Valentin Brunel alias Kungs is an author, composer, DJ and producer. The public discovered it with his remix of the title: This girl in 2016, which has long remained at the top of sales. A huge revelation which, since then, has been exported internationally with its participation in festivals such as Coachella, Tomorrowland or even Lollapalooza. After a first album layersKungs is releasing a new one on Friday March 18, 2022: Azure Club, including eleven new titles. He is on tour now.
franceinfo: Club Azure was born out of this Covid-19 pandemic. Did it change the course of your life?
Kungs: Yeah, completely. Before the pandemic, I spent my life on planes, on tour. I had about fifty dates every summer. And there, it was a forced break for all the DJs. Finally, it also allowed me to take a step back from my music. It is thanks to this period that the album was born: Club Azure so, it was quite beneficial by taking a step back. It’s a bit as if I had given myself the mission of making people dance and I did: never going home.
For ‘Club Azur’, I said to myself that I had to go back to the basics, to the sources and that I make music that makes people dance.
I would like to talk about: This girl, a title that has allowed you to enter the big leagues very quickly and to enter the homes of French people, all generations combined, to go around the world. What does this song represent to you?
For me, this piece represents a change in my life. That’s when I went from a GEA student in Aix-en-Provence to a full-time DJ, it really became my job. And from there, it was a whirlwind of lots of amazing things. It allowed me to travel all over the world, to meet my audience, to meet incredible people with whom I made music. It was a very big start that we had to digest a bit afterwards.
Have you lost your footing?
I haven’t lost my footing, but I have sometimes lost my means a little. I was very young, I was 19 when I released this track and I was not 100% accomplished as a human being, and artistically, I still had a lot of things to explore, to discover. I might have liked to experience this success a little later in my life or in my career. To be able to have prepared things a little better since I had no experience, I was not surrounded at all. I didn’t know everyone about music, so I had to learn everything very quickly. But looking back, I don’t regret anything at all and if I had to do it again, of course, I would do it again a thousand times.
From there, indeed, the doors opened wide. You took your courage in both hands and said to yourself: “Now, I’m going and going!“
That’s it. In fact, I didn’t ask myself many questions. I stopped my studies a little after the baccalaureate. I did four months of study, then I got kicked out of the IUT. I said to my parents: here, I want to make music, I want to do my job and they said to me: “We give you three years and we see how it evolves.“And I was lucky that it worked after a year. Very quickly, I said to myself that I shouldn’t stop there and be seen as a person who had just had a stroke of luck, a huge title by chance. And so, it was a lot of work, a lot of questioning and… that’s a career!
It’s also a nice tribute to your parents. Your dad really raised you with the rock soundtrack. Then there is the djembe, percussion lessons given by your mother. Do you carry within you what they gave you?
Of course, I carry the trust they gave me at the beginning. They have really always pushed us, whether it’s me or my brothers and sisters, to do what makes us happy, what excites us, and it’s true that there is nothing more beautiful in life than to do a job that fascinates. My job is to make people dance. I get paid for this. It’s still amazing. And if my parents hadn’t pushed me to do that, maybe today I’d be doing a job I half like and maybe I’d be less happy.
A word about: never going home. It has become an anthem. Is it also the strength of the music that you offer, to unify?
Exactly. I wanted a track that had a clear message for the end of confinement. And here the message is very clear: never going home, it really means that we are fed up with being at home. It touched people. The message got through and last summer, when I was able to play it a bit in a club or at a festival, people were really receptive and that’s great.
What place does music occupy in your life?
I don’t always think about my music, I also try to immerse myself in what other people are doing.
I love music, it’s my job, it’s a passion. I think a lot about music. I don’t necessarily always think about mine, I also try to soak up what others are doing. But I also try a lot to draw inspiration from the subculture, from this musical culture. First of all, making music also means getting a lot of inspiration from what’s happening around, it’s listening, it’s being curious.
Coachella, Tomorrowland, a Paul Smith fashion show. Huge things have happened in your life. How did you experience this boundary crossing?
It’s been great. From the moment when my music started to be exported all over the world, I was able to do a lot of tours in the United States, in Asia, in Brazil, in Mexico. It’s once we’re on stage and we see crowds moving for us that we realize the magnitude of the thing and it’s very pleasant. I sorely missed doing concerts for two years. I have a live set ready for the whole summer, an album coming out and I can’t wait to find my audience.
Kungs is, for example, in concert on March 19 in Avoriaz, on March 22 at the Westfield Forum des Halles in Paris, on April 17 in Vitré or on April 22 at the Printemps de Bourges.