With an industrious and productive
vigour, Sébastien Léger, has over the last decade become one of the
most assured techno producers around. Eschewing the more obvious French
filter house clichés his productions have taken on the robust
dancefloor edge of his beloved Chicago house heroes and twisted them
into his own electronic masterpieces. With an impressive decade long
discography that started from the first EPs under his Deaf ‘n’ Dumb
Crew alias and now rests squarely on the shoulders of his blossoming
Mistakes imprint, Léger has become one of France’s most revered
DJ/producers and a frequently requested remixer du jour.
In
fact if there was such a thing as a ‘Chicago House Academy Diploma’,
Léger’s formal training during school on piano and drums pretty much
guaranteed him a straight A in disco. However, it was whilst visiting
the various record stores on his many re-locations as a child (which
included a four year stint growing up on the French island, Noumea (New
Caledonia) that Léger began swapping Mozart for Mr. Fingers and
Prokofiev for Ian Pooley. As the pull of the dancefloor grew ever
stronger the transition to DJ was but a simple progression for the
young trained percussionist.
Cutting his DJ teeth in the early
90s at the tender age of 15, Léger first slid behind the decks whilst
his parents were seconded to the French west coast town of Brest.
Taking to the decks behind a local gay bar his miniscule savings gave
him just enough money to play for the night and he built his record
collection up, as is customary for many a DJ’s rites of passage, by
blowing his pay packet on vinyl. However, constantly on the move
through his parents work (both professional orchestral musicians
themselves) it wasn’t long before he was making his way back to his
birthplace in Paris.
Having already built up a small
collection of studio gear, his arrival in the capital at the time when
Laurent Garnier, Daft Punk, Etienne De Crecy and Cassius were exploding
onto the global dancefloor in a riot of red, white and blue spurned on
the young Léger to release his own syncopated techno-house productions.
In 1998 Sébastien published his first EPs as Deaf'n'Dumb Crew and has
released over 50 EPs during the ensuing ten years for such esteemed
imprints as Black Jack, Josh Wink’s Ovum, Carl John Dahlback’s
Pickadoll, Defected and more. Meeting many of his house heroes in the
process, Léger has gone on to surpass many of the legends who initially
inspired him to take to the decks, with many a release, such as 2006’s
‘Bad Clock’ (Intec 47) becoming underground club anthems in the
process. As always, Léger pushed his production boundaries and adapted
himself to the sounds and technology around him yet it is testament to
his musical training that he only recently swapped his studio sequencer
to a more customary computer set up.
1999 witnessed the release
of Léger’s first album ‘Atomic Pop’ which included a guest appearance
by Junior Sanchez. Yet after so many years as a techno gun for hire,
Léger is now solely concentrating on his own imprint that will be
indelibly stamped with his trademark techno-funk sound.
‘Mistakes’
is the label of a man who has learned from the school of life. Never
dwelling on the past but always learning from it, Léger now possesses
all the production know-how to single-handedly develop a label around
his unique and distinctive percussion driven style. With the first
three Mistakes releases taking inspiration from the planets, in name as
opposed to some hidden conceptual meaning, the label is already finding
favour with DJs all over the world. With Léger’s DJ sets continuing to
take him to all four corners of the globe as he headlines and guests at
clubs and festivals throughout Europe, Asia, the US and Australia, his
new canon of Mistakes dub plates have become the secret deployment
weapons in his ever refined and distinctive drum driven sound that
recently saw him break into DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJ poll.
Parallel
to building his international DJ career Sébastien Léger has also become
one of the world´s most in demand remixers, working for artists such as
Armand Van Helden, Kevin Saunderson, Jakatta, Paul Johnson and more
recently turning in remixes for Dave Gahan, Kylie Minogue, Duran Duran,
Groove Armada and Justin Timberlake. However at present he continues to
remain focussed on developing his own sound via his Mistakes missions
as he single-mindedly refines and defines his trademark sound.
As
a consequence of his continued progression in his production work, the
great variety of house music colour in his tracks, the construction and
arrangement of his electro and funk-infused rhythms, the now Amsterdam
based Sébastien Léger has established his position at the forefront of
reconstructing contemporary electronic music. From Germany, the UK,
Japan, the US and the Netherlands Sébastien Léger is well on his way to
conquering the electronic music world in the same way that his Chi-town
heroes have done before him.
