RV in his own words:

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My first piano, I was 8:
an old upright with a wooden frame that kept going out of tune. It had baroque wooden sculptures and chandeliers on it. It sounded big and haunting, and had crooked action.

My first 45:
‘Heart Of Glass’ by Blondie. I was 9.

My first album:
a weird 1979 compilation with mixed stuff from the 60s/70s on it. James Brown’s ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag’ was on there.

My first synth:
Roland JX-3P, I was 14. It was quickly followed by a Roland SH-101 which I still use to this day.

My first piece of recording gear:
Fostex cassette 4-track (the little black one).

My first vintage keyboard:
a Stage 73 Fender-Rhodes, sold to me in a hurry by a guy who was moving to Australia and needed to get rid of it.

My first computer:
if you don’t count that Commodore 64 that my parents had bought for my brothers and I in the 80s, my first computer was a PC in 1998. A real crash party that taught me to save constantly. Before that computer, all I had been focusing on was playing those keys tight and right, and rocking the stage with the bands I’d joined. To me, the digital world was like Uranus: a distant land. It took a major label fiasco (the band I was in at the time: Vercoquin; the label: Island France) to convince me to take the jump. Computer = don’t need no-one else’s money to make a record = artistic freedom. GE was born in direct reaction to the fiasco.

My first GE track:
‘Badville.’ Didn’t make it to the album. You can get it on ‘Central Mixes.’

Some of my favorite records.

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Some albums I always end up going back to. It’s not a list of what I think are the greatest albums of all time (I don’t know what that means), it’s the records that make me tremble the most.

Stevie Wonder ‘Innervisions’	The Beatles ‘Revolver’	Curtis Mayfield ‘There’s No Place Like America Today,’
Serge Gainsbourg ‘Melody Nelson’	Sly Stone ‘Small Talk’	David Bowie ‘Hunky Dory’
Duke Ellington ‘Money Jungle’	Lou Reed ‘Transformer’	Donny Hathaway ‘Live’
Prince ‘Parade’	Bob Dylan ‘Blonde on Blonde’	Charles Mingus ‘The shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife’
De La Soul ‘3 Feet High & Rising’	The Beatles ‘White Album’	Lalo Schifrin ‘Bullitt’
Wayne Shorter ‘Speak No Evil’	Tom Waits ‘Rain Dogs’	Fela Kuti ‘Expensive Shit’
Herbie Hancock ‘Inventions & Dimensions’	War ‘The World Is A Ghetto’	Jimi Hendrix ‘Electric Ladyland’
Eric Dolphy ‘Out To Lunch’	Al Green ‘Still In Love With You’	Stevie Wonder ‘Songs In The Key Of Life’
The Beastie Boys ‘Check Your Head’	John Coltrane ‘My Favorite Things’	Graham Central Station ‘GCS’
The Pharcyde ‘Bizarre Ride’	Esther Phillips ‘From A Whisper To A Scream’	Bob Marley & The Wailers ‘Uprising’
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers ‘Live at Club St Germain 1958’	Radiohead ‘OK Computer’	Marvin Gaye ‘Here My Dear’
Wu-Tang Clan ‘Enter The Wu-Tang’	Sly & The Family Stone ‘There’s a Riot Goin’on’	Bobby Womack ‘Communication’
Beck ‘Odelay’	The Isley Brothers ‘Brother, Brother, Brother’	Curtis Mayfield ‘Sweet Exorcist’
D’Angelo ‘Voodoo’	and many, many others….