Rain in the Valley EP

Knotweed Records is a new label launched out of Chamonix, France, by Belgian DJ and producer Philippe Petit. Philippe Petit has been around the dance music scene for a good 20 years. When he was not playing in his thrash metal bands, he was going out but did not like the music he was hearing. That is when he started DJing. Very eclectic in the beginning, he quickly veered towards funk, hip hop and acid jazz in the early nineties, playing for Guru, Ronnie Jordan, Galliano, the Goats, Palm Skin Productions etc. In 1995, he moved to London. Having to stop his sweaty metal activities, he needed to find another way to release all his extra energy, this time on his own. That is the reason why slowly but surely he started to incorporate more and more techno into his DJ sets. By 1997, it was only techno that was coming out of his needles. Having no time to start producing tracks, he focused mainly on playing gigs across London, as well as the one-off gigs in Belgium, France, Italy and Spain, mixing deep house and techno, always with a funk twist. By 2000, he was sharing his time between Chamonix and London, where he became a regular at Cantina Club and at Soulfood. Two years ago he moved permanently to Chamonix where he now spends 100% of his time focusing on making music. After one year of trial, he comes with this first release. As Philippe is composing music mainly when the weather grounds him at home, the dark atmosphere of the steep-sided mountain environment can be felt in all tracks of this release. The sound is techno at its best, Detroit influenced, hypnotic, dubby, but always with a funk element incorporated in the tracks. The key here is energy and groove!