Artist Profile: Leo Pol

The record had no name on the sleeve, only a stamp that read UNIILE 1. In the summer of 2017, the cheapest copy on Discogs was going for nearly $200. The track that set off the run, "You Got The Funk," had been circulating in booths for the better part of two years. Back then, no one could agree on who had made it. Eventually, it was discovered: twenty-something-year-old Leo Pol (Léo-Pol Poirel).

By the time the record's value was climbing, Poirel had become a resident at one of the most-watched clubs in Europe and was hauling his live setup across the continent by hand. His studio arsenal included an Oberheim Matrix 1000, a Juno 106, a Roland TR-808, a Squarp Pyramid sequencer and a Uher reel-to-reel. In 2018, he told SceneNoise that DJing in clubs still scared him, and that hauling twenty kilos of analogue equipment through airports felt closer to who he was. On June 20th, Poirel brings his heavy live set to Control Club as part of Fête de la Musique, presented with the French Institute in Romania.

Poirel grew up between Normandy and Paris in a household where music and discipline pressed against each other. His sister became a singer and producer. He has two brothers, one a skater and the other a stand-up comedian. His father wanted him to study law, but he lasted roughly three weeks. Poirel went to the studio, and the years that followed were a patchwork.

He had also been a drummer since childhood, playing in punk and rock bands. Early in high school, a schoolmate handed him a copy of Ableton Live, and the first thing he made was, by his own description, "more rock with electronic sounds." Around the same time, he started haunting the Rex Club and the Social Club, absorbing the late-2000s Paris microhouse scene that orbited the Minus aesthetic. A trip to Berlin and a first visit to Berghain closed the deal. One of his first gigs was in 2011, at the sixteenth-century Church of St Eustache.

His EP, I Cleared My Mind, came out on the small imprint Body Parts in 2013. Two Velvet records followed. None of it, however, prepared the scene for the Uniile diptych. It crystallized a sound that was raw and jazzy, indebted to Chicago and Detroit in equal measure. By 2016, Poirel was a resident at Concrete, joining Antigone, François X, Cabanne, Shlømo, and Ben Vedren.

His label, IILE, launched in 2015 with his partner Jean-Baptiste Messier, ran a vinyl-focused series anchored around Poirel's own EPs and the occasional outside release such as Ewan Jansen's IILE 03. A digital sub-label, IILE TAL, followed in 2020, with four volumes running through 2022. D'Julz, the Rex Club mainstay whose Bass Culture imprint traces back to the lineage of French house, brought Poirel to the label in 2018 for the Dark Outside EP. A 2020 release on Mella Dee's Warehouse Music then placed him inside the UK lo-fi house moment.

The IILE TAL releases now look like a bridge toward the more vocal, self-exposing version of Leo Pol that would emerge. IILE TAL 004, released in December 2022, was especially revealing. Poirel placed his voice across the whole record, testing a more direct relationship between the hardware language he had built and the song-form instincts that had been lurking beneath it. This evolution would be further captured in 2023, when Poirel launched Tigh Pop, a label that unapologetically trafficked in vocals, eurodance, ghetto-house, and a glossed-up techno-and-pop sensibility.

His debut album, Be Mine, appeared at the end of 2021 as a 2xLP that shifted between electro pressure, softened drum-and-bass, synth drift, and home-studio intimacy. Bambounou appeared on "Track 1"; the vocalist Keke surfaced on "Brazil"; and Pekko joined him on "The Original Jamming."

He had also, by then, started a side group with two friends called St Ouen Connexion. Denis Sulta called him "the next big thing in European dance music" and brought him to Printworks. Charlotte Gainsbourg received a remix. In 2023, Disclosure selected him to rework “We Were In Love” for the nine-track Alchemy (The Remixes) collection. His track “I’d Rather be Getget” was included on DJ Boring’s DJ-Kicks offering in 2024. He played everywhere from the depths of Berghain and Shelter Amsterdam to stages of Exit, Wonderfruit, Basscoast, and more.

In late 2025, "We All Need Love" was released via Kitsuné Musique. In March 2026, he released "I've Been Good" with the producer Poté on Ed Banger's new digital sub-label ED. A few weeks later, "Call Me Later" came out on Helix.

Online, XLR8R's Podcast 732 gives listeners the most accurate image of Poirel's process. His HÖR live set from August 2024 pushed that image, while the later HÖR On Tour Vilnius appearance in November 2025 and Maison Kitsuné Paris Fashion Week live set in 2026 placed him before audiences that no longer belonged solely to the chin-scratching underground.

From the Paris studio life he has documented over the years, Poirel keeps the calendar moving. He has become a rare French house figure whose work can move from hand-stamped vinyl to Boiler Room visibility without losing the enigmatic privacy that made it compelling in the first place.