How Deep Does The Rabbit Hole Go? A Trip Inside The Mind of Santino Le Saint [Interview]

A NEW WAVE STUDIOS Production -

DIRECTOR/PHOTOGRAPHER: Oana Ancuta Briciu

PROJECT MANAGER: Diana Scarpignato

STYLIST: Giulia Falzoni

WORDS: PJ Somervelle

It’s probably around 22:00hrs when Santino Le Saint takes the stage with a Fender strapped to his shoulder and an unopened bottle of Chivas in hand, the man makes poison look chic. On the eve of the inaugural Cloud X Festival, its most wayward founder is about to perform to a packed out audience starved of social contact and live music. Quite unfazed and possibly a little faded, having (probably) consumed another bottle backstage and announcing his mum was in the audience, he had the crowd eating out the palm of his hand. Hoping to treat the revellers to a couple of new tracks from his upcoming debut album as well as some of his hits, Santino’s first chords ring out with the intro to “I Know”. The rest is a smoke-filled blur...

Rewind to almost a week before and I’m sitting opposite Le Saint in a grassy parkland a stone's throw away from Canary Wharf and the Thames. Around us, the team are preparing for a photo shoot. This is all quite normal for Santino, as he considers each of his answers carefully before delivering them, balancing a welcoming aura and the confidence of someone that has done this many times before. It’s clear that ten thousand hours have come and gone for the South London heartbreaker and he’s just getting started. Having his formative years in the 90s, explains Le Saint’s tendency towards rock and grunge riffs, trampling through the early 2000s you see the surge in popularity of the emo scene, while his role models had more classic rock and hip hop inclinations, add to this a familial bond with music production and you get someone who has the attention to detail and a deep appreciation of what makes music so powerful. Each and every one of Santino Le Saint’s tracks is experiential and experimental in its own right. Whether it’s the search for love and falling down the rabbit hole of lust, the highs that never last for long or a life that imitates art, it’s hard not to get caught up in the romanticised stories that Santino weaves within his verses.

Being constantly told to stick to a specific sound or genre only pushed Santino Le Saint further towards manifesting his reality. While the essence of his music sounds like the illegitimate lovechild of R&B and Rock ‘n’ Roll, his tracks feature deeper lyrical content, haunting cadences, harmonies and more often than not heavy drum production. Now as he stands on cloud nine, it’s clear that he prides himself on the diverse influences that shaped his musical journey.

Santino Le Saint has naturally developed his input and output in all aspects of his sound and brand, from production to video directing to researching colour palettes for the next album rollout. He’s quick to point out that having a strong team around him that take care of business and mentor him gives him the most time and space to commit himself wholeheartedly to his craft. “They allow me to be myself, which is why I'm not going anywhere”. While other artists lose sleep over getting a big label deal, the Cloud X family proves that making great art doesn’t come from six-figure endorsements and billboards on Picadilly Circus. "F*ck a bad deal, f*ck a co-sign", Santino sings in 'The Party', the chilling opener to his Blue Pill EP.

‘I want to make emo guitar sh*t with R&B, they (the industry) just feel like that doesn't make sense.’

Having always been interested in visuals and cinematography for a while now, Santino has more recently been bingeing on 90s and early 2000s films to get inspiration for how he wants to paint the next project. Watching the videos for “Dopamine” and “Sleepless Nights” you can see that the aesthetic and themes built around Le Saint's style. “Watching millions of films from certain time periods and genres and referencing colour grading and shot angles”, that’s what has been keeping him busy during these lockdowns. His music often touches on self-destruction and excess so we were keen to learn more about if this is an alter-ego that he uses to illustrate a scenario or if his storytelling was true to life. He credits his subject matter as “being who I am in an artistic space” but also remarked how surprised people are when they meet him in person and he’s not “sad all the time”. “I have a certain level of self-control where I don't let it affect everyone around me, but in music I can”. Here you have an artist who really runs with the development of projects and bodies of work where he can use “different sounds that are part of the same story”. When asked if he is worried about becoming ‘too famous’ he casually says “not really”. Le Saint has a very common sense approach to managing his life as an artist: he stays off social media as much as possible and focuses on making music that is the truest reflection of him. “I just wanna have successful albums, really”.

Speaking further on the assumptions and perceptions of male R&B singers Santino mentioned that the ‘dark moody’ type known for being aloof or isolating themselves from others is very much an unhelpful stereotype and because Santino makes the music he makes it often leads to others expecting him to act in a certain way. Changing perceptions is something that Le Saint will continue to do thanks to the unique space and team he’s curated. Through his music, Santino pays homage to his roots while at the same time making it something people can dance, smoke and drive to.

One thing that you can count on is the wail of Santino Le Saint’s electric guitar. His style stems both from his upbringing and a craving for something that he himself needed to hear as he matured. While others jump on the pop bandwagon, become viral sensations by accident or attempt to reinvent the wheel, Le Saint has managed what his contemporaries have failed to do: create a niche for himself. “It's a combination of all my influences. So I guess I make it because it's the music I want to hear”. Nothing illustrates the contradiction that Santino Le Saint presents to the mainstream like his twin EPs the “Blue Pill” and “Red Pill” which were released during our own dystopia of 2020. Very much like night and day, good and evil, these projects represent a psychological duality riddled with pop culture frames of references and a lens to understand the addictive cycle of relationships and self-destruction. There is also a thread of vulnerability that runs throughout much of his music, magnified on the “Red Pill” EP. Even though there are more than two Santino's the Blue and the Red rage inside him.

Following on from a release of “Dopamine” featuring Lancey Foux, it felt like Santino was doubling down on the “Blue Pill” energy which he admitted he was not ready to let go of “just yet”. “The next album has combined the two, but really the ‘Red Pill’ was an excuse to show a softer side of things”. Falling back into sin and darkness, the Prince of the Damned is gearing up to give his die-hard supporters something to quench their thirst as well as tempting some new supporters to his circle. Knowing how attached he is to six strings we asked Santino what his favourite guitar solos are (from his own tracks and by other musicians). After thoroughly rummaging through his memory he came to the Guns N Roses epic “November Rain” and his own track “Unholy” from the “Rage of Angels” mixtape, where he does a fair bit of shredding himself. Slash would be proud. Le Saint has also hinted that his favourite ever solo may be on the upcoming album, which is something we’re very much looking forward to listening to. It’s safe to say that his focus and commitment to music bleeds into his guitar solo work, making it an integral part of the DNA of the SLS sound.

It’s not been easy to duck the industry’s penchant for pigeonholing artists, but the formation of Cloud X has allowed plenty of glass ceilings to be shattered. Alongside fellow creatives and good friends David Dabieh and Ben Cross, the three have crafted a blueprint for building your own community instead of attempting to assimilate into another. Now that the party has ended (for now), Santino and his peers have not only proven that the UK’s alternative R&B, Neo Soul and melodic rap scenes are thriving on the peripheries of the mainstream, but that they are growing their own scenes with no need for co-signs.

Good music will always find its audience. What’s evident is that Santino Le Saint enjoys cultivating that pure underground following and love of good art. While he embodies an intersection of Soul, Blues and Rock ‘n’ Roll with all the strongest elements of modern beat production; he is never far from a Telecaster or a bottle of Chivas. Santino Le Saint keeps his feet firmly on the ground and his head high up in the clouds.

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