BIOGRAPHY

On the scene before, during and after the French touch, les Dupont are an electronic duo created by Didier Blasco-Giavitto and Louis-Frédéric Apostoly at Nice’s Fine Arts school.

The major years

In 1995 they join forces with the Omnisonus/Polygram team and artists Dax Riders, Pacman, Roussia, Djul’z, Armand. Les Dupont are remarked for their highly acclaimed record production (Magic, Coda, Keyboards, Only for Djs…) and their live performances (le Rex, SIR. CUS Cybernaut, Festival de Wattrelos). They release their first LP, Miracle (1996), a first IDM album « à la française », somewhere between ambient, house and atmospheres verging on cinematic jazz. They also remix the single Sound of Mo by Frederick Rousseau (musician-programmer for Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis), which was striking for its originality and Asian sounds. Sound of Mo will open the way to what will later be called ethno-lounge.

During these «major years» at Polygram, les Dupont alternate between house and ambient productions. Influenced by Coil, SPK, Throbbing Gristle, they also record hardcore music. They feature on compilations such as: Hardcore Fever Vol. I & II (Polygram), Techno Trash Car (Polygram), Hardcore Cybermix (Fairplay), Harcore Extreme Mission (Polygram). Les Dupont work with Lisa N’Elias and Manu le Malin on the maxi EP, Hardcore Fever EP-Extreme Vinyl (Polygram). Meanwhile, their single Cinetik Rex (E Child) becomes a reference amongst hardcore DJs.

Independent label

In 2000, Les Dupont create their own label Lysis and release their second opus Renaissance, an homage to the Palace, to house and new-beat. Creative and innovative, they bring hours of glory to melodic house, poetry and even a certain philosophical sense by using inserts from Jean Cocteau and Verlaine. Far from the clichés of the French Touch, the listener floats along to Miracle, somewhere between house, ambient and easy listening. After a concert at the Technoparade, Les Dupont release the single electroclash I Feel in 2004. With a video clip playing on M6Music and MCM, I Feel reaches the third place on Fréquence Spé.

The hardcore trilogy

In 2005, Les Dupont go back to their industrial inspiration and make three albums at Apocalypse Records, a hardcore trilogy capable of bringing the listener out of passive consumerism as well as expressing the violence that society pushes onto youth and fans of this culture: Black Metal, In Nocturno and Hiroshima 10 Tracks. The label Multiplayer releases the maxi vinyls Cineteek Rexx (re-release of the 1996 title) and Der Geist/Phase II at the same time.

Tales from the Ambient House Vol 1

After the I Feel Remixed mini-album, a collection of mixes from the album Renaissance by DJ Dioxine, we rediscover Les Dupont differently. They don’t disown their electronic background, but sprinkle fresh literary, musical allusions around. With “Tales from the Ambient House Vol 1” the group recreates original polychromatic ambient house, gently mixing together elegant electro-pop, voluptuous house and ambient with a cinematic jazz tendency. This time using Verlaine’s poetry (« Our ancient ecstasy, do you recall?»), the title Elégie recalls Miracle, one of the group’s first singles.

Transmission The Best Of + The Best Of Remixes

In 2009, the group releases their first best of compiled from their 7 previous studio albums, bringing together emblematic titles, new or unreleased versions, all totally re-mastered. The idea behind Transmission: The Best Of, is simple: start off with originals, respect chronology, exposing extracts, witness to the group’s career. After several key titles from the first album, maxis and compilations (Miracle, Transmission, Alpha 29-30…), the best of has several singles recorded between the major and independent periods (Heaven, Conscience…). Images from the 90’s go by, the years at Boy or The Palace. Witness to this pioneering period, Anna Karina whispers in Miracle: « We live in the shadows of our metamorphosis… ». Then there’s the title I Know marks the birth of the label, Lysis in 2000. Extracts of the albums: Renaissance, Treasure, Visitation and I Need, are all logical choices, but also the single I Feel. The compilation proposes the unreleased titles Shine and Jamobea, then finishes with ambient titles that first brought the group fame: Sur l’eau and Mille Plateaux. What seems to be a return to the past, is in fact a circle being made complete. This compilation doesn’t retrace the hardcore period, as this is a different moment in the group’s history and which will be part of a different retrospective.

Following this, The Best Of Remixes was released, an album made up entirely of remixes of the band by artists such as Subversive Boy, Dj Béru, K21 and the Duponts themselves. More than just an album of remixes, it’s almost a tribute, so much so that the artists have reappropriated the tracks. You don’t listen to the Dupont tracks again, you discover them.

Back to hardcore

Cineteek Rexx is the logical follow up to the re-editing of the mythical 1996 maxi single. The first thing which strikes one when listening to this album is its apparent roughness, but track after track the album soon reveals itself in all its subtlety, like a sonic multi-layer pastry. The first track is called Hiroshima: a direct reference to Marguerite Duras’s book. It bursts in one’s head with its hardcore throbbing rhythmical sounds. The listener clearly feels from the beginning that this won’t be a banal album belonging to a consensual mainstream genre: an effort will certainly have to be made. His attention is sharpened as he acknowledges the fact that three tracks have been recorded live in a slaughterhouse (Theatre of Pain Part 1 and Part 2, Carcasses), that tunes by Prokofiev and Wagner have been integrated, as well as the voice of famous philosopher Deleuze (who can be heard in Someone Else’s Dream), and ecology-activist Severn Cullis-Suzuki (before Greta Thunberg), pronouncing his speech during the 1992 World Summit in Rio. In a permanent fluctuation between hardcore and dark-ambient, their amazing sonic magma also conveys brindles of tunes by Throbbing Gristle and Coil, as well as some calmer sounds.

Back to ambient

Like a real cinema for ears, Film Music Theory is conceived as a sound background constructed by visionaries endlessly inspired by the theories of Erik Satie, John Cage, Fluxus and Marcel Duchamp.

In 2011 Machine Symphony reminds of the wideness of Les Dupont’s range when it comes to ambient music. Here the classical source is revealed by tracks such as Someone Else’s Dream or Parsifal. Atmospheric music follows with tracks such as Song of the Dunes, Un chant d’amour and Arctic Gymnopédie, the “polar” orchestration of Eric Satie’s composition. But the major interest of this album is to propose samples of all of Les Dupont’s sound explorations, from the majestic and medieval-sounding Magical Ring to the clubbish The Storm (Club Vocal), and all the way to the jazzy character of Avenue de France and the world music inspiration that seals the album with tracks such as Reptiles I and Deepest India (Singles: Arctic Gymnopédie and The Storm).

The Live albums

The Live Technopol album proves that Les Dupont are now also able to work their little miracles in public. Apart from proposing all their main titles, they also show their ability to raise the pressure and never let it drop, conferring a great deal of emotion to this rare moment shared with their audience. Accompanied by singer Nadège Leroy, Les Dupont were particularly inspired that night, the public followed. The production crew of the Technopol Association proved to be outstandingly clear-sighted and professional, reuniting all the ingredients for a good live album.

Live MPPM (with K21) is for those who like hardcore music in a live hitting hard album. Wonderful hardcore registration which brings to life the atmosphere of a brilliant gig. Just two samplers, a drum computer, the Dupont themselves and an exstatic crowd in Marseille. An atmosphere and a live unique in its kind.

Return to IDM

Machine Symphony had the feeling of a finale or a testament, especially with the two live albums they published after. But to those who’ve been thinking that perhaps it’s time to stop getting over-excited about them: chin up, as not only have Les Dupont seen fit to return, but they’ve done so with a stunner. Skyline by Les Dupont sees Didier Blasco-Giavitto and Louis-Frederic Apostoly back on a life lived through music, its importance and the daft music it leads to do. (Singles : The Fridge & Electronic playlisted by DJ Morpheus).

In 2013, Arctic Gymnopédie is a rearrangement of the first Gymnopédie from Erik Satie. The video is edited after a the Méliès short film Conquering the pole. Laureate of the public domain remix, Arctic Gymnopédie is placed under a free license.

They also return to form with their new album 13.13 features 13 tracks in total – including the singles Renaissance Redux, Satan, Underground Radio, ShineTwo, Treasure Planet and two tracks about the Fukushima catastrophe. This latest album evolves as a response to the previous album and, whereas Skyline had an ambient-house mood, 13 is pretty techno, catchy and banging.

In 2014, 13 Remixed consists of 13 tracks, half of them recorded by different artists close to the band. The original tracks are all taken from the 2013 album 13. The same year Les Dupont develop their work through sets that mobilize visual perception and listening (OpenData-IGN, In & Out Festival at the Villa Arson). Their performance Someone Else’s Dream / Crash includes text, music, video and set design. It puts into perspective a philosophical reflection while providing special treatment of time and space. It convenes around Gilles Deleuze musical material borrowed from Sergei Prokofiev and Richard Wagner, videos on the theme of mental manipulation, Hindenburg archival extracts and landscapes of Slovenia.

Published in 2015, the Reflections compilation represents some of Les Dupont’s work from 1995-2006. Nine tracks from the first albums, embracing their musical diversity as an introduction to those who may not have known their previous work.

Almost seven years after their hardcore trilogy Black Metal – In Nocturno – Hiroshima 10 Trax. Les Dupont finish their Great Work: the Darksides compilation. With this Final Chapter, Les Dupont lead us into the darkest side not only of their work but of ourselves, our society, our relationship with one another. Bringing intensity, darkness and industrial chaos, Les Dupont remind us of this very dark and speeding world we live in.

15 years anniversary

In 2016 Lysis, the Dupont’s label, celebrates its 15 years and delivers the Dupont’s fourteenth album, duo noticed this year by the entry of their latest single Springtime in the iTunes charts. Les Dupont propose a Design for Dreaming in the line of the intelligent techno they pursue throughout their history. The album is a journey into the world of ambient-house, sometimes tinged with jazz (the majestuous Italia) or dub (Um May-O), and dotted as usual with literary and film references (cf. Chantal Goya chanting a memorable quote from a Jean-Luc Godard movie: ” Give us a TV and a car, but deliver us from liberty.” What a program!

The Greek album

Athenæum is the fifteenth opus by the band Les Dupont and is released in 2017. Its selected pieces of softness and subtlety will take the listener on a journey of calm and voluptuousness. Ouranos, the primal Greek god personifying the sky, opens things up, and its ambient and dreamy style sets the tone for the album’s supernatural mood. The bright-sounding Lysis is one of the highlights here, as is Statues, the single chosen for the album. The anxiety-ridden Kronos, the time master, enhances the album’s concept the best, accompanied by some excitable guitar and keyboard playing. The final Nyx, goddess of the night, close the album and teaches that our dreams are our most important asset, in Dupont-type charm.

First cover album

In 2017 they recorded a cover of the song I’m Alive by the band Electric Light Orchestra for the contemporary art film Body Double 35 (remake of the opening scene of the film Xanadu) directed by Brice Dellsperger. They also recorded a remix of Grândola, Vila Morena (a song associated with the Carnation Revolution and the restoration of democracy in Portugal) for the documentary Lisbon, I’art à l’assaut des façades directed by Marie Brand. Subsequently, Les Dupont released the album of covers Looking Through. Most of the tracks come from artists who influenced them: Electric Light Orchestra, Visage, Human League, Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk… For its recording, the band called upon other artists such as the Brazilian guitarist Vinícius K Macedo, the French rock singer Julien LOko and the German countertenor Andreas Scholl. The album and its singles Cold Song, Fade to Grey and Full Moon Boogie topped the European iTunes charts.

Programmed Memories, the techno SF album

In 2018, after their cover album Looking Through (#1 in Finland) and its companion release Looking Through: B Sides and Bonuses, Les Dupont deliver an album of original compositions that replace their electro in a style that is both vintage and avant-gardist. With this concept album built on the theme of science-fiction, the future and the transmutations of man into machine, Les Dupont affirm this time a powerful, synthetic and robotic style. (Singles : What’s Wrong, Voyager, Blood Moon Ritual).

The same year Les Dupont compose also two tracks for the soundtrack of Rémi Lange’s film L’œuf dure (presented at the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Marseille; theatrical release on 28/08/2019). They also collaborate musically on Brice Dellsperger’s video installations Xanadu, Carrie and Fucking Perfect, a multi-screen video installation produced and realized in situ in the square gallery of the Villa Arson art centre.

Soundtrack, the modular album

Les Dupont’s psychedelic album Soundtrack is Les Dupont’s chance to redraft the mushroom music from the 70’s as we knew it into a contemporary explosive, cosmic wonderland of ecstatic harmony and perfectly accessible journeys into inner space. Recorded and produced by the band between Nice and Paris with modular synthesis, this album it is certainly one of the band’s most experimental creation. The progressive single Elevation is noticed by Jean-Yves Leloup, who reviewed Miracle the first album of the band.

Rainbow Days & Rainbow World

In 2020 Les Dupont return with a very personal suite, more relaxed, assertive and powerful, drawing on the musical vocabulary of house, hip hop and contemporary electro. Less explosive, subtle in its arrangements (softened synths, pop melodies), Rainbow Days offers several songs with virtual featurings (the electronic voices of Stop Playing Games or My Heart Is My Processor), giving a positive image of tomorrow’s world, a world where man will perhaps be made more human through the machine.

Rainbow World is a kind of twin album of Rainbow Days, initially planned as a double album. Rainbow World takes up the basics of the previous one and mix them with the colours of a radiant house flirting with the French touch (the single Dj’s) and the new beat of the 90s (Fine Time and To Dance Is To Live).

To accompany these two albums, Les Dupont offer an astonishing cover version: an electro–rock version of Tout Petit La Planète, a song by Plastic Bertrand, released in 1978. This title is one of the singer’s best-known songs. Forty-one years later, Les Dupont took back the track. “We often draw on the 1980s for our compositions,” explains Didier Blasco-Giavitto, the group’s composer, alongside Frédéric Apostoly. “We are children of the Plastic generation, punk guys who fell into electro. We chose the retro-wave singer Madmoizel to ensure the featuring. His icy voice sits elegantly on the majestic harmonies of this song which we consider to be one of the most beautiful French-speaking new wave tracks of the early 80s. “

Later Rainbow Mixes features numerous remixes of tracks from Rainbow Days and Rainbow World. In regards to this remix album, Didier Blasco-Giavitto states: « The idea of the album comes from the need to create a open access, an open door to the tracks of our two previous albums. By establishing a connection between people that listen to dance music and our « Rainbow albums era ». There’s no limits to these remixes, and it may help people listen to our music. It’s also a different way to express ourselves. And the other thing is to bring some value in the Rainbow Days and Rainbow World albums by revealing their dance potential. »

Back to ambient again

In 2021 Les Dupont released the ambient track Music for Ghosts. A first version was used as a generic for the program Une vie une œuvre/Derek Jarman cineaste queer 1942-1994 broadcasted on France Culture on 01/12/18. A second version appears in the soundtrack of the film Je reviens vers moi by Sophie Blondy, with Louise Depardieu & Béatrice Nécaille (2020 Héloïse films).

This single appears in the Music For Ghosts album. Experimental in its use of electronics and sound, this album marks both a return to the industrial roots and a new departure in a more meditative direction. Originally, the title Music For Ghosts was not intended to be published, but when it caught the attention of France Culture, Les Dupont chose to record a full album in a tone reminiscent of the band’s early philosophy: an arty and industrial music, a mix of avant-garde electronic experimentation, with transgressive and provocative themes.

Twelve years after Tales From The Ambient House Vol.1 (the Verlaine album), the band recreates the ambient polychromy of the early days, gently telescoping the rhythms of machines and misty tablecloths, voluptuous ambient house lanscapes and cinematic jazz. Tales From The Ambient House Vol.2 is a suite of musical architectures as graceful as they are aerial, bucolic and sometimes echoing a distant rave. It’s the definitive album of our dreams after trip…

Cover album with Jean-Luc Verna

In 2022, Les Dupont reunite with Jean-Luc Verna (I Apologize), a student like them at the Villa Arson, for the collaboration Les Dupont feat. Jean-Luc Verna. Their creations are inspired by Siouxsie & The Banshees, Bauhaus, Depeche Mode, The Human League, with nods to The Doors, The Velvet Underground and jazz standards (Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe). The style is electronic, but without any particular anchoring: electropop, new wave, house or even trance ambiences are intermingled throughout the tracks. There are several film references, including Irvin Kerschner’s The Eyes of Laura Mars.

Les Dupont feat. Jean-Luc Verna made their first public media appearance on 15 January 2021 with the broadcast of Nightclubbing on Radio Kanal Centre Pompidou and Hello, I Love You in Arnaud Laporte’s “Affaires culturelles” program on France Culture.

Lost & Found – the unreleased tracks

Lost & Found isn’t technically a ‘new’ album, nor is it a ‘lost’ album from their early days, but a collection of previously unreleased rehearsal room recordings made in Nice between 1990 to 2021. All tracks were composed and performed by Didier Blasco-Giavitto and Louis-Frédéric Apostoly.

The collection offers an insight into a young band taking their first steps. It’s important to note at this point that the band would later become electro IDM pioneers, releasing the seminal album Miracle and celebrated single from the same name.

Lost & Found is something of a curio, and a most welcome one at that.

Sur L’eau – Sunny Crypt Reissue

In 2023 Sunny Crypt is happy to announce the reissue of “Sur L’Eau”, the sought-after debut EP by French IDM pioneers Les Dupont, an electronic duo composed by Didier Blasco-Giavitto and Louis-Frédéric Apostoly at Nice’s Fine Arts school. Originally released in 1994 on the seminal Virtual… label, this record is a unique-sounding blend of trippy aquatic-themed house meets electronica meets ambient. Now up in demand and with OG copies hard to get ahold of, this new fully licensed and remastered edition comes with a bonus techno / trance jam called “Outremer”, previously released only on CD on Les Dupont’s 1995 debut album titled “Miracle”. In the words of the artists, a kind of equivalent of surrealism, a work of collage, chance, freedom and experimentation of all kinds.

Sound Of Mo – Oki Remixes

In 1994, Frédérick Rousseau released Mō, an album that marked by its originality and Asian sounds. This pioneering music opened the way to what would later be called ethno-lounge. Extracted from this album, sung by Shisui Enomoto & Atsuko Constant, The Prayer becomes Oki and is already the subject of many remixes: Radio Remix, Jungle Remix & Long Remix. Commissioned by Polygram, their label at the time, Les Dupont create in 1995 the Radio Edit, Tek Mix & Dupont Club Mix. Fruit of their reunion with Frédérick in 2023, Les Dupont add a final and contemporary touch with the Kimmei, Yamato and Mononobe Remixes.

I

Sacred Songs

In 2024, the duo split up following an artistic disagreement. Didier Blasco-Giavitto remained the sole member of the band.The same year Didier Blasco-Giavitto joins forces with the vocal ensemble Beata Mvsica, accustomed to the sacred works of the 17th century. This is not the first foray of Les Dupont into the Baroque: proof of this is the trance version of Purcell’s Air du froid popularized by Klaus Nomi, with the voice of countertenor Andreas Scholl (from the album Looking Through, #1 iTunes Top 200 Finland Dance Chart 2018). Sacred Songs is a new musical experience, where the harmonies of baroque chant blend with electronic beats to create a sound universe that is both timeless and avant-garde.