Charles Schillings was born in Zaire in 1966, in the town of Ipamu. He began his career over ten years ago DJing in some of the best known music clubs in Belgium, which avant-garde reputation stretched far across Europe. It was there that, with all the exuberant enthusiasm of a former fan of disco and funk, he played the first techno and acid house records, championing this new style of binary music born in Detroit and Chicago and soon taken up in Ibiza and Italy.

At the time, as well as DJing, he started to study philology. Schillings’s natural passion for all styles of music that come under the banner of techno and house, his open-mindedness and musical curiosity took him to the forefront of the new musical trends, taking many European clubs by storm. His track record is impressive.

He became resident DJ in the most renowned clubs in Belgium. For three years, from 1995, Schillings was resident DJ at the Queen, Paris’s most prestigious club. Currently living in Paris, he occasionally plays at Les Bains and Folies Pigalle. He often takes to the road, criss-crossing France from Paris to Rennes to Marseilles, then across the pond to New York’s Tunnel. Charles Schillings’s ‘sound’ is packing in the fans : Powerful house music, happy and melodic, blending with raw electronic funk, US grooves and the best of European. Charles Schillings is a man in a hurry. Clubs and engagements follow in rapid succession. Schillings says he is enriched by the diversity of the music he encounters when he plays with the biggest names in dance music –Laurent Garnier, Carl Cox.

He is also a composer. His first single, Ovation Ovation was followed six years later by Defcon 3. The label Pschent has brought out a dozen maxi singles under his own name or, when recorded with his partner Pompon Finkelstein, under the name of Magenta. Schillings has also released four volumes of his Overground House mix compilations, and remixed Hawaï Police d’Etat for the compilation Sérialement Vôtre, which earned him a nomination for the French Music Awards (les Victoires de la Musique).

Recently he remixed King of my Castle, from The Wamdue Project, as well as hits from Touloulou and Spoon Nation for Mercury France.

Schillings’s music and his talents as a DJ also delight the fashion world. He orchestrated the entire Autumn/Winter 96 and Spring 97 Karl Lagerfeld catwalk show, and played in the Yves Saint Laurent Jazz perfume advertisement. Recently, he was called upon for the opening night party of the new Louis Vuitton boutique held at Fouquet’s, on the Champs-Elysées. Whether performing at Bercy, in Paris, for 18.000 people, in Jakarta, Copenhagen, London or New York, he wows the crowds and his fans worship him.

Today he is one of the star DJs of the French scene. The French have definitely adopted him as one of theirs. He’s also spinning as a resident at Lotus / New York, Chocolate / Moscow, and at the Rex Club / Paris.Schillings’s album It’s About..., in collaboration with Pompon F., has been released in January 2002 and he ‘s now working on the second one...