The French house swag king offers advice on DJ sets, music production and using SoundCloud for success.
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Dombresky has had a lot of milestone moments in his career since moving from Paris’ mainstream hip-hop clubs to the house music stages of the world. Since signing his first EP to A-Trak’s tastemaking Fool’s Gold label in 2016, the man born Quentin Dombres become one of Beatport’s top-selling artists and gone on to collaborate with the likes of Diplo, MK, Blond:ish and Armand van Helden, to name a few. Along the way, he’s also played Coachella, Lollapalooza, EDC and his own sold-out shows at LA’s Shrine Auditorium and the Hollywood Palladium. Dombresky brings an irresistible style and swagger to his sets, and for 2024, he’s leaning heavily into the classic French house sound, all loopy disco samples, sexy basslines and slinky grooves. You can hear more Dombresky sounds via his bi-weekly Process Radio show, but we caught up with the DJ/producer in the middle of his 20-city North American LIFT OFF tour to ask him about the various ways he curates his sound and vibe, his production tips and how he uses SoundCloud for success.
It’s a huge deal when you go from DJing clubs to your first festival gig. What advice would you give DJs about preparing for that moment?
For festivals, you have one hour. It’s not 65 or 62 minutes – it's exactly 60 minutes, so you need to prepare yourself. Prepare your intro, prepare your outro. I like to prepare my DJ sets like a movie. I need a scenario. Most of the time, I start very groovy to bring the people with me, then I go up, then down, then I finish with my own music. I don’t really like to play my music. I have to, because fans are coming for that, but I also have to enjoy myself! I’m a DJ, more than I am a producer. I love to DJ so much. But I have to prepare the set – it gives me less stress, then I know how I’m going to finish and I can respect the scenario I envisioned. For the clubs, it’s very easy. I check out all the brand new music I like and I’ll prepare one playlist with 50 tracks. Most of the time, I’ll prepare the first three or four tracks and they’re enjoying it then, boom, I stay with the house music. But you never know what to expect in terms of the crowd – sometimes you can read in their face, they want more aggressive music.
What are some things that you learned that you feel really advanced your production skills?
When I started producing music in 2015, I was sharing studios with Tchami, Malaa and DJ Snake. I don't know why but we love to control everything, from the production to the mixing and mastering – it’s a very French thing. So at the beginning, I spent so much time fixing my mix and my master (I was mastering my own music). With time, I started to send my demos to mastering, because it takes a lot of time and I'm more busy with my DJ life – I don't have days to spend tweaking one track. But I did that for a long time and it really helped me get better at production.When I started producing, if you saw my master chain, you would say I was a psychopath because I used maybe like 20 VSTs. Now I keep it simple. I use FabFilter for the limiter. For the compressor on the master, I use the glue compressor or Mix Gel from Ableton. I used to try to save my song with stuff on the mastering channel and now I try to save my song in the mix stage, and leave more space for the mastering guy.
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How has SoundCloud played a role in your career growth or your opportunities?
It played a big role at the beginning of my career. SoundCloud was almost like my record label because I didn’t know any labels then. I released my first two tracks on SoundCloud before my Fool’s Gold EP and then I did a remix of A$AP Rocky that went crazy on the platform. SoundCloud plays such a big part for newcomers. Back in the day, it was like the only platform for independent producers. When you don’t have a label, you can put your tracks on SoundCloud and see what happens. It’s also good if you know how to switch vocals and use acapellas to create your own remixes. SoundCloud helped me put some lights on my Dombresky project and send some music to people who also put more lights on me. I really love this process where there are no rules and you can just throw the music you like up there.
Does fan interaction or do comments play any role in what you choose to release?
I had a really clear plan in my head of the music I wanted to do and I knew it might take some time for me to be more popular. For me, it’s better if you stay in your position, stay in your lane and see what's going to happen rather than changing your style and your mind because of the comments. But I have to say the comments were pretty positive on SoundCloud. SoundCloud is a community; if you’re into it, it's like a family. There’s a human energy.
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How do you use SoundCloud now that you're more established?
I'm very disorganized. I put all my demos and unreleased tracks on my SoundCloud (on private, of course). So every time I’m checking what tracks I have to finish, I check SoundCloud. It’s better than checking a folder on my laptop, because I have so many files and I don't know where to go. So as soon as I have something almost done, I bounce it and put it on SoundCloud; once a week, I check everything. Sometimes friends send me demos for collaborating and I don't want to forget about them so I check them out, put the name and the date and put them on SoundCloud. It’s different playing the track on a webpage and seeing the frequency – it’s a more creative way to listen than opening a WAV on my laptop. You can also put yourself in another position like ‘What if this song was released by someone else and I just clicked on it and listened to it? What would be your honest feelings about it?’
On the note of SoundCloud successes, your track “Soul Sacrifice” is at about 1.5 million plays on the platform! Did you know that song was going to take off so hard?
It’s very hard to know when you make a song if it’s gonna work or not. I remember the day when I made that song. I was in LA with my roommates in a small apartment in my room with my two speakers. I worked on this sample looping ‘Pa, pa, pa, pa,’ put in a kick, a bassline. I was like
‘Damn, it’s a vibe. But maybe this saxophone is a little bit too cheesy?’ I called over my friend who was with me – this guy is very French, a very picky guy. I thought, if this picky guy loves this saxophone, it’s proof there’s something there. He looked at me and was like, ‘Bro, it’s pretty cool!’ The main idea was made in like 30, 45 minutes. I released it independently on my own label, which is not really a real label, and it didn’t blow up the moment I released it. It took months for the song to be more popular. It became bigger in six or eight months after I released it and always went up, but it never had a super peak. That’s the way I like for my music to go because if the song goes very high very fast, it can go down very fast too. My goal is to try to make timeless music – the sound that you can hear five or 10 years after and say oh that’s a great song. If you make a big song for sure you're gonna add the fame and the money but you also add the pressure and the risk to do another one like that because that's what people expect from you. And that was not my strategy.
What’s influencing your sound right now and what direction do you feel you’re moving in for 2024?
It’s something I ask myself all the time and it changes all the time– as a DJ, every six months, you can start to think about another direction. But right now, I’m focusing on doing proper house sets – there is tech house, there is Afro house, but what I’m talking about is like this French vibe, funky, groovy house. One thing I’m very happy and proud of is the more I go in this direction, the more people seem to like it. I play old Antoine Camaran from 2016 or classics in my sets, Bob Sinclar, Roulé, but it doesn’t have to be French artists – there is also this new wave like Salute, Barry Can’t Swim, all these guys. As a DJ you always try to find out what is the next move, and now the music is going so fast. There are no more rules. You can release a techno track one day and then a house track the day after. A DJ set for me is a scenario – you have to build it like a movie. My goal is to build a house movie and if people love it, that’s a win/win.
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Click here for Dombresky’s SoundCloud and here to listen to his Process Radio shows.
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