Events

"This is the kind of album I could only make right now," says Hugo Pierre Leclercq, the visionary French producer, singer, and songwriter better known as Madeon. "There's something so urgent about the present, something so exhilarating about this music and this moment that I knew I needed to capture it before anything could get lost in the polish."

Victory, Madeon's rapturous new multi-media masterpiece, is indeed urgent and exhilarating, but it's also a work of meticulous craftsmanship and exquisite detail. Arriving seven years after Madeon's Grammy-nominated sophomore effort, Good Faith, the record is marked by an explosive collision of genres and influences, drawing on punk, indie rock, electro-clash, sci-fi, and high fashion to create an immersive sonic and visual world all its own. Leclercq's writing is both brash and vulnerable on the album, grappling with identity and reinvention in the wake of heartbreak and loss, and his productions are larger-than-life, transforming raw, personal revelations into epic, stadium-sized anthems that blur the line between fantasy and reality. The result is a bold, daring exploration of transformation and catharsis, an irresistible celebration of freedom and self-discovery from a singular artist at a pivotal crossroads.

"Something about this music felt forbidden," Leclercq recalls, "but it was so exciting that I couldn't walk away. It made me feel emboldened to go all out, to say the kind of things I'd always been too shy to say."

Growing up in Nantes, France, Leclercq's introspective ways led him to embrace a myriad of creative pursuits. After teaching himself English, he learned to record and produce music on his laptop, dove headfirst into the worlds of video editing, animation, and graphic design, and even studied magic and illusions. In search of a likeminded community, he began sharing his songs online, where he cultivated an international circle of friends and collaborators (several of whom, like Porter Robinson, Skrillex, and Zedd, would go on to similar success). At 16, Leclercq dropped out of high school to pursue music full time, and at 17, he went mega-viral with his "Pop Culture" mashup, which saw him live-mixing samples from 39 different songs on a Novation Launchpad he'd purchased earlier that day.

"I felt like a bit of an outcast in France, so everything I'd been doing online up to that point had been kind of an escape, like a secret, second life," Leclercq explains. "My parents hadn't even heard my music until suddenly all these record label executives came knocking on the door."

With his work spreading like wildfire online, Leclercq began touring the world, playing iconic festivals like Lollapalooza and sharing bills with the luminaries like Lady Gaga, who invited him to open a series of arena shows and record together.

"Working with Gaga was my first experience in a real studio," Leclercq reflects. "It was an intense, life-changing time for me, and the experience still influences the way I create today."

Leclercq would go on to become a highly sought-after studio collaborator across genres, working with everyone from Coldplay and Ellie Goulding to Muse and Deadmau5. "Shelter," his joint release with longtime friend Porter Robinson, went Gold in 2016 (the pair crisscrossed the world together that year on a massive tour that concluded with a mainstage Coachella set), while "beside you," which Leclercq produced on his iPhone for rising R&B star Keshi, racked up hundreds of millions of streams online. But it was Leclercq's solo work that earned him his biggest accolades, with his 2015 studio debut, Adventure, garnering rave reviews, and his 2019 follow-up, Good Faith, debuting at #1 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart and earning a Grammy nomination for Best Electronic Album.

"I had really grand ambitions with Good Faith," Leclercq explains, "and the success brought me a level of freedom that I'd never felt before."

That sense of liberation is palpable on Victory, which incorporates Leclercq's broad array of creative passions into one immersive, cohesive whole.

"There are sequences in the live show where I pull from my love of theater and magic to create these onstage illusions," he explains, "but then I'm also physically editing video sequences and doing VFX and creating the graphics and designing the costuming. I don't just see myself as an artist; I'm a craftsman trying to build an entire world."

In that world, the album's visual accompaniments—everything from the press photos to the music videos to the wardrobe choices—are inextricably linked with the music.

"I wanted to put high fashion and the feelings of fantasy and spectacle it can evoke at the core of this album cycle," Leclercq reflects. "I went back to Paris and worked closely with my stylist to pull these incredible runway pieces, and then I worked with a friend in LA to create these crazy metal helmets and jewelry and chest pieces that we had custom 3D printed for the shows."

The burst of creative innovation at the heart of Victory happened to coincide with a moment of personal transformation for Leclercq, who found himself navigating the challenging aftermath of a relationship at the same time.

"There's a brief moment right after a breakup where you get to reinvent yourself, where you get to perform this new version of yourself for the world," he explains. "You're both overconfident and a little bit pathetic all at once, and I wanted to explore the internal tension that creates."

That tension is central to the look and feel of Victory, which walks a fine line between bravado and breakdown. Despite the album's triumphant title, Leclercq appears lonely and defeated on the cover, and the dazzling visuals that accompany the live show (which debuted at a sold-out Red Rocks last fall) find him battling a clone of himself alongside masked, imaginary bandmates who grow to superhuman heights.

"If you have to claim victory, then it probably isn't true," Leclercq reflects. "The title starts as a lie I tell myself, but over the course of the album and the show, through the collective release the audience and I go through, it becomes real, like something we've manifested together."

That journey from delusion to transcendence is plain to hear on Victory, which opens with the frenetic "HI!" Fueled by blistering guitars, relentless drums, and fuzzed-out vocals, it's a crackling live wire of a track, one that grabs you by the lapels with its brash, in-your-face production and dizzying mix of electronic and analog elements. (Bleachers' Mikey Freedom Hart plays most of the guitars on the record, but good luck guessing which ones are real and which ones are digital.) Like so much of the collection, "HI!" arrives with an infectious pop appeal that belies a darkness lurking just beneath the surface. The pulsating "Car Crash Baby" beckons you onto the dance floor even as it grapples with cynicism and self-destruction; the soaring "Dancing On Your Grave" radiates blissful abandon while nursing its wounds; and the hypnotic "Fire Away (feat. Slayyyter)" begs for a singalong as it struggles to make sense of a relationship that feels more like a war zone.

"I wanted to create these big pop anthems that were laced with tragedy," Leclercq explains. "The record comes out of the gate loud and confident, but as it goes on, it gets progressively more earnest and vulnerable."

Indeed, tracks like the swaggering "Super Platinum (feat. Erick The Architect)" and insistent "Chaos Magic" eventually give way to more measured self-reflection. The wistful "Red Jacket (feat. Sam Gellaitry)" comes to terms with the inevitability of change, while the bittersweet "Do It For Yourself" lets go of jealousy and resentment, and the aching album closer "Lonely Space Age" strips away the gritty guitars and blistering arrangements to reveal the fragile human heart underneath it all.

"Victory feels like this culmination of all my creativity and curiosity and passion," Leclercq explains. "It feels like the ultimate expression of this moment in time. It feels like me."