..Once upon a time there was a place: Hotel Costes, and its music guru: Stéphane Pompougnac. Two names definitely linked to each other, as the music lovers all over the world have identified the place to its famous series of compilations "mixed by Stéphane Pompougnac".In Paris, Stéphane started out at Café Costes, at Queen, at Privilège, at Diable des Lombards, and then moved on to Les Bains, where he encountered Claude Challes, who broadened his music scope. And then one day he met up again with Jean-Louis Costes, who asked him to mix music at his hotel restaurant. This was back in 1997. Little by little, Stéphane started leaving his musical mark at Hotel Costes. The customers, hooked into his universe, asked him about his music and his mixing. This sparked the idea of a compilation in order to spread in the world the spirit of the Hôtel Costes, a mythic place where baroque is woven into avant-garde, where at any moment the muffled mood might go electric.Today, the Hotel Costes have already spun round the earth, drawing more than two millions passengers aboard this ship of Parisian nights, mesmerized by the stories told by Stéphane Pompougnac.He now looks at his trajectory with humour, feeling that this whirlwind is a little to much. He gets away now and then from the waves of hype by wooing beautiful women, who are a constant inspiration for him, especially for his producing and composing. He doesn’t want to get pegged under the heading of “DJ lounge mixerâ€. That would be a far too narrow way of grasping what he’s about.Stéphane Pompougnac is indeed a fulfil musician, composing and producing his own songs as well as he can mix and producing compilations.A first album ("Living On The Edge"), released in 2003, have been the right demonstration: 12 audacious tracks, breaking with the compilations spirit, inviting first choice artists for voices : from Michael Stipe (REM) to Clémentine, from Cathy Battistessa to Juliette Oz, also with Yves Montant's voice on "Pour faire le portrait d'un oiseau".Today, Stéphane Pompougnac is one of the most required DJ, spreading the music "à la française" all over the world.And far from resting and looking at his success, side to the Hôtel Costes compilations to which he still provide his talents – the 9th edition has been released in September 2006 –, he is about to release his second studio album "Hello Mademoiselle" on May 28th 2007, and he is already working on the 10th volume, scheduled for September 2007.
