French house
French house (also referred to as French touch, filter house, or tekfunk) is a style of house music devised by French musicians in the 1990s. It is a form of Euro disco and a popular strand of the late 1990s and 2000s European EDM scene. The defining characteristics of the genre are filter and phaser effects both on and alongside samples from late 1970s and early 1980s European disco tracks. Tracks sometimes contained original hooks inspired by these samples, providing thicker harmonic foundations than the genre's forerunners. Most tracks in this style are in time and feature steady four on the floor beats in the tempo range of 110–130 beats per minute. French house is similar to future funk, although there are some key differences. Purveyors of French house include Daft Punk, David Guetta, Martin Solveig, Stardust, Cassius, The Supermen Lovers, Modjo, Justice, and Étienne de Crécy. History and influences French house was influenced by American dance music, Euro disco and the space disco music style. Space disco was popular in France during the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially with artists such as Cerrone and Sheila and B. Devotion. American P-Funk also influenced the genre's sound, especially the work of George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. P-Funk was played alongside disco in many French discothèques, notably after Disco Demolition Night took place in the United States. The Jacking aspect of Chicago house was also incorporated into the French house scene with "jack house" becoming a short-lived descriptive term for the sound in the UK. The influence of 1970s French pop music, championed by musicians such as François de Roubaix, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Serge Gainsbourg, is also apparent within the genre. Thomas Bangalter's tracks for his Roulé label were some of the earliest examples of French house. His solo material, along with his work as a member of Daft Punk and Stardust, influenced the French house scene during the mid-to-late 1990s. The French duo Motorbass were among the first in France to produce house tracks largely based around samples and filtered loops and released their seminal album, Pansoul in 1996. Parisian producer St. Germain also produced jazz-inspired house tracks. Other known French producers during this time period, such as François Kevorkian and Laurent Garnier, remained distant from the emerging French house label. UK dance music and European DJs first recognized French house experiments in the mid-1990s with commercial success occurring in 1997. Daft Punk, Cassius and later Stardust were the first internationally successful artists of the genre, and along with Air, signed to Virgin Records. Initial releases by all three garnered music videos directed by Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Alex & Martin. Thanks to a growing awareness of the clubbing scene, along with major label support, Daft Punk's debut album Homework entered the top 10 of the UK album charts upon its release. The duo would ultimately become the biggest-selling French act in the UK since Jean-Michel Jarre. The emergence of the French sound coincided with dance music's popularity in