OrangeTone is Montréal-based producer and sound designer Étienne Dubé. Inspired by an amalgam of club, experimental, and ambient, Dubé imagines sounds like objects. Often sturdy and metallic and just as frequently bendable and plasticine, OrangeTone’s compositions are both architectural and malleable; sounds and textures contort, interweave, and collide with one another delightfully.



Dubé’s last album Lightmixer, released on Noumenal Loom in 2023, is a collection of gossamer, fragmented tracks that balance the opposing philosophies of dance and avant-garde electronic music. His latest work, Portail Opaque, leans closer towards nocturnal club sounds and rhythms while remaining just as tactile and gestural.

Dubé’s approach to OrangeTone in many ways foils the day-to-day grind of his job as a video game sound designer. Rather than getting bogged down in technicalities and having to micromanage the minutiae of real-world sounds to fit a specific storyline or aesthetic, OrangeTone firmly stays and plays on the computer, utilizing VSTs and samples. This allows for a joyful prioritization of tonality that harkens playful experimentation inside a fully digital realm.

Within the sturdiness of OrangeTone’s world, glimpses of sounds appear like small openings or windows: a crystallized jingle or bubbled harpsichord emerge as happenstance glimmers and whimsical sonic cues. The result is off-kilter, abstract dance music that exists in its own original frame.