New York musician and producer Les Techno, not only with his name (or, should we say moniker) has been proclaimed as an ‘electropop provocateur,’ with a series of recordings that tried to counter the advice he got from a “knowledgable” A&R man at a “Major Record Label”: “You know, genre mixing in this business is dangerous.”
Les Techno actually kept on doing precisely that – mixing the genres with constantly giving them that electro-pop base as an underpinning. This should not be anything unusual for a man who trained his guitar chops with late jazz legend Larry Coryell and who made hip-hop tracks with rap artists Run-DMC (Profile), Mobb Deep (Loud/RCA), and Onyx (Def Jam/Sony) (among others). He also did a Red Hot Chili Peppers remix (“Higher Ground”), and worked with R&B artist Ava Cherry and with the late, legendary funkmaster Bernie Worrell.
So it comes as no surprise that his latest single outing “Make You Feel Good,” is yet another slice of very sophisticated electro-pop following a lead from other genre-bending artists that came before him, here specifically David Bowie and LCD Soundsystem. Yet with all the musical clues Les Techno leaves here, he molds an extremely listenable (and danceable) melody coupled with lyrics to match. It should fit any connoisseur’s beat-oriented playlist.
