DJ Le Tone

DJ Le Tone is bound to catch everyone’s eye. The Frenchman is gorgeous (and knows it). He is bound to catch the ear, as well, with his winning “futuristic” sound.

On a four-city promotional tour to release a lounge music compilation featuring one of his tracks, Le Tone is passing through Calcutta, with his first gig at the Incognito in Taj Bengal on Friday evening.

The album, produced especially for India by Silk Road, is a collection of 12 tracks, blending electro-lounge, pop, hip-hop and R&B, peppered with “sweetened voices, runny synthesiser and playful beats”. Titled French Touch, the compilation, priced at Rs 349, features numbers from albums like Starlight, Soundz of Life, Breathe, License, London Highs and more.

“We are more famous outside France,” says the Paris-based DJ, who feels electric music has not yet caught on in France. The French music scene is still dominated by “very mainstream music” involving French lyrics and some hip-hop. “At least that’s what they play on the radio all the time,” he shrugs.

It took a musical movement of sorts called French Touch by an English journalist a few years ago for electronic music to make a mark, he adds, though it is still “largely underground”.

So it isn’t surprising then that Le has come looking for greener pastures for his sound. That, coupled with a healthy dose of wanderlust, has brought him on this tour. “I just like travelling… India or Indonesia, it doesn’t matter,” he smiles. “So when this Indian label, Silk Road, approached me, I thought why not,” says the dashing DJ.

“Electronic music, especially lounge, is really catching on in India,” observes Nicolas Blasquez, director Alliance Francaise, Calcutta, who has been instrumental in organising the tour along with the French Embassy in India.

“Places like the Shisha Bar at the Grain of Salt have been playing lounge music and it’s doing really well,” Blasquez explains.

Le himself plays around “quite a bit” with trip hop, pop and live instruments like the guitar to “break and re-break the sounds on the computer until they are fragmented into something totally different”.

Technicalities aside, the end result is the full sound of lounge that “gives a soul” to different places like airports, cars, bars and, if it is the kind of music for you, it can work its magic in your drawing room, too.