXX started life as a mixtape, after the epic Kick pentalogy, and you can hear it in the album’s carefree and stripped down spirit. There are no guest turns here, no obvious concepts and all but two songs weigh in under four minutes. Instead songs tend to turn around one brilliant idea - see the stuttering riff in Syncope - which Arca then runs with, taking it as far as her warped imagination can turn. XXXXX is simple but not simplistic, abounding with ideas, bleeding-edge production and mischief.

Marina Herlop - Vas Volant (feat. Adri Goor)

Did you expect jazz funk from Marina Herlop? More fool you. You shouldn’t expect anything from Marina Herlop. Or, rather, you should expect each and everything from an artist as boundlessly talented as Marina Herlop. Vas Volant, the latest single from her new album Dja Dja, is among my favourite things she has ever done, combining woodwind that chirps like summer birds, a bass line that verges on slap without ever quite getting there and a beat that resembles an octopus playing Afrobeat, all wrapped up in a gorgeous pastoral melody.

Things I’ve done

Line Noise podcast - Zora Jones returns

I spoke to Zora Jones about the sting from 400 bees, going off grid, singing in Spanish, playing live live and more, as she looks ahead to the release of her wonderful new album 50 Bullets To The Heart. 

Dreams in Neon: Remembering Kavinsky

I wrote a tribute to Kavinsky for Crack magazine, examining his impact on music and culture. “French producer Kavinsky, who has died at the age of 50, was an artist who seemed to manifest his dreams into reality.”

Line Noise - With Saul Williams

I spoke to the hugely talented musician, poet, director and actor Saul Williams ahead of the release of his new album, Leap Life, in August. We spoke about that new album, but also the role that music plays in Williams’ life, trusting the moment, shamanism and ceremony, headphone listening, technology, Sun Ra, optimism, Paris and more. Naturally, I also asked him about his magnificent DJ Krust collab. Coded Language and - for film fans - we discussed his role as a preacher in Sinners. On video for the moment - coming to the podcast soon

The playlists

Apple Music: The newest and bestest 2026

Spotify: the newest and bestest 2026

Apple Music: The newest and the bestest

Spotify: The newest and the bestest