As one of the French Touch movement’s forgotten heroes, Demon is perhaps the artist that best brought about the movement’s essence, a reimagining of house and American disco. Such is exactly what is offered from the 15 tracks of this debut album released in 1999. The album was soon eclipsed by the hit You Are My High, released several months later alongside the lip-oriented video worked into reissues. Struck by the release of Homework by Daft Punk in 1997, Jérémie Mondon would come to closely adopt their formula and demonstrate a fine coherence. The album may well act as a guidebook for anyone wanting to recreate French Touch in decades to come.
The title track Midnight Funk, with Alex Gopher is the perfect amalgamation of his made-in-Chicago downtempo house beat, a soul vocal sample (Randy Crawford on the intro to Street Life - who would dare do this today?), funk guitar and refined bass. Other archetypes follow: Lil ‘Fuck with Etienne de Crécy is more hip-hop in nature, Now That I Have You is more downtempo with wah-wah pedals and an aquatic beat, while My City (Demon’s Theme), Heartbreaker and Lost Highway are of a more jazzy vein. Such tracks would have doubtlessly turned the heads of Fred P and Jus-Ed, the godfathers of the New-York deep house scene in the 2010s. And while Demon has never known a career quite as thriving as his contemporaries, you will not find any justification for this in this highly underrated album. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz