We label music to understand it. Once it’s understood, the imitation begins. Eventually, songs start to sound identical and we need to rip things up and start again. Enter 21-year-old Norwegian producer/performer Coucheron, a prodigy who understands this cycle and has avoided it at all costs. “I have no boundaries in what I’m doing now, compared to when I was making club-friendly music,” he says, now being handpicked as a Spotify Spotlight Artist for 2015.
Born and raised in suburban Asker, Norway, Coucheron (Sebastian Kornelius Coucheron-Gautier Teigen) grew up in a large family with little sense of limitations. With three siblings, two half-siblings, and four stepsiblings, there was always someone to talk to, someone to entertain, someone to dance with. “Every day is a party when you have ten kids under the same roof,” he says, underscoring the mentality that he artfully brings to dance music. With a father who played saxophone and a mother proficient on piano, Coucheron’s musical aptitude is genetic. By 8-years old, he’d learned the ivory keys and taught himself both drums and guitar. Before long, practicing and collecting weren’t enough—Coucheron needed to perform.
At 10, he formed a band with his brother and several other classmates. Crafting original songs immediately followed. He has emerged with several sunny, dance-floor ready tracks, from “Deep End” with award-winning singer Mayer Hawthorne on vocals and “Honkey Donk” with his girlfriend RebMoe, to remixes of inter alia B.o.B which, along other remixes of his, was awarded #1 on Hype Machine's Most Popular.
Many more would surface on his aptly titled debut EP, Playground, released August 2015 on Atlantic Records. The first single from Playground, “Deep End”, shows just a glimpse of what we can expect and is a great collaboration with Eastside and Mayer Hawthorne on vocals. Just recently a new single was launched, namely “Ruby” a groovy track with wobbling synths, driving arpeggiator, and a downright dirty bass sound providing the framework for Noonie Bao‘s light-as-a-feather vocal performance.
Influenced by artists as disparate as jazz-fusion pioneer George Duke and French house duo Justice, Playground is perfect whether housed in headphones or blaring from music festival speakers. Slithering techno synths and the body-quaking bass of house music are tempered with soulful funk. His gift at coloring outside genre lines will leave you reeling, but it will also make you remember a time when you didn’t know those lines existed. “I want to inspire people and give them a sense of no boundaries,” says Coucheron. “To me, a lot of music seems homogenous. I want to provided a piece of playfulness in the form of a record.”
