Yann Levasseur A.K.A. Le Spectre is a multi-faceted electronic music composer. He started to make music at a very young age thanks to Public Domain, the cult video from Powell Peralta’s skateboards. This is how he grabbed a guitar just to play the riff of « Weakness » by McRad, the track exploding the whole video’s soundtrack. He kept on practicing and his very own tracks were born, at first in punk-fusion teenage bands.
The discovering of the drum machine combined to his first four-track makeshift home studio turned his life towards machines. A choice that will led him to spend every penny in a huge synthesizers collection while self-learning music and production techniques that will became his job. In the meantime, British jungle and drum’n’bass catched him with its ruthless and the blackness of the beats. Yann’s first productions dive straight into drum’n’bass and, under the name of Earsut, he will release 7 maxis between 2000 and 2005.
It’s in 2006 that Le Spectre came to life in a debut EP, « Analog Monolog », quickly followed by a mini-album, « Analog Dialog ». Through this character, he invents a full-blown world of sound made of analogic metal and sailing between electronic soul, martial cold-wave, stadiums’ pop or gothic soundtrack, but most of all noise and hardcore punk.
Yann Levasseur is back today with a brand new single, « Gaslight » featuring Lewca and is now adding the final touch to the 2023 upcoming album “Future Primitive”. This seven tracks album shows another aspect of Yann Levasseur spectrum’s scope : mistier and milder but still captivating with pop tracks tailored for mainstream radios to more electronic ones darken by synths.
As a Trentemøller or a Moderat, Yann Levasseur uses electronic music rather to instigate an energic, dark, bewitching and astonishing pop than to make people dance. Should we call it spectral in a few years?