Antigone

Parisian techno producer Antigone’s sophisticated blend of dancefloor toughness and melodic melancholy put him at the forefront of a resurgent French techno scene in the 2010s.
Born Antonin Jeanson, he was introduced to electronic music by his godmother at the age of eight and in his teens became an insatiable vinyl addict, spending hundreds of pounds a month on records. Starting with minimal and house, he eventually gravitated to techno, becoming a protégé of Sylvain Peltier, aka Zadig, and eventually securing a DJ residency at the Concrete boat party on the Seine. He took his time learning to produce, and only launched his own techno project in the early 2010s, named after the tragic daughter of Oedipus in Greek myth. His debut single, 2011′s “Forbidden Works” on Peltier’s Construct Re-Form, had a tough, funky sound. It was soon followed by more releases on labels like Children of Tomorrow, Concrete, Ars Mechanica, and Indigo Aera, with the EPs “As I Walk to You” and “The Day the Sky Fell In” particularly prized by techno connoisseurs for their balance of club grit and melodic melancholy. In 2015 he signed to Belgian label Token, releasing the highly regarded double-pack Cantor Dust. Several more singles followed before the label issued his debut full-length album, Rising, in 2018; it had a lusher, more immersive sound with ambient passages. ~ John D. Buchanan