Le Noir – The DJ as Master Dramatist When Leandro Fina – aka Le Noir – leans back to absorb a new track, a number of questions are running through the substantial grey matter between those headphones: which elements in the mix are working towards which moods? What gives the track so much room to swing?

Just how did they arrange those superb strings? Le Noir is looking for substance – because only the cream of the tracks are just about good enough for this relentless perfectionist’s triple-distilled sets. Rather than let himself be guided by dance floor fashions, he more often creates them, just as he did some years ago when he crossed over from garage to techno-house and redefining the term ‘success’ for a host of other Swiss DJs in the process.

The extremely high standards he sets himself are no coincidence. Born into a family of musicians, Leandro Fina enjoyed an exemplary musical youth, getting behind the drum kit in his father’s session room aged just three. Guitars, basses, keyboards and all kinds of percussion instruments filled that room – instruments that Le Noir would later learn to play himself.

It was only a matter of time before he was a regular in his father’s varied band line-ups, being almost impossible to remove from the long, explorative jam sessions that his Congolese father would hold almost nightly with his fellow African musicians. “I’ve been making music since before I learned to walk properly… It was just normal at our place”, muses Le Noir a little shyly. Structural finesse is a key element in his sets’ ‘narrative’ too: they build gradually, begin to tell new stories, growing through the subtle use of synth pads, complex harmonies and delicately drawn-out spherical soundscapes.

It’s not unusual for Le Noir to take a good hour to hit the first peak: “You have to guide an audience, not force them… that phenomenal wave of total euphoria only comes when absolutely everyone on the dance floor hits the same groove.” Small wonder, then, that Le Noir only adds individual new selections to his perfectly-tuned sets so that he can work these in as precisely as he wants them. The tales his sets tell are as delicately interweaved as the proverbial silken threads – the slightest stitch out of place would ruin the whole tapestry.

Le Noir is probably the only Swiss DJ who doesn't have the standard two turntables in his basement: as his sets are constructed harmonically and not rhythmically, just one precision instrument is enough. He concentrates on the atmospheres that each track creates and then puts the set sequences together in his mind. Le Noir sees the DJ’s craft as an ongoing learning process and after almost a decade behind the decks, the 22-year-old is still driven to hone his skills even further in the elusive hunt for those unique moments than can make a DJ’s set truly magical. To get this far, Le Noir has for years applied his impressive musical understanding to the analysis of foreign DJs’ sets.

He admits to being genuinely impressed by a mere ten international star DJs – all of them recognised masters of the craft such as Danny Tenaglia, Pete Heller or ‘Little’ Louie Vega and all of whom, besides enjoying international acclaim as DJs, are outstanding musicians themselves. No doubt about it: following his meteoric rise, Le Noir is well on the way to joining them in DJ heaven. Aargau-born Fina gave his first professional DJ performances aged just 13. At 16 he was given his own exclusive evening set in Zurich’s ‘Kaufleuten’. And to celebrate his 18th birthday he released his first mix CD ‘18’, followed by ‘Soirée Noire’ (2006) and the «Be Together Sessions LONDON» (2007).

His sheer dedication and love for his job have paid off: Le Noir counts among Switzerland’s Top 3 DJs and can already look back on legendary gigs at Pacha and Space on Ibiza, at Cavo Paradiso on Mykonos and at Turnmills in London. Following the successful nationwide launch and establishing of his own «Be Together Sessions» club nights across Switzerland, tireless musical alchemist Le Noir feels that now is the right time to turn his talents to producing other artists and to re-explore the seemingly limitless possibilities of his own music-making.