68
BUSINESS
Text by TONYA STONEMAN
Photography by LALA LA PHOTO
TRUE SPIN Stéphanie Laplane’s soundtrack for living.
T
he soundtrack of Stéphanie Laplane’s life is a mélange of rock, punk, new wave and hip-hop. A conducting officer at DNB, she lives a fairly typical Luxembourg life from 9 to 6, but the tunes that stream through her head provide continuity with her moonlighting pastime as a DJ. “When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is listen to music,” she says. The day Delano interviewed her, she listened to DMX while getting ready for work. On the way to the office it was Frustration, a French old-school punk/new wave band inspired by the sounds of Joy Division. And that night, she headed to Dudelange to play a set in a local bar. She isn’t a technical DJ--she doesn’t mix, rather she’s a selector. Laplane began spinning records about five years ago when she stood in as a DJ at d:qliq for a night. It was love at first spin. She joined a group of likeminded friends and they called themselves Les Problèmes. Soon after, she stepped out on her own with the name Steffou. Laplane doesn’t take any money for her work--which she does faithfully about every other week. She feels very strongly about maintaining a separation between business and pleasure and doesn’t want the DJ gig to become a chore. “It is a passion for me, and I don’t want it to become a duty,” she says. “A job is a job. And DJing is not a job. At work, you always find something you don’t like about it. But there isn’t anything I don’t like about being a DJ.” On a recent trip to Japan, a local bar owner let her DJ for a night and she treated the night clubbers to some of her favourites. She prefers 90s rock and roll (she’s psyched about The Cure’s show in Amsterdam) and classic hip-hop (Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog have December 2016
MY OTHER LIFE
sentimental ties to her youth). But her ultimate goal is to make people dance. Asked what she does when people aren’t dancing, she shrugs and says that she plays the songs for herself-but this is never a problem. “I play what they like,” she says. A self-described generalist, Laplane first takes mental notes on her crowd, then she starts the gig, adjusting the playlist accordingly. She knows the perfect song for every occasion. For instance, the best song to dance to? ‘Jump Around’ by House of Pain; a good second is ‘Maniac’ by Michael Sembello. The best song to kiss to? ‘Let’s get it on’ by Marvin Gaye. And the best song to heal a broken heart? ‘Respect’ by Aretha Franklin. With over 5,000 vinyl records in the personal collection Laplane shares with her husband, she has a lot to choose from. Being a DJ is fun, but it’s also important. “Gotta get your kicks, run fast from the gloomy grips, keep the bad thoughts out, and the smoke away,” as Bombay says in ‘Slow Motion’… which is, after all, the best song to wake up to.
DJ STEFFOU Stéphanie Laplane mainly wants people to dance