SebastiAn

Some dance artists try to remake the music of their influences, but SebastiAn’s relationship to the past is more complicated: The French electronic musician specialises in a hard-hitting hybrid of vintage styles—electro-funk, disco, house, hip-hop and even punk rock—that rarely mixed in their heyday, yet sound better than ever when mingled in his computer. Born Sébastien Akchoté-Bozović in Boulogne-Billancourt in 1981 (and raised between Paris and Belgrade), SebastiAn was making hip-hop in the early 2000s when he got signed to Ed Banger with his 2005 EP Smoking Kills (?) and became a fixture of the French electro scene alongside contemporaries like Justice and Kavinsky. After 2008’s A Fine Selection of Remixes collected his work for Daft Punk, Kelis and others, his debut LP, 2011’s Total, looked past the dance club, spinning retro inspirations into visionary futurist pop. It would take him another eight years to follow with Thirst—perhaps because he was so busy producing for acts like Fall Out Boy, Charlotte Gainsbourg and, most notably, Frank Ocean. A big chunk of SebastiAn’s discography is devoted to soundtrack work for film and fashion, where the producer’s innate sense of cool is right at home.