Intro
He's the casual French master of house and tech, blessed with golden ears and possibly the most bizarre monitoring choice we've ever seen.
Sébastien Léger has been releasing records internationally for over a decade, but in the last four years, Léger has become a globally recognised force in dance music production. His huge solo club hits like Hit Girl, collaboration with Chris Lake on their Mistakes EP and vast amount of remix work has marked him as one of the club's leading producers, with a golden touch when it came to big, spacious and melodic productions.
Léger's parents were both musicians and he himself was classically trained on piano and percussion. For the listener, this nod towards formal musical training might be something that's very obvious considering the melodic nature and evolving arrangements, but his ultra casual personality means it isn't something that Léger thinks important.
The studio
His studio is similar to others we’ve seen in the tall and thin townhouses of Amsterdam – located in the roof space it’s a small but packed affair, with plenty of hardware and personality.
“I want to buy an 808 again because I had the 808, 606, 707 – all of them – but I had to sell them when I needed the money. Now I will probably buy them back at twice the price. I’m never looking for the
next plug-in or anything, just hardware machines.”
Modded TB-303
"This TB-303 has been a little bit modified. I have an original here but it’s not MIDI. This is so I can program my basslines in my sequencer rather than the built-in step sequencer which is a nightmare.
"I just put some notes, like it’s a plug-in and it makes a nice bassline. There’s an overdrive knob which is a very subtle but there’s more switches and knobs for really changing the sound. And you can program the filter over MIDI so I draw in shapes in the sequencer. There’s no other TB-303 that can do that.
"Then I record the audio from the machine and I’ve got a nice clean bit of audio for looping or chopping. I can even add swing which the original doesn’t have. There’s endless possibilities."
Monitoring
“I don’t know what to say about these Kinyo speakers. I bought them over ten years ago and they were the first speakers that I had for my computer so I used to listen to all my music on them.
"So I knew them so well by the time I started to use them to make music. These and Ableton are the perfect combination for me.”
