Studio Electrophonique

Behind Studio Electrophonique is James Leesley, a musician from Handsworth, Sheffield, whose world was shaped between the wastelands of that north‑English neighbourhood and the atmosphere of the local social clubs, with their cabaret singers, hall organs and popular standards. Studio Electrophonique develops a solo project located between melodic pop, chamber ballad, hushed soul and echoes of rock’n’roll, with songwriting centred on the song and deliberately spare arrangements. The project took shape when James Leesley began recording his ideas on an old multitrack recorder found at a car boot sale, a setting that permanently steered Studio Electrophonique’s sound toward a stripped‑down, direct and slightly timeless aesthetic. In this music the influence of composers such as Carole King or Burt Bacharach meets voices like Dusty Springfield or Elvis Presley, alongside a marked taste for American literature and French cinema of the 1960s. Studio Electrophonique thus moves in an intimate register where the simplicity of form highlights the melodies, the phrasing and a certain memory of British popular entertainment.