Born in Nantes 20 years ago, Hugo Leclercq aka Madeon was introduced to electronic music aged 11, when he came upon a documentary about Daft Punk. A year later, he began learning how to make music. He posted some of his tracks online, but declined label requests to release them and other artist's offers of remix work.
Instead, he entered an online remix competition for drum’n’bass band Pendulum. His repositioning of their 'The Island' as tough, sparkling house won whilst his remixes on the Yelle “Que Veux Tu” and Deadmau5 “Raise Your Weapon” singles further raised his profile with support from of Annie Mac, Diplo, Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, Steve Angello, Pete Tong, Deadmau5, Chase & Status, Skrillex, Knife Party, Porter Robinson, Zedd, Martin Solveig etc..
As well as these breathtaking remixes there was the excitement caused by his Pop Culture video that he uploaded to YouTube in July 2011, which featured him performing with his Novation Launchpad controller, as he live mixed 39 samples from pop tracks from the likes of ELO’s Mr Blue Sky and the Gorillaz 'Dare' to Britney Spears's 'Baby One More Time' - into three and half minutes of music that has currently had nearly 23 million views. His first official single which he released on own popcultur label, Icarus, was taut electro-house, but its follow-up, Finale also released on popcultur/Columbia Records was “a 92 bpm anthem rock track”. “This was very important for me,” he notes, “because I wanted to test the water of people’s open mindedness.” Madeon’s third single 'The City', was he says “a conclusion of a type of style I’ve been exploring and is one of my favourite tracks.”
Madeon has collaborated with Ellie Goulding on ‘Stay Awake’, a pop/rock track with a drum & bass spin which was an exclusive to Beatport but was been added to the repackaged re-release of Ellie’s current Halcyon album. He also produced an alternative radio mix for Muse’s “Panic Station” single release which Zane Lowe chose as his hottest record in the World on his Radio 1 show. He then went on to produce Two Door Cinema Club’s single ‘Changing of the Seasons’ which Zane also chose at his Hottest record in the World, as well as writing and producing three tracks on Lady Gaga’s ‘Artpop’ album. He also had time to collaborate with Coldplay on their Ghost Stories album.
Madeon has also been extremely busy touring over the past couple of years performing at festivals such as Coachella (US), Lollapalooza (US), Transmusicale (France), Sonar (Spain), Wireless Festival (UK), Ultra (US), SonicMania (Japan) etc.. He then embarked on his first headline tour around Europe back in December 2012 before heading to the States to join Lady Gaga on her Born This Way Ball in early 2013, coupled with main stage appearances at a plethora of festivals around the Globe including EDC (Las Vegas), Global Gathering (UK) Rockness (Scotland), Ultra (US) Electric Forest (US), Creamfields (UK), Benecassim (Spain), Summerburst (Sweden) 7th Sunday Festival, (Holland), Main Stage Festival (France), Arenal Sound (Spain), EDC (UK), Electric Zoo (US) SonicMania, (Japan), etc...
In 2013 he became the first ever electronic artist/dj in History to perform a show on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Madeon took off the majority of 2014 to write his highly anticipated debut album. He dropped its first track ‘Imperium’ in October which was premiered as a special delivery on Annie Mac’s BBC Radio 1 show. ‘You’re On’ is the second piece of material and the first single to be released off the album. The track was made available on December 8th 2014 and features vocals from rising British talent Kyan.
To date, combined Youtube views for Madeon’s music stands at over 120 Million.
www.madeon.fr
