Origins: Louen Poppé On Sound, Patience, And The Long Road To ‘Parasites’
- Undrtone Blog
- 23 hours ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 9 hours ago
For Louen Poppé, making electronic music has always been about balance. Tracks built for movement and the club, but detailed enough to reward close listening. Energy paired with patience. Sound treated as something physical rather than decorative. Those instincts sit at the core of his new EP, ‘Parasites’, landing on 6 February 2026 via Lumiere Noire, and they have been present far longer than any formal sense of genre.
“I think I’ve always wanted to make tracks that make people dance, designed for the club and live performance, but that can also lend themselves to attentive listening,” he explains. “I’ve also always tried to compose tracks that are accessible from the first listen, while allowing myself to experiment with sound design.”
That relationship with sound predates any attachment to electronic music itself. Louen describes his earliest musical memories not as melodies or songs, but as isolated textures and timbres that stuck with him. “I’ve always paid a lot of attention to sound in music,” he says. “The musical memories I have from childhood are more connected to very specific sounds than to melodies or rhythms.”
Discovering electronic music later opened a new door. Not just creatively, but technically. “I immediately wanted to understand how these sounds were created,” he adds. “There’s also the energy and the dynamics unique to electronic music that immediately drew me in.”
That curiosity feeds directly into ‘Parasites’, an EP rooted in restraint, space, and control. Louen connects that approach not only to musical influences, but to interests far outside the studio. “Alongside music, I’m very interested in biodiversity, aquatic environments, and fishing,” he explains. “Parasites is a musical project that brings together these different passions and influences.”
Field recordings captured using hydrophones sit alongside electronic synthesis, blurring the line between organic and artificial. The patience required in those environments has shaped how the tracks unfold. “This connection to fishing, aquatic environments, and the patience it requires has undoubtedly influenced the way I structure my tracks.”
Genre, however, remains secondary. Louen moves fluidly between minimal techno, deep house, and left-field club music without seeing those boundaries as fixed. “I don’t really concern myself with the musical genre I produce,” he says. “Above all, I try to make tracks that feel coherent to me and that I enjoy.”
Not coming from a traditional DJ background has also left him less tied to convention. “For example, I know that many ‘club’ tracks start and end with drums to make mixing easier for DJs. For my part, I naturally want to create longer intros built around sound textures.”
That freedom is something he has grown into over time rather than claimed from the outset. Looking back, there was no single moment when his sound suddenly felt personal. “I don’t remember having a specific moment when I realised my sound had become personal,” he reflects. “When I started composing in middle school, I would sometimes play my tracks around friends without telling them it was me.”
The EP’s sense of physicality and space reflects both his interest in live performance and his attention to environment. “I wanted to create contrasts between passages that are more muted, tighter, almost confined, and others that are much more open,” he says. “It allows you to create real atmospheres and progressions within tracks.”
Comparing his earliest work to ‘Parasites’, Louen hears continuity rather than rupture. “I’ve always enjoyed making tracks that make people dance,” he says. “But I’ve also allowed myself more freedom to mix influences and sounds that I really like, and that I might not have dared to explore before.”
Asked to trace his origins through music, he points to three tracks that shaped his relationship with sound. High Tone’s ‘Emergency’ opened his ears to sonic richness and psychedelic texture. Daft Punk’s ‘Alive’ embodied repetition as power, teaching him how minimal ideas can feel explosive. And Múm’s ‘We Have a Map of the Piano’ revealed how subtle noise, contrast, and slow awakening could create emotional depth without force.
A deeper dive into Poppé’s most pivotal evolutionary listening lore also exposed some absolute gems:
Matthew Dear – Headcage
"I discovered Matthew Dear’s album Beams at the local media library in the small town where I grew up as a teenager, simply by trusting the cover artwork! It’s a track that has stayed with me for years, and that I still listen to today. Matthew Dear is a very versatile artist who explores many different directions, and I find his work deeply inspiring."
Yoichi Kamimura – ryūhyō
"This is a piece by a Japanese sound artist whose work I really admire. He works extensively with the sounds of water and ice, using very close-up recording techniques. There’s almost a microscopic relationship to living matter, which strongly inspired me when creating Parasites."
Chloé, Ben Shemie – Recall
"I had to include a track by Chloé! I discovered her work with the release of her album Endless Revisions in 2017, whose approach—both very club-oriented and experimental—left a strong impression on me. A few years later, I met her while working as a sound engineer on a show, and today I’m very happy and grateful to be releasing my EP on her label."
Deena Abdelwahed – Fdhiha
"A great track by Deena Abdelwahed, an artist with a very personal and distinctive sound and a strong artistic vision. Her music sits at the crossroads of many genres: electronic, break, bass, and experimental."
Together, those references lay the foundations for ‘Parasites’. An EP that values patience over immediacy, texture over spectacle, and coherence over categorisation. It is club music shaped by listening as much as movement, and an Origins story still unfolding rather than neatly defined.