Philippe Cohen Solal

Founder of Gotan Project and ¡Ya Basta! Records
For two decades now, Philippe Cohen Solal has been making his mark as an electronic music architect and self-taught composer, having worked in many different areas of music production from A&R to soundtracks, as well as DJ-ing and making records.
He founded his own label, ¡Ya Basta! Records, in 1995. The label’s avowed aim is to give free reign to his passion and vision. This passion and vision is infused with a mixture of genres.
Parallel to his recording activities, Philippe Cohen Solal continued working on a number of side projects such as Métamorphose, the Pierre Henry remix album, which he A&Red in addition to being one of the contributing remixers.
¡Ya Basta! then provided the platform for his projects, such as The Boyz from Brazil and Stereo Action Unlimited.
Alongside Eduardo Marakoff and Christoph Müller, Gotan Project was formed in 1999. The trio initially released three 10” singles, which were a huge success with DJs across the globe. From these early experiments, an ambitious balance of electronic music and tango, the group evolved and were then joined by a large group of musicians. This concoction went on to produce the -must have- album, La Revancha del Tango. Gotan Project has sold more than three million copies to date worldwide, and played over 450 concerts from Rio to New York, Montreux and Tokyo, not to mention in some of the most prestigious venues in Europe.
Meanwhile, Philippe Cohen Solal wrote and composed his solo album, which he then recorded in the countryside near Nashville, Tennessee. This country/bluegrass album, Solal presents The Moonshine Sessions, is made up of personal, acoustic songs, and upon its release in 2008 was praised by international press from Paris all the way to Sydney (over 40,000 copies were sold).
Philippe loves nothing more than this freedom to write and produce the music he loves. While he was touring and releasing records with Gotan Project, his label signed David Walters, who sings Caribbean-inspired electro-folk; Féloche, who released the first Cajun electro album in collaboration with the legendary Dr John from New Orleans; and El Hijo de la Cumbia, one of the founders of the new Latin American electronic sound, “Digital Cumbia”.
He produced Talé, the last album of The golden voice of Africa, Salif Keita, and is currently working with Mike Lindsay (Tunng) on a new project around the American outsider artist Henry Darger.

He’s recently released a new solo album called “Paradis Artificiel(s)”, inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s poetry and the 19th century Hash Club of Paris.
His credo is making records that play on cultural diversity that are designed to please the whole world, not just the French. He sees it as not just being about borrowing from different musical traditions, but sending back a transformed vision of their music. He explains: “True diversity, is sending your music on a journey through other styles, rhythms and tones!”. With this vision in mind he gathered other great musicians to collaborate for a series of forthcoming singles including Horace Andy (Jamaica), Mo Laudi (South Africa), Angelique Kidjo (Benin), La Dame Blanche (Cuba), Los Calchakis (Argentina/Chile) and many other…