Name: Clémence Maillard of Cercle
Nationality: French
Occupation: Label Manager of Cercle Records
Current event: Cercle's COSMOS, their latest in a series of annual label compilations, is out now. It features exclusive contributions by Indira Paganotto, Ann Clue, Bantwanas, Romain Garcia, Denis Sulta, Brina Knauss, Vitalic and Notre Dame. Pre-order the vinyl version here.

[Read our Indira Paganotto interview]
[Read our Bantwanas interview]
[Read our Brina Knauss interview]
[Read our Vitalic interview]

If you enjoyed this Cercle interview and would like to know more, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, tiktok, Youtube, and twitter.



What is your own story to how you got to Cercle like and how do your personal interests overlap with the Cercle philosophy?

Cercle has always been some sort of dream job that I was hoping to reach later in my life. I never thought that I would have the chance to reach this goal so young.

From what I was seeing about Cercle: the way they communicate, the music they promote and how they always take meticulous care about their aesthetic, I knew that it would be the perfect fit.

What I didn’t expect was that not only are the projects exciting but the team behind them are absolutely mind-blowing by their talent and mindfulness.

I have to be honest, I've known Cercle for years, but wasn't aware it also published music. Cercle has always been about experiences, fleeting moments, and movement. How does the label fit in there?

When the label was created, the idea was to create something in addition of the show and the long-form content on Youtube: a memory from the experience: a soundtrack. At first, the label was only releasing tracks from Cercle shows, exclusive tracks composed from the location: titled by the name of the location with a picture from the location as a cover.

Then, we decided to open the label activity with new concepts such as our live sessions called Cercle Stories but also remixes and now, original tracks accompanied by innovative video concepts. The last video series released by our track was called “Matter” where Cercle initiated a fresh exploration of the bond we all cherish between music and the world.

With the help of visual scientists, like the Australian filmmaker Josef Gatti, we visualize how unexplored dimensions of our reality react to the creative frequencies of Cercle tracks. Mixing up different scales and substances, science and aesthetics, we thrived to show the heart of our music in the most surprising and tiny places.

Many people will assume Cercle to be rooted in streaming culture but there has always been an intriguing dialogue between what you're doing online and  events on location. How do you see the connection between the “virtual world” (if there is such a thing at all) and the physical world?

Cercle's motto has always been to act as a bridge between breathtaking venues and individuals that can’t necessarily travel by way of musical discovery.

Through our different experiences, we've always wanted to shed light on what's real (culture, heritage, art, music) while making it available to as many people as possible.

A question closely related to the previous one: What can a fruitful and healthy relationship between these two worlds (or aspects of the same world) look like?

Tough one haha!

We're in the midst of a renewal of the experience that artists want their audiences to enjoy, both by taking them into spectacular fictional worlds that break away from their everyday lives (whose images are going viral on the Internet) and by asking them to detach themselves from their phones to rediscover a more intimate atmosphere and a real artist-audience connection.

It's all a question of balance.

Many of the artists on your compilations it would seem are producers and DJs at the same time. From your conversations with them, what relationship do DJs have with the act of travelling? What do they draw, creatively, from their time on the road?

It's hard for me to speak on their behalf, because it's quite individual.

However, generally speaking, I have the impression that artistic creation can emanate from any environment. Whether in the studio, at home, on the road, in transit or at a café table, artists draw inspiration from their daily lives and personal experiences to compose and find a certain resonance in their projects.

The Cercle compilations are not just nice LPs, they're veritable works of art and combine storytelling with photography, design, and sound. Tell me a bit about the work on the physical copies of this, the third Cercle vinyl release, please. What were the main ideas this time, what were some of the challenges?

The 4th exactly, because our first release included two different-coloured vinyl LPs with different tracklists. There's always a different challenge because the tracklist changes, the artists present change and the environment in which the compilation is released changes.

The idea for this one was to bring together producers of very different styles, around a common project: the Cercle Festival 2024! Each track on the compilation was released as a single and accompanied by a video of our new concept “MATTER”. It was a big challenge for our design teams to link the Festival's graphic environment to that of MATTER.

This release was realised in close conjunction with your festival in May. What memories do you have of that event and how did that experience translate into the release of this compilation?

The Cercle Festival is my favourite time of year, because it brings together all the artists around us, those we've already collaborated with, or those we've dreamed of doing so with! It's a joyous gathering of music enthusiasts with the special feature of playing under airplanes and rockets!

Whenever I get the chance to spend a few minutes in the artists' village (where all the dressing rooms are located), I always enjoy watching the artists mingle, chat and dance amongst themselves. It's a great boost to get through the hours of sleep!


Cercle Festival Image by Geoffrey Hubbel

A series of videos will accompany the vinyl. What role, generally, do the visuals have in the Cercle cosmos – is the music leading the images, would you say, or is it the other way around?

I'd say it's quite the opposite, since the idea behind MATTER is to capture how matter reacts to music.

Through our collaboration with Josef Gatti, we highlight the interactions between our musical compositions and matter, going beyond the recording of musical performance to reveal the influence of music on our environment.

I love the Cercle videos, but have always wondered about what these DJ sets actually are – just streamed DJ sets, extended video clips for the music, immersive dream spaces etc … There are elements of different aspects of the traditional music business, but the end result is something entirely its own. How would you describe what they mean to you and how you experience them?

We like to define our shows as soundtracks to places.

From personal experience, I'd say the best way to enjoy a Cercle show is to watch it on a big screen on a comfortable sofa (even better if you can bring friends).


Video still from Ben Böhmer's DJ set by Cercle

The entire Cercle team seems to be in love with travelling and the joys of discovery. They are also in love with music. What is the connection between sound and music, on the one hand, and a specific place, on the other?

In our context: one can't live without the other.

Once the venue has been chosen and confirmed, our Music Director thinks about the perfect musical fit to highlight both the venue and the artist, to find a symbiosis between the two and create something unexpected.

Are there some examples of how different locations have concretely influenced the video concept you're taking?

Cercle's video concept is designed to be light, flexible and adaptable to any situation. Since the beginning of 2024, we've been looking for new ways to bring to life the place we're filming, while respecting the principle of performance.

For the Argy show in Switzerland, for example, we worked with Studio 12 Degrés on a set design incorporating translucent lenses to evoke the observatory's telescope. We also wanted to play on the nostalgic aspect of the place, which is also a ski vacation spot, by filming with an analogue camera that recalls memories of family vacations.



For the 2024 edition of the Cercle Festival, we installed mirrors on the stage structures (necessary in case of rain) that allowed the audience and cameras to see the artists enveloped by the audience's reflections in the same shot.



Music has become a lot more global and incorporating elements from other parts of the world or the musical spectrum is commonplace. Do you still think there are city scenes with a distinct, unique sound? What holds these communities together?

Although increasingly, we're seeing a reinvention of genre barriers, with more and more hybrid styles blending several influences. Of course, there are still a few bastions specializing in a particular style of music, notably the cradles of emerging genres.

What's interesting to observe is this willingness to grow a fairly niche style in order to make it known to as many people as possible. At the end of the day, it's the love of music that unites all communities.

In a way, travelling (like a DJ set) remind us of the transitory nature of life. When a DJ performance or journey ends, is it really gone, just like a cup of coffee? Or does it live on in some form?

This is exactly what we wanted to remedy by offering our free sets on Youtube: the chance to experience them without having to go anywhere, and to relive them for those who were there before, with the added bonus of an exclusive track in the name of the show's location as a souvenir of the moment.

The idea is to engrave this experience in time with an original soundtrack.