Chispa by adults are boring

Crate-diggers, record collectors, and DJs know music discovery is all about the hidden gems. Those types of unexpected finds and special moments that catch you off guard and keep you longing for more. That’s the case with Chispa by adults are boring: these bangers were recorded over two decades ago in an old apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine, before the hard drive with the original files got lost thanks to a sloppy radio deejay. How the music resurfaced and is now released in 2025, is a wild story…


In the early 2000s, Amsterdam native and student Sjoerd Thys packed his bags for an exchange study with a school in a Parisian suburb. Let’s fast-forward from the boring stories of French lessons of un, une, des, and le, la, and les, because he learned something much more impactful there. Not at school, but at the home of his exchange family. His older ‘brothers’ there were the archetypal cool guys: smoking, skateboarding, collecting vinyl records, wearing the coolest clothes, and hitting on the nicest girls. Thys looked up to them, even more so because they constantly raved on about music. Their love for the French wave of electro introduced him to new acts including DJ Mehdi, Busy P, Mr. Oizo, Mr. Flash, and The Great Disco Bouzouki Band, and the two brothers took him along to underground parties across the city of Paris.

It was like Obelix falling into the cauldron of magic potion: a world of music opened up to him. He got deeper and deeper into the raw electronic sounds, syncopated rhythms, deep basslines, and new alien terms like “four-to-the-floor.” It all reminded him of Daft Punk, the music he knew back home from hits like "Around The World" and "Da Funk,” unbeknownst that there was so much more music like that out there. When his 'brothers' told him they even met Thomas Bangalter years ago at a house party of friends, that officially blew his mind.

Inspired by The French Touch he now was in the midst of, Thys booted up a cracked download of Ableton he got via his real brother—saxophone player and producer Reinier Thys, another person he looked up to. Decades later, his brother would release various genre-bending albums on the highly esteemed record label Rucksack Records, with support by Warp Records, FIP Radio, among others. In three months' time, making the most of the time spent during the exchange, he recorded seven songs with his own vocoder vocals—Chispa was born.

The name adults are boring originates from a moment Thys vividly remembers. Listening to a 12-inch record of "La Mouche" by Cassius in his brothers’ bedroom slash hangout, their mother screamed that “the heavy bass shook the entire house.” The guys looked at each other, shaking their heads and laughing, saying “Putain, les adultes sont ennuyeux…” — damn, grown-ups are boring, a saying Thys always remembered after they translated it to him. Calling himself adults are boring was a homage to the two brothers.

As a sign of gratitude, they passed along the demos of his music to a befriended deejay at FG Radio 98.2 FM, a radio station dedicated to electronic music and the 'Futur Génération.' The deejay ended up integrally playing the music in FG Undrgrnd, a show focused on newcomers and the sound of the underground. Sadly, the hard drive Thys lent out (mind you: we’re talking about a pre-file sharing, pre-social media era here) got lost during a move and rebrand by the radio station in September 2003.

Eventually returning to his hometown, Thys was bummed out about losing the hard drive, but an audio rip of the radio broadcast eased the pain of losing his music that now turned into a precious memory of his time in Paris. The city kept attracting him, and in 2020 he decided to move to Paris - following in the footsteps of his brother Reinier Thys, who moved to Barcelona two years prior. In a weird case of serendipity—moving to Paris, his favorites Daft Punk breaking up, and the world going into a pandemic lockdown—led to Thys having a spark and so much time on his hands, that he decided to re-create, re-sample, and re-record his adults are boring material in Pro Tools based on the web rip of the radio show. That version of ‘Chispa’ is the EP you’re hearing today. And that lost hard drive? That resurfaced years later. But that’s a story for another time—when a full album of adults are boring drops later this year…


—Benoît Mourlon

adults are boring is equally mysterious at is it madness. A producer found his long-lost demos dating back to the early years of Daft Punk and Ed Banger. Now, over 20 years later, he re-recorded, mixed, and mastered his catchy electronic tunes for official release—finally:

EP 'Chispa' out June 13.

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