Les Gordon: Classic guy goes electric

Les Gordon. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

He's humble and reserved, hippyish and relaxed. Looking like a good boy gone bad, the young French musician Les Gordon performs like a geeky nice guy gone wild.

Tinted with the retro-futurist proclivity, Gordon's music lends a somberly cheerful tone to his creative combination of guitar, cello, ukulele, mandolin and keyboards, layering classic and electric just perfectly. It'll be a peaceful, exciting journey you're taking if you hear Gordon's music live.

Receiving academic training in music and influenced by a wide range of musicians, from Chopin to Alphex Twin, Bonobo to Gold Panda, from Four Tet to Radiohead, Gordon has worked his way to the top of electronic music, step by step.

Under his real name, Marc Mifune, he played at the Trans Musicales festival in 2013. So far, he's released four albums, with some EPs soon gathering tens of thousands of clicks soon after they came out.

As one of the musicians in the French Miracle Tour of the Festival Croisements 2016, Les Gordon has recently played in Beijing and Xi'an. He gave an exclusive interview to China Daily website during his tour in China. Below are excerpts from the interview.

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How do you define your music genre and style?

My sound is like acoustic sound mixed with electronic music; some side chained guitar, harp and cello with some minimal beats.

What instruments do you usually use in your compositions, and are there any newly found ones? How do you do mix and match to create an ideal piece of music?

I studied cello since I was child so I used to play in concerts for cello. I record everything in my work, so guitars, cellos, autoharp, etc. The only thing I don't record is the voice. Lots of voices are friends', acapellas from a remix I made. When I work on a song, I try to compose a pop song (with chorus and refrain) so after, when I find something good, that's the beginning of the process: the recording. The first part is recording the loops of guitar or rhythm. And then I continue to make the structure of the song.

You combined electric, indie and classical music very well in the album, White Land. It sounds quite special. How did you arrive at the idea of putting them together? Was it because of your education background?

Yes I think my classical background is very important in the process of creating musical pieces. For White Land, I tried to use only guitar. It was a big challenge cause you need to produce a song with only one instrument. My big inspiration for this EP was Bibio, an English musician. He influenced the process of creation for this album.

In the album Diadème, the music is more psychedelic, with a touch of rock. The name of the album is also quite intriguing. What resulted in the change of style and what were you trying to express in this album?

For this album, I tried to combine many instruments. I choose Diadème - it refers to feminimity - because it sounds great in French when you say it. This album is more dynamic than White Land; my ambition was to mix many acoustic sounds with a minimal electronic beat.