We caught up with Jacques Lu Cont (who also goes under the name of Les Rythmes Digitales) at Musik's 5th Birthday @ The End, just 3 days before Homelands England.

So this is your warm up for Homelands...

I'm playing the High Rise tent/arena... not sure what it is... see when we get there!!

First time I saw you play was supporting Cornershop at the Shepherds Bush Empire... a strange combination!!

Every tour or support tour, I always like to be the misfit and play on that element of surprise, although a lot of people aren't going to enjoy what you do, at least they might appreciate it, and the rest will love it, and that's my ethos behind touring. It's a bit too easy to preach to the converted.

Festivals or clubs?

It depends on the context. With the live show it works on both contexts - where you've done a club show that's really good and you're on at three in the morning, it's the perfect time for it and it goes off... but then in the same breath we've done shows at 8.30 at night on a British tour and you're playing at Newcastle Riverside... and its equally as good but for different reasons. I'm lucky enough to have music that's flexible enough to go into both contexts.

Will Homelands be your first festival of the year?

The last two years was spent gigging heavily, doing Friday, Saturday and Sunday every weekend, with a couple of days off here and there. When we weren't doing festivals we were doing proper tours in America, here or Europe, so this summer I'm just taking it easy 'cause I'm recording new material. So trying to do festivals every weekend and tours don't fit in with the recording schedule... your ears get fried for one thing...

What are you working on this year?

I'm working on another project called Zoot Woman which is quite a different kettle of fish, and will surprise people accordingly. Zoot Woman is more of a band thing, radically different, more based in rock, whereas Les Rythmes Digitales is firmly placed in club world and the electronic thing.

What do you do at festivals?

Sometimes you turn up and its... "Quick, get on stage..." and the gears on stage, you do the line check and you're on and you don't get any sort of feeling for the festival whatsoever... offstage and the bus is ready, and you have to go to Belgium or somewhere... So you end up at that situation OR you turn up and you've got nine hours to kill and you're like... "What the hell do I do at a festival?!", and you have to get into it and see what's on. At a lot of festivals there's lots of funny things on, whether it be other bands or sideshows along the way, but they're always good fun.

Who are you going to see this year?

At Homelands I'm going to check out Ian Brown, because I haven't seen his live show and I've heard it's supposed to be [adopts Manchester accent] 'sound'. I'll probably catch up with my other friends who are playing there, because I've been in the studio I haven't had time to catch up with my buddies.

Thanks to Andy and Matt from Plug for their help.