Caribbean grooves made in Marseille with David Walters

Over the last 10-ish years, my friend Guts, a French music producer and record collector, has been the lynchpin of a music collective he put together under the name "Pura Vida". His idea was to get like-minded people from many different locations to share their passion and create rich in-person connections through studio sessions and gigs. He went as far as putting together a yearly gathering for the collective, each edition on a different island, with live music and DJ sets for a limited audience with a strong sense of community.

I met David Walters through this network. On top of his obvious musical talent, he always stood out as a very charismatic figure and had a reputation for being a serious workhorse. When I first sent him the song "Yemamaya" I had recorded with my Brazilian friend Luizga, he raved about it and offered to remix it. He did, and his remix did really well, played by many DJs across the globe. Among them was KL Jay, an absolute legend of Brazilian hip hop and DJ for Racionais MC's, the country's most revered rap act since the 90s.

After the remix came out, we stayed in touch from afar, occasionally exchanging music and social media DMs, until he called me a few months ago. He was finishing his new album "Ti Love", and wanted to work with me on a couple of the remaining tracks. He insisted on working together in the same room, so I went down to spend a few days in his adopted city of Marseille.

Marseille has long been the home of an "alternative France", claiming its own twist on the language, an irreverent Mediterranean lifestyle and a population largely shaped by immigration. As France's second biggest city, it has always weighed heavily on the cultural scene, especially in popular music, with a unique working-class, unruly voice. David has Caribbean ancestry, grew up in Paris, and has made Marseille his home for a couple of decades now.

I had visited Marseille several times before, but riding along the seafront on the back of David's motorbike, early in the morning on the way to the studio, felt like a whole other way of experiencing the city. His studio is inside La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille's mythical alternative cultural centre. We locked ourselves in there for a few days and came out with well-advanced versions of two tracks from the album: "Lajan" and "Santi Ko'w".

The process was fluid and playful: iterating fast, leaving ourselves room to try the most unlikely things, playing with any gadget or instrument at hand... I took some time at the end of our sessions to do a first edit, and finished it back home. David ended up keeping "Lajan" for the album, and the work we did on "Santi Ko'w" will come out as a remix of the album version. I learnt a lot from his irreverent Marseillais approach to writing music. I also learnt to hold on tight as we slalomed between cars at night on the highway above Marseille's port.

"Lajan" is out now on David's "Ti Love" album, and my remix of "Santi Ko'w" is coming soon.