Madeon - Post Modern Music

Biography:

Name: Hugo Pierre Leclercq

Born: 30th May 1994

Nationality: French

First EP: Released in 2012 called 'The City'

First Album: 2015 called 'Adventure'

Music Style: French House Style / Electronic

Producer for:



Ellie Goulding - Stay Awake
Two Door Cinema Club - Changing of the seasons
Coldplay - Always in my head, O
Muse - Panic Station
Lady Gaga - Mary Jane Holland, Venus, Gypsy

Also worked with Deadmau5, Pendulum. Martin Solveig, Zedd and Porter Robinson 


Madeon uses homage to mix songs, with a purpose to distribute and educate a new audience in how contrapuntal sounds can complement each other to form a new post modern resource. A sample he created in 2011 included songs such as:

• Around The World - Daft Punk
• Starry Eyed - Ellie Goulding 
• Video Killed The Radio Star - The Buggles
• Wow - Kylie Minogue
• Viva La Vida - Coldplay
• Dare - Gorillaz 

All songs which are featured are post modern in their own respect, and have been used further by Madeon to create a Mix Tape of his own which has been further distributed to exhibit inter-textual reference within his original music. 


There is no form of pastiche through Madeon's music as he only respects the sound from other artists. However he mixes the sounds he produces together to make mixtapes, and gathers inspiration from this to produce his own material.

Madeon uses iconic older songs such as Video Killed The Radio Star as a form of appreciation for the song. He mixes this song with more modern tracks like Starry Eyed which has an electronic based sound to it. This isn't a bricolage as such in my opinion, regardless of him mixing different genres of sound together to make something post modern.

There are intertextual references in the respect that Madeon cuts specific clips from every song he uses, therefore meaning lyrically and melodically these can be classed as references.

Madeon reflects simulacrum like other post modern artists such as Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus. He is identified as a different person in the music industry to his name. This could have many reasons attached as to why, however unlike Lady Gaga, Madeon doesn't change his image and therefore wouldn't necessarily be looked upon by a consumer as post modern.

Madeon distributes his music through YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes and Spotify, There is no artefact to accompany the consumption of the product. The music produced is merely just a young male, mixing sounds, which has become popular to many globally.

Madeon is a composer as opposed to a singer songwriter. He creates his sounds through adapting current music, old music and sounds he has established himself to create a whole new sound. This is similar to what other DJ's do like Calvin Harris and David Guetta.

Madeon's videos are very limited with regards to performance. They are very like Clean Bandit's videos in that they look very postmodern - including city landscapes, a focus on one character, whilst having no real connection with the lyrics of the song. Madeon however, does feature in his videos for a split second, which is unlike other DJ's in the industry unless their videos are purposely performance based.

Madeon tends to be influenced by others in the industry at the moment. A recent news story shows that Madeon chased Dan from Bastille around the world following their tour, just for him to record something to feature on his debut album. Madeon has very limited originals that aren't mixtapes, however will become a great influence to many in the music industry in the near future.

Is he cool?

With Dance / Electronic music becoming more and more popular it is seen as cool, when really the sounds produced aren't nice to listen to, and are purely played in clubs and on the radio as a fashionable icon. The charts have noticeably become more based around these genres of music, especially as Summer is relatively close. These types of songs are associated with drinking, dancing and having a good time, which could be why younger generations of people are more interested by this genre than the older generations, for example our parents.
The samples and mixtapes that Madeon has produced use older and newer songs like said before for the purpose of appreciation for all eras of music.
More and more, Madeons style of music is becoming more mainstream, however it still incorporates a niche market, as more younger generations of people enjoy it. This indicates that it is more of a fashion icon regarding the popularity, rather than people actually liking it because it is good.