Fred Rister, posthumous light

Electro music producer Fred Rister at ASCAP Pop Music Awards 2011. © AFP / Getty Images North America / Frazer Harrison

08/21/2019

Fred Rister succumbed on August 20th to his ninth cancer in thirty years. A tube maker for David Guetta and others, this shadow producer had refused treatment for two years. In 2018, he published a book, Making People Dance and released a testamentary video, I want a miracle , whose sales are fully donated to cancer research.

Fred Rister was born at the end of the spring of 1961, at "Malo", a small seaside resort of the North attached today to the commune of Dunkerque. From a modest family, unable to enroll in the music school he dreams of, he becomes a hairdresser by chance, "because it smelled good, the women were beautiful, the music was good and they were listening to the same radio as me . In the shadows already, he officiates as a DJ in the boxes of De Panne, in Belgium, one of which will disappear in a fire. In the wave of free radio, he invented a third job as a radio host and traveled from Antwerp to Aix-en-Provence, via Paris and Bordeaux.

"An ordinary boy"

In 1986, he founded, under pseudonym, the group Interdit with Patrice Swynghedauw. In the New Beat movement coming from Belgium, they know an ephemeral success with You want of love, you have melancholy . From that time, the disease burst into his life and he fought tirelessly for thirty years, before finally giving up the care in 2017.

In the 1990s, he wrote for French-Gabonese singer Abayle. He even makes a discreet appearance in the clip I Wanna Be Your Lover Too . He becomes a reference of techno under the name of Mory Klein and creates with Jacky Aru Ixxel duo. Alleeez! becomes one of the hits of the year 1997, one of those who could join, along with Komakino or Aphex Twin, the soundtrack of Guillaume Nicloux's Octopus (1998).

In the 2000s, he meets his wife Isabel in Lille as he tries to get in touch with David Guetta . She became Anaklein for the stage and produced for her for two years the album Darkside , which was released in 2005. We can hear a remix of Personal Jesus Depeche Mode and a cover of Lena Belgian band Twee Belgen. "My place is really to stay in the shadows" will say that, over the years, creates or transforms the careers of those who have the chance to cross. Defining himself as "an ordinary boy", he has already left his mark on the dancefloor for two decades. Unknown to the general public, we know him from the start as a maker of hits in the electro scene.

"Melancholy is my whole life."

His collaboration with David Guetta begins at a distance, in 2007, on the album Pop Life . The following year, he remixed a tube of the Taxi group of 1981, Look for the boy for Quentin Mosimann, which becomes one of the great successes of the year. In 2009, he finished David Guetta's album One love in Los Angeles. This is his first trip to the United States. The two inseparable create the same year the global success I Gotta Feeling for the album The END of the band Black Eyed Peas.

Humble to the end, he says that the first song that comes to mind when he returns to "Malo" is not one of his many compositions, but the old psychedelic single British band Procol Harum, White Shade Of Pales , remembering his seven years at the seaside. The one who willingly slows down the tempos of David Guerra also admits: "Melancholy is all my life." And it is with a certain disbelief that he evokes the title of the documentary that France 3 devotes to him last June, The man who made the world dance .

For the last two years, Fred Rister has been preparing for his disappearance, leaving behind a trail of sweetness that can be found in his book, his last video and the more numerous interviews he agrees to give. "The real miracle for me is to die without treatment," he says in one of them " I'm not afraid of death, I'm afraid of dying, I'm afraid of the road which leads to death. " Of all that preceded him, he made a journey of courage and generosity, of those who leave no regrets: "My life is very beautiful, in the end."

By: Olivier Favier

Fred Rister - David Guetta

Electro - France