Published
Name: Chloé Thévenin aka CHLOÉ
Nationality: French
Occupation: Composer, producer, DJ
Current release: CHLOÉ's new album Shape Of The Unknown is out October 30th via Lumière Noire.
Current events: Catch CHLOÉ live at one of the following dates:
23 Oct 2026 — CHLOE & Vassilena Serafimova, Creation (30min classical & mix)
18 march 2027 - CHLOE Live , L’olympia Paris , FR
29 Jan 2027 — Sequenza Live w/ Vassilena Serafimova — Nanterre, France
If you enjoyed this CHLOÉ interview and would like to know more about her music and upcoming concerts, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, bandcamp, and Soundcloud.
What were some of the musical experiences which planted a seed for your interest in electronic music?
As a teenager I was buying a lot of old records, exploring very different styles.
I remember coming across records on Warp and discovering that whole Sheffield scene, with this combination of bleeps, heavy bass and something quite raw and futuristic.
I became fascinated with searching for music that shared a similar mood, and started making connections between records that could be completely different.
Most genres of music make use of electronic production means. What does the term “electronic music” mean today, would you say?
You don't necessarily need to define anymore what is electronic and what isn’t, electronic tools are everywhere. You can record an acoustic instrument, a drum machine, a voice or something completely random, transform it.
I like this ambiguity. I've experienced it a lot in projects such as my duo project with the marimba player Vassilena Serafimova, where acoustic and electronic sounds constantly interact.
Disco, house, techno, drum n bass, IDM and many other genres were about a lot more than just music. For you personally, is electronic music still a way of life – and if so, in which way?
Yes sure, I’ve been part of this culture for most of my adult life. Djing has made me travel, meet people and experience very different scenes. To me, club culture is also a space that allows people to express themselves outside predefined norms.
But at some point, I need things outside music too, doing completely different things, just for the need to step away from music and come back to it with fresh perspective and have a more normal rhythm.
Debates around electronic music tend to focus on technology. What were some of the things you learned by talking to colleagues or through performing and/or recording with other musicians? What role does community play for your interest in production and getting better as a producer?
I've learned through collaborations because it makes you approach your own habits differently. It can take you somewhere you wouldn't have reached alone.
Collaboration means accepting that you won’t control everything. You have to create space for somebody else, and that can take you somewhere you wouldn’t necessarily go on your own.
I’m always curious to see where that can lead us.
What are examples for artists, performances, and releases that really inspired you recently and possibly gave you the feeling of having experienced something fresh and new?
My collaboration with Vassilena Serafimova on our album and live performance «Sequenza» is important in that sense.
I process her marimba live, recording parts of her playing, looping them and transforming them with effects. We had to find a common language between an acoustic instrument and electronics, but also between two very different ways of performing. I have similar experiences working through film, contemporary dance or with my friend Ben Shemie.
Also through Djing, you meet artists exchange music, remix, or release music on friends label. It s my way of approaching this music.
What kind of musical/sonic materials, and ideas are particularly stimulating for your own work right now?
Quite often it can be something very simple, like a new drum machine I’m trying out, or a plug-in, or even an instrument someone has lent me. Just discovering a new tool and seeing what it can do can be a starting point. It can push me somewhere unexpected and trigger an idea.
With my new track «Repeating The Obvious», the title actually came first and was the idea of an obsessive thought going around in circles. The bass had to be a kind of mantra that carries the track.
Where do most of your inspirations to create come from – rather from internal impulses or external ones? Which current social / political / ecological or other developments make you feel like you need to respond as an artist?
It can come from anywhere, a sound, an image, a mood, a film, something I’m going through. And of course, what’s happening in the world affects me too, consciously or not.
I don’t necessarily try to translate it directly into music, but I guess it is somewhere in the background.
Sometimes music becomes a refuge, and sometimes it’s a way of expressing fears or concerns.
Tell me a bit about the sounds & creative directions, artists & communities, as well as the colleagues & creative hotspots of your current hometown, please. How do they influence your music?
I’m a Parisian native, so Paris has obviously been very important in my musical life. I’ve been playing at Rex Club for around 30 years, it s a place that is important to me.
Djing has always gone with travelling for me, so my musical environment has never been limited to Paris. I’ve experienced many places and scenes with their own identity.
Sometimes a small club can leave a much stronger impression on me than a huge venue, because of its particular sound, atmosphere and connection with the crowd.
Today, electronic music has an interesting relationship between honouring its roots and exploring the unknown. What does the balance between these two poles look like in your music?
Everything I’ve listened to and played in my sets over the years is never too far away. I often go back to old tracks and realize they still sound just as good, while I’m always looking for new music that touches me.
I’m not obsessed with either new music or old tracks, but what I like is that balance between old and new, it really takes shape when I’m playing. When I'm producing, I don't consciously try to reference them. I'm more interested in starting somewhere and not knowing exactly where I'll end up. That's partly how i produce, like my album «Shape Of The Unknown».
I like this moment when a track starts escaping from the original idea. You think you're heading in one direction and suddenly something changes.
What were some of the recent tools you bought, used, or saw/read about which changed your perspective about production, performing, and making music?
Sometimes I'm almost completely digital, using plugins to create depth and textures, also because I'm working while im travelling or on my couch. I really dig that soundtoys effects that creates delays, saturation and modulation. Decapitator is one of those with which you can really reshape the character of a sound.
At other times I'm recording more analog, like synthesizers, drum machines or sounds through pedals and effects in my own studio I have built. I particularly like processing sounds through delays, echoes and reverbs and recording these manipulations live.
OTO Machines make some tools I really like for this because they can give a sound a lot of character.
How do you see the role of sampling in electronic music today?
I’m more interested in the result than how to get there. When I do sample something, I transform it until you can no longer recognize the original source, it just becomes raw material.
For me, that process of transforming sound is also a big part of what electronic music is about. In the end everyone can use sampling in their own way.
What are some of the most recent innovations in sound design for you – and what are currently personal limits to realising the sounds you have in your mind?
There are some really interesting developments in spatial audio, especially in the way you can move and position sounds in space and create almost acousmatic effects, It can create a whole sonic world around you and completely change the way you experience the music.
I'm today more interested in finding new combinations than in the idea of technological innovation itself. I build my own effect chains and presets, combining different routings and processors until they create a particular character.
I try to reduce everything back to the essential elements can actually open a track again.
In as far as it is applicable to your work, how would you describe the interaction between your music and DJing/DJ culture and clubs?
They're deeply connected.
Djing teaches me about tension, dynamics and duration. It learns me to react rather than control everything. Also, accidents can sometimes create unexpected and powerful moments, and that’s something I try to keep open in my own music.
Also, working on film soundtracks and contemporary dance has changed the way I think about music, space and time. I don't want every track I make to have an obvious function on a dancefloor. For me these different formats feed each other rather than compete with each other.
How would you say your live performances and your recording projects are connected at the moment? How do they mutually influence and feed off each other?
They're probably connected with the name of my album «Shape Of The Unknown».
I started working with visual artist Neurotypique while I was still finishing the album and hadn't prepared the live show yet. So the visual was developed alongside the music. Now we're building something together that extends the music into another dimension.
Preparing the live set also changes the tracks because you have to reconsider their structure, dynamics and how they exist over time. I like this circulation.
Even if AI will not entirely replace human composition, it looks set to have a significant impact on it. What do the terms composing/producing mean in the era of AI, do you feel?
One of the biggest issues right now is that there still isn’t a clear legal framework around AI and music, especially around copyright, and the material used to train these systems. I'm also curious about it, but I think it makes intention and choice even more important.
For me, producing has never only been only about generating material. It's also about listening, making decisions and developing your own language. I'm more interested in the creative process, which AI can’t really replace. I don't think that disappears because the tools change.
