Tepr

The guy behind Tepr was born Tanguy Destable in 1980 in the most western town of France. As a child, his playlist was including Kim Wilde "Kids In America", Tears For Fears "Shout" and Supertramp "Breakfast in America". Being a young teenager, he quickly and obviously became converted to Nirvana, but stayed closer to The Jesus Lizard or Pavement than any grunge-affiliated band. This was the time he took a guitar and played in his first noiy pop band.



Then Daft Punk made the revolution all the 90's french kids were not expecting any more, opening the doors to many different kinds of electronic music. Between Aphex Twin, DJ Vadim and Les Rythmes Digitales, Tepr never made a definitive choice.



So after stopping losing his time playing the same pop song with his band, Tanguy decided to try the "machines & samples stuff" with his mate Lionel Pierres. Created in 1999 for a single show in a local festival, the duo named Abstrackt Keal Agram then tried to make the "groovebox gently weeps". And despite the fact that their compositions were more a kind of ultra-melodic techno than remixes of The Beatles, the audience loved it.



After working a bit more to reach their own musical identity, Abstrackt Keal Agram signed in 2000 with Monopsone (a young label from eastern France) and became in 2001 the french masters for mixing hip hop and electronica, helped by both the melodic perspective of the U.S. indie-pop scene and the John Carpenter soundtracks.



At the end of this year, Tepr gives is first cd-r of his future solo project to another beginning label called Idwet. The demo was sexy like any Mego record, that is quite experimental, but the label found the little something that can make anybody cry. So in 2002, Tepr recorded his first solo album which was released at the beginning of next year. Mixing weird electronica, hip hop beats and post-rock visions, "The Deadly Master Of Rappers From Hell" is both sad and funny, sweet and violent. Just beautiful in fact. The musical press generally likes to describe records very strangely. This album was a good opportunity for a lazy journalist to write that it was like "Cex remixing Prefuse 73 remixing Godspeed You Black Emperor". No one really understood this sentence, but it seemed very interesting.



Apart from this solo project, Abstrackt Keal Agram was still growing and then reached Gooom Disques (home of M83). With this label, the duo released two records in 2003 and 2004 ("Cluster Ville" and "Bad Thriller") receiving amazing feedbacks from both press and public (and also from Deftones leader Chino Moreno !). At the same time, A.K.A. also collaborated with Robert Le Magnifique and theatre producer David Gauchard, composing the "Hamlet" album, released on Idwet in 2004.



As any hyperactive artist, Tepr never really stopped composing for himself during this period, throwing away many excellent tracks he was not considering faithful enough to his personality. Finally, he became aware of the fact that he was just really fed up with composing music "as a little crying child locked in a cupboard" (these are his own words), and then he was ready to emancipate from the musical point of view. He developed new orientations trying to integrate various elements from dirty south hip hop and crunk, baile funk, reggaeton, ghettotech, Miami bass, trance, german techno, synthpop, early 80's funk and, obviously, the required "French Touch" to make it sexy and cool !



So, the end of 2005 saw the release of "Cote Ouest" ("West Coast" in English), a kind of "rebirth" according to Tepr, followed six months later by "En direct de la cote" ("Live from the coast"). These albums can be considered as 2 parts of the same record, but couldn't be released together just because Tepr is composing really too fast when he's on a good mood.



The new musical orientation, helped by the Myspace phenomenon, allowed the name "Tepr" to become even more renowned than the "Abstrackt Keal Agram" trademark, which implied numerous requests for licencing, remixing (Just Jack, Paul Hartnoll & Robert Smith.), producing or collaborating. At the end of 2006, Patrick Alavi's label Roxour took a licence on the tracks "En direct de la cote" and "Minuit Jacuzzi" (featuring GrandMarnier), and released them as a 12" that got large feedbacks for a starting label. The tracks were played and supported by Justice, Mylo, Pedro Winter and Pharell Williams himself !



In 2007, Tepr put an end to the Abstrackt Keal Agram project and began to travel around the world, playing keyboards with growing pop-star Yelle (he also coproduced her tracks with GrandMarnier). Wall Of Sound (home label of Les Rythmes Digitales and Royksopp) then re-released the "En Direct de la Cote" EP, including the amazing remix of "Minuit Jaccuzzi" by DatA.

Since then, the number of remix requests don't stop to grow (Infadels, The Teenagers, Calvin Harris, Santogold, Housse de Racket, Martin Solveig, Laroux, Naive New Beaters.), and numerous tours around the U.S.A., Japan or Australia are now Tepr's everyday life, who nevertheless manage to spend time producing new tracks for Yelle.



In september 2010 Tepr launches his new website http://www.tepr.net/ which allows to subscribers to get a new unreleased track each month and a 20 minutes DJ mix for free. This new challenge is about gathering the people who like Tepr and delivering them the music he is working on before some more "official" releases.