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Benjamin Boguet was accidentally born in Montreuil France, (the location was accidental because his parents lived in the Côte d’Ivoire in Africa at the time). Benjamin spent the first ten years of his life in Africa, but he best remembers the imported records his father bought, from Stevie Wonder to Marvin Gaye. Eventually they returned to a small city in France and Benjamin grew restless. He found refuge in the town’s specialty record store where he discovered albums by the Clash and everything on the Def Jam label. He enrolled in University to study English, but knew his future lay elsewhere. “I taught myself music from age fifteen. I was serious: I knew I’d be a songwriter one day and I took that task very seriously. Those were the days of baggy sound: My Bloody Valentine; Sonic Youth; and then Massive Attack. I wrote music articles which was a good excuse for moving to Paris in 1993.”
The year of 1993 also proved to be a turning point for Benjamin. He embraced house music, yet he refused to dismiss songwriting as a whole. He played guitar with indie group Perio and also produced demos in his room using his 4-track machine. In 1997, the Solid record label, which had just released the 'Superdiscount' classic, fell for one of Benjamin’s (now known as Cosmo Vitelli) demos, thus releasing his first self-titled 12-inch. The track title (“Don’t eat animals anymore, eat children”) wasn’t the only thing to score a bull’s eye, with the music’s sound equally embraced: Lo-fi electro with a crazy tendency. “For me, the titles were obvious!” The following year saw the arrival of his second maxi single, “We don’t need no smurf here”, voted “Single of the week” in the UK’s own NME.
Cosmo Vitelli then achieved two dreams: recording with Jalal from the Last Poets and having his work remixed by Afrika Bambaataa. At the same time, he produced several remixes himself (for Superdiscount, Bosco, Benjamin Diamond, etc.) and became a reputable DJ, playing in Paris (Rex, Pulp, etc.) on a regular basis, as well as in Rome, Cologne, Glasgow, Nottingham, etc. With “Clean”, Cosmo Vitelli embarks upon the next stage of his ascension, a full artist album. Expect to see Cosmo behind the decks throughout ‘03 and to hear his music in clubs, on the radio and anywhere high rollers take their biggest risks.
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According
to our latest census, there are two men by the name of Cosmo Vitelli.
One is a character who owns a Sunset Strip nightclub in a 1976 film
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, a film whose depiction of strip clubs,
gambling and organized crime are no where near conventional. The other
is causing quite a stir in the house, pop and techno music scenes. This
musical artist was born in 1974 in Montreuil, France under the name
of Benjamin Boguet. Is there a connection between the two artists? Perhaps
their sex appeal or their shared high roller tendencies? More likely
the connection is best embodied in the phrase “they want to make
minced meat out of me”, as heard in both the strip-club owner’s
mind and on Cosmo-Boguet’s second 12' single “We Don’t
Need No Smurf Here”. One must take a closer look at songwriter
Cosmo Vitelli’s career to better understand this unlikely connection,
although only the music can fully explain.
