LeFtO

Sweeping Through Eclectic Styles

Lefto picked up his name back in the days when he was deep into tagging. The word is a mangled version of French for ‘early riser’ – ‘lève tôt’. And while he switched the pen for the stylus at some point, he has kept well ahead of the curve throughout. His playlists for Belgium’s prime radio station Studio Brussels bring ample proof of that, and his DJ sets juggle effortlessly from crate diggers’ nuggets to hip hop and next level bass music. From the late 90s until the mid 2000s he worked at seminal Belgian record store Music Mania, as well as co-running the now-defunct hip hop label B9000. His deep roots in jazz made him a natural for a Blue Note remix album, but the label he’s most closely affiliated with since its inception is Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings. Lefto has been resident for the Worldwide Festival in Sète, France and in Singapore and has his own stage at the Dour Festival. This close relation with Gilles Peterson resulted in entry to the ‘Worldwide Family’ series on the label, together with his mate Simbad.

Although LeFtO will never really talks about his production skills, considering that there’s enough seriously talented and dedicated producers out there, his job being to give exposure to those who deserve it the most. Nonetheless he has a couple of releases that need to be mentioned for some prestigious labels as Blue Note and Brownswood Recordings.

Most of all Lefto is a highly demanded deejay throughout the world and already visited Asia, the USA, Eastern Europe and many more regions. With gigs coming all over the world in the pipeline he knows he’s blessed to have so many opportunities. To document his trips and gigs he plays Lefto always brings his camera to produce. Lefto is probably one of a few artists reporting the deejay life on video.

“Best radio show out there, LeFtO show on Studio Brussel, Belgium” – Gilles Peterson (BBC Radio1/Worldwide)