BANZAÏ LAB / Senbeï

Senbeï is a prolific beatmaker and producer, a videographer and a film buff  passionate about Japanese culture.

For more than 10 years he has produced a unique Hip-Hop tinged with Asian sounds and electronic textures. Half of the duos Smokey Joe & The Kid, Al’Tarba x Senbeï and Slumb, he has accumulated more than 80 millions streams on his various projects, hit the stages of the whole world, including some of the biggest European festivals (Sziget, Solidays, Boomtown , Garorock ...) and stil found the time to make live arrangements for Deluxe and Chinese Man.

Trained at the classical guitar conser vator y, Senbeï (Hugo Sanchez) discovered computer music in the early 2000s during the heyday of the NINJA TUNE label, while living in Montreal (Canada).

When he returned to France a few months later, he composed his 1st album TROUBLE TOYS which will be one of the 1st releases from the Banzaï Lab label, in 2008. He will remain loyal to the Bordeaux label ever since. Without abandoning his Senbeï project, he formed with Matthieu Perrein (founder of Banzaï Lab), in 2010, the duo Smokey Joe & The Kid, whose success will go far beyond the borders of France.

In 2018, he teamed up with beatmaker Al’Tarba for the Rogue Monsters project which will be released in 2019 on Banzaï Lab. At the same time, Senbeï created another duo, SLUMB, with pianist Julien Marchal, with whom he released during lockdown a 1st EP “Reset”. Extremely active, he succeeded between all these projects, to make arrangements for Chinese Man or Deluxe, to compose for a 90-minutes documentar y on judoka Teddy Riner (prime time on french national TV) or for commercials (Apple, Engie, Ubisoft ...) . Senbeï is a geek par excellence : a gamer, he collects retro and, preferably, rare video games. He spent a few weeks in the world top 10 in Mario Kart and his fridge is a giant Game Boy. His library is crumbling under manga books and gurines from them.

His passion for Japan reached its peak when he moved to the Land of the Rising Sun in 2017 to record his album Ningyo. There he will notably record - consecration - a collaboration with the Japanese MC ShingO2 (who signed the soundtrack of the cult anime Samuraï Champloo).