Originally a jobbing DJ, before establishing himself as a producer and electronic artist, London-based musician Hardt Antoine made a name for himself at the helm of Reculture, a regular club night that transitioned into a record label during the Covid pandemic.
It was also around that time that Antoine really invested in the production side of his career, spending time establishing what made him distinctive as a music maker.
“I'd been able to produce music to high standards before that, but it was always a bit lost,” he explains. “Because I was DJing, I was playing a lot of different music, and I'd make a bit of this and a bit of that, and a bit or whatever.
"It took a long time to learn to produce, but definitely longer to find myself as an artist than it did to learn how to make beats and mix them and arrange and whatever."
Since moving into production Antoine has established a sound that draws on eclectic samples and ideas, but is consistently rooted in his own rugged, beat-driven take on house and techno. That’s seen his tracks land on lauded labels including Innervisions and Kompakt, as well as his own Reculture imprint.
We caught up with Hardt Antoine in his London studio to watch him create a track idea from scratch, and to talk about his journey from DJ to producer and label head.
Watch: Hardt Antoine builds a track from scratch
How did you get into making electronic music?
"I guess my intro, like a lot of people, was DJing and DJ culture. That was my teenage dream, and I was working on it from finishing education. I was working as a local DJ in London. And it wasn't so glamorous. I was playing at bars and restaurants and eventually clubs, but I was very much a DJ first. From getting into the culture I learned about producing music. I also learned about writing music and things like classical music. I was just trying to educate myself, I guess. But it was very much a hobbyist approach.
"Then at one point, I eventually said, 'You know what? Let me take this a bit more seriously'. I decided to invest the time and a little bit of money and actually pursue learning how to make music."
Do you still think of yourself as a DJ before a producer?
"Today, in 2024, I actually don't like to call myself a DJ. I prefer to say I'm an electronic artist, because I'm making music, I'm playing it and I'm touring, but I'm only playing like, four or five hours in a week on the weekend. Whereas before, when I said I was DJing, I used to play every night, that was my job. That was my being.
“I was playing different types of music. Where I could – which was few and far between – I was playing the house music that I loved. But I was also playing in some more commercial venues, I was doing weddings. I was playing a lot of hip hop. I was very much like a 'DJ', and for me, that was a much more true art form of DJing.
“What I'm doing now is, I'm taking my DJ experience and catalogue and knowledge of music and all that stuff, but that's just one of my outputs.
“When I'm playing, I'm still very much DJing. That's very much what I'm doing in the moment – I'm looking at the crowd and reading and responding, but what goes into a DJ set now is much more about digging for music that sounds like me, that I connect to in the same way as the music that I make. And I'm making music to play in the DJ sets.
“What you get is a DJ set, in terms of that I'm playing to the crowd, but you also get two hours of my personality in a way that's adapted to the crowd in the room. It's a lot more artistic, and it's a lot more personal than the traditional sense of DJing.
"But I'm a big believer that the traditional 'guy in the corner', whatever, that's the real DJ. That's what I used to do.”
Your tracks often feature recognisable production touches – lush synths, stuttering snare rolls. How important do you think it is for a musician to establish a signature sound?
"The most important thing is that my personality goes into the feeling of the track. I don't need to have [a specific] Nord sound, or the snare rolls. I'm a great believer in the idea that, if I've got a track, the kick has to sound like me, the snare has to sound like me, the bass has to sound like me. The vocal too, even if it's not my voice. Every element has to sound like Hardt Antoine.
"That's quite a broad spectrum, and I'm not saying every element sounds unique to me – I didn't invent the 909 – but I have become quite aware of what's 'me' and what's not me."
You have a lot of vinyl, what role does that play in your music making?
"I like sampling from vinyl, because I like buying vinyl. I'm not buying so much, like club music on vinyl anymore, just because everything's on digital. Especially in the last few years, everything's on Bandcamp now, and I'm almost never doing vinyl gigs out and don't have the time to rip things.
"But I like being able to buy vinyl. I like going to the store. I like having the physical record. I've got a big collection at home. I like playing with it. I like the limitation, and I like the randomness. When I'm sampling from vinyl, I'm not going through the tracks one by one. It's like, [mimes placing the needle down at random]. Okay, record five seconds, move on, next. Swap it out.
“If you've only made five tracks, I'm sorry but you probably don't know who you are as an artist.”
"I prefer doing something physical to looking through files. I get very lost with YouTube too. There's just so much stuff on there. And there's a reason why everyone goes to the same samples on YouTube, because they're easy to find. To dig deeper is actually really difficult.
"So I'd rather go to a store and buy a bunch of stuff that I have no idea what it is. I like that whole record store thing.
"Then there's Splice, which I've got such a love-hate relationship with. I use it for more weird and obscure stuff. Sometimes I hear something and I think, 'Oh, that's just so good, I have to use it', because there's some really great stuff on there. But the problem is, if there's something good on there, you hear that in three or four other records.
"Do I care? Not really. None of us are reinventing the wheel. But it's not where my best tracks have come from, you know? The best tracks and the best samples that people know me for are generally either vinyl or my own voice."
How quickly did you find your feet as a producer?
"I'd say I learned to produce music to a high standard before I was artistically settled. I've only really felt since Covid, after that period of stepping back, that's when I really feel like I created myself as an artist. Having that time to be introverted and to say, 'Who am I, what am I about?' Who I am, as an artist, has come from that.”
What’s your most recent addition to the studio?
"The most recent thing is the room itself. I worked at home before. I've had this room for like, a year. I haven't bought any gear since I moved in here.
"The most recent buy, I think, was the Juno-106. I bought that two years ago. My general rule of thumb, which I'm breaking all the time, is one significant purchase per year. But I'll be honest, I'm quite settled. I haven't felt like buying gear. At the moment I'm more into buying records and samples. That's the headspace that I'm in."
In our studio session, you demonstrated how you quickly generate ideas, but how fast are you at arranging and finishing tracks?
"I think I'm very slow. Because of the hardware setup, I can bang out loops and ideas very quickly. Normally when I'm writing I'll let things evolve. I'll make something, add a snare drum, change the bassline, until something clicks and feels original. Sometimes that can happen in 40 minutes, sometimes that can happen in six hours or not happen at all. It's very hard for me to quantify that.
"When it comes to the next step, the arrangement, I hate arranging tracks. It just does my head in and it takes ages. It's not my strong point. I'll spend several hours arranging something, going round in circles. Then I'll mix, which I'm pretty quick at. But I'm definitely not one of those people that's turning out tracks in 40 minutes or two hours"
You have quite a few chairs in your studio…
"I've got three chairs. I've got a drum stall, I've got my cheapy chair, and I've got my Herman Miller expensive office chair. I generally work on my cheap chair. It's light and it swivels around, but it's very uncomfortable, so it makes me want to stand.
“If I'm standing, I can get more creative juice flowing, and I can move back and forth [between sitting and standing]. It's not a chair you want to sit on all day.
"When I'm digging in to mix and arrange, then I move to my lovely Herman Miller chair, which is ergonomic, and you can sit in for hours upright. That transition means it's now arrangement time. We've gone from being wild and messy to getting really organised and being serious."
What advice would you offer fellow producers?
"You just have to make tons of music, just tons and tons and tons. Experience is a numbers thing, because you need to be able to make different types of tracks and you need to get good at every stage of the production – the beginning, the middle and the end.
"In making tons of music, you'll learn how to do every stage, and you'll find yourself. One of the big mistakes that people make is to say, 'Okay, I know who I am as an artist. I've made five tracks and I'm going to put them out there'. If you've made five tracks, I'm sorry but you probably don't know who you are as an artist. That process of digging in, making hundreds and hundreds of tracks – probably doing nothing with them, but like, you've got to be non–precious. That's kind of a rite of passage that most people I speak to have gone through."
