Onra Interview

Onra is a French producer based in Paris. He may have reached a wider audience with the excellent Chinoiseries but he has also snuck out 3 other albums with the fourth, Long Distance, out soon on All City. The album may have an eighties soul and funk feel but hip hop heads will be more than satisfied with what they hear. We were lucky enough to get an interview with him and here it is.

Firstly, tell us a little bit about yourself.

I make music under the name of Onra, I’m French and I live in Paris.

Like a lot of people, I first heard about you via the Chinoiseries album which I fell for instantly. It seemed to have a real sense of humour which appealed to me. How was it getting all that sample material together and at any point did you worry that people would see it as a bit of a novelty release?

It just came naturally. When I came back from my trip to Vietnam, the first thing I did was listen to the records I brought back and I made half of the album in two or three days. Then I waited for a year before finishing the project. I didn’t know it was gonna be that talked-about. To me it was just a concept that was interesting, but I thought I was gonna sell just a few, actually, I thought this was gonna be my last album out.

Your new album, Long Distance, is heavily influenced by Boogie as a genre. Outside of France a lot of people are unsure of what is meant by Boogie. Could you explain a little bit?

Well, first, the album is not 100% Boogie inspired. It’s also inspired by Funk and Modern Soul (R’n'B from the 80′s). Boogie is a genre that defines funk music that came after disco. It’s a bit less uptempo and it has a more electronic sounds, because of the use of drum machines and electronic synthezisers.

Vocals play a large part on Long Distance. What was it like for you working with vocalists and how collaborative is it at the beatmaking stage?

There are 5 vocal appearances on the album, out of 21 tracks, so I don’t think it represents a large part, but it definetely helps making the project stands as a real album, and not a beat-tape. It’s not the first time I have worked with vocalists, we did it with Byron The Aquarius on The Big Payback project in 2006, but basically, it has been very simple and easy to work with those artists cause they are song writers. I just sent them a few beats to choose from, and they picked up what they felt, and started writing to it. After I got the acapellas back, I can rework my beats, the way they sound, and their structure to really fit what the vocalists did, and that’s it.

If you tour this new release will your current, solo, live set-up work or will you take a bit of extra personnel on the road with you?

I think this formula is half live, hald DJ, so it can work anywhere. Though, for this album, I invited my friend Buddy Sativa on a few dates to play some synths over the beats.

New and exciting producers on the beat scene are popping up all over the place. Who’s really doing it for you these days?

I don’t really know, it’s been a while since I paid attention to who’s hot and who’s not. I know there’s a lot of talent everywhere, and it makes it hard to follow.

You have changed sound and style almost completely from one album to the next since Tribute. Assuming this trend continues what can we expect from album number 6?

I’ve changed my style cause I have different concepts for all my albums. I like to work with directions for projects. I definitely want to explore more, and do all kind of music. You’ll soon be able to hear some Dub, some Deep House, and some other shit I have to keep secret for now. All i know is that no matter what I do, it’s still gonna be Hip-Hop, even if it doesn’t sound like it.

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