SebastiAn discusses his work on ‘Blonde’ and story behind “Facebook Story”
Photo: Pile Rats
In a new interview with French electro-house DJ SebastiAn, more details behind the recording of the infamous Blonde skit track “Facebook Story” have come to light.
In the interview, conducted by Conor Herbert at Pile Rat, SebastiAn recounts the strangeness of his production projects at the time, working with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Frank Ocean simultaneous across the Atlantic.
“I started the album of Charlotte Gainsbourg, I thought that I was gonna be like, ‘okay, I'm going to chill a little in Paris because she's French,’ and in fact, she moved to New York. Frank Ocean called me at the same time, he’d moved to London. So they crossed: I was producing an American in Europe, on a French girl in the US.”
SebastiAn has production credits for three songs on Endless, “Slide On Me,” “Rushes,” and “Higgs.” For Blonde, he contributed strings on “Godspeed” and programming on “White Ferrari.” This is what he had to say about contributing to the record.
“When we were working on the album, we definitely knew that we were doing something very big. Frank Ocean just created what people call a 'classic,' like David Bowie did before, or Prince did.
When I started to work with Frank Ocean – I am not the only one, there were many people on this album – I really felt that this guy, to be really honest, had something... he's a really, really special guy.”
Of course, he’s best known to Frank Ocean fans as the narrator of “Facebook Story.”
“He never told me, he didn't tell me about that. I knew he was recording a lot, even the conversations everywhere during the process of the album. We were waiting for him in the studio in London, I was talking with some other guys in the studio and we were laughing about how the girl left [me], or things like this. He just arrived when I was telling this story, and I don't know why he asked me more questions.”
I think, for him, maybe it was relating something about the new generation, like that you can be fired from your own relationship just by not accepting your girlfriend on Facebook. It was kind of a strange story, but what can I say? Maybe he was he was laughing because of my accent... maybe he had love for my accent!
I'm just discovering [through] interviews that people are interested about this story. There were some people in New York who even tried to ask me to contact the girl again... it became kind of crazy, in a way. I'll never live something like that again.
[Frank is] truly like the last guy that I met that's that intense: not him, but the way he works. So weird, but like so in an intelligent way.”
SebastiAn’s highly anticipated record Thirst comes out this Friday, November 8. Read the entire interview with the artist at Pile Rats.
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