06/04/2026
The best dance music records are often the ones that seem the most basic. Simple tracks built of little more than a few looped beats, melodies or perfectly-pitched samples, which nonetheless convey tension and emotion through subtle variations in each repeated motif.
Intro, by French musicians Alan Braxe and Fred Falke, is a prime example. Released in 2000 on Braxe’s Vulture Music label, Intro samples its refrain from The Jets’ 1985 hit Crush on You, that main hook augmented by crisp sampled percussion and a silky, grooving bassline played by Falke.
The two musicians began collaborating in 1999, but had met several years before during a stint of national service.
Braxe lived in Paris, and by the end of the 1990s had already had global success with Music Sounds Better With You as Stardust, a band Braxe formed for the one-off release with Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and vocalist Benjamin Diamond.
He had recently released his solo debut Vertigo on Bangalter’s label Roulé, but was in the process of setting up his own Vulture Music label, inspired by the approach taken by Detroit techno icons Underground Resistance.
Having not seen each other in several years, Braxe chanced upon Falke in a secondhand instrument shop.
The pair decided to try a few recording sessions together in Braxe’s home studio, at the time containing a fairly sparse setup of hardware tools.
“The centerpiece was the SP-1200 sampler from E-mu,” Braxe recalls. “There was another sampler, the ASR-10 from Ensoniq, which is a kind of workstation where you can sample and arrange, and do synthesis with samples. Then there was just a mixer and a very cheap compressor – the Alesis 3630 which is very well known for its pumping sound.
“There was one synthesizer, one multi-effects from Ensoniq – the DP/4, which has phasing, reverb, delays, all in one – and a turntable for sampling. That's it, there was no computer at all.”
Read the full interview and watch Braxe and Falke recreate the track via the link in the comments 🔗
