Laurent
Fintoni

In 2015 the French magazine Audimat asked me for a bio and, not having one, I told them to write what they wanted. They described me as "French, but exiled abroad for so long he now writes in English". That description has lived rent free in my head since.

So that's the main thing: I grew up in France and Italy, left for England at 18, and spent 20+ years living and working in English-speaking countries or jobs, picking up American citizenship along the way. Writing, speaking, and thinking in English despite being French and Italian is basically my thing.

The other things: creative professional with more than two decades of experience producing, managing, and promoting original content across platforms, languages, and industries — always with a focus on music and culture (but I need to pay rent so I've also worked in/for luxury travel marketing, education, and manufacturing). Since 2022, I am also a Digital Humanist working on digital cultural heritage, archives, and the semantic web. Currently based in Bologna following time in Los Angeles, New York City, London, Tokyo, Milan, and Brussels. Not gonna lie, I miss driving around L.A looking for food quite a bit.

Fun facts: I've also worked as a tour manager, census taker, English teacher, and translator. The first domain I ever registered is spinscience.org.uk (this might be relevant to you later on).

"Every time somebody thinks they know who we are, we prove them wrong. Every time someone thinks they have us locked into a spot we have passed that spot, and it’s because we care more than they hate." - Bun B

Less piping-hot news desk, more stuff that is recent at whatever time I last updated this website.

My book, has been reprinted, so go cop it if you haven't so I can buy food for my dog. Thanks. In related news, Parker Pubs has dropped the excellent Beatmakers of L.A. Underground Hip-Hop, an oral history of a specific moment time in Los Angeles that my book covers more broadly as I felt it more important to cover what happened next. It's something I've always wanted to revisit and so it's lovely to see this and see my book used as a reference. Go support!

The lovely people at Ghostly Intl. are reissuing Telefon Tel Aviv's Farenheit Fair Enough for its 25th anniversary, including the liner notes I wrote for the original re-release 10 years ago (taken from what was then book work in progress). For this occasion my words appear on the obi, which is a nice flex.

In late 2023 the homie Mike Boo reached out to ask if I would write the liner notes for a reissue of his debut album, Dunhill Drone Committee. We had a long conversation about the album, life in the early 2000s, and that moment in time when scratching offered myriad possibilities for musical expression. The reissue dropped November 2025, ironically a couple days after my born day, marking 20 years since that moment in time when turntablism was the nucleus of my musical life.

"Focusing on the internal fault lines within neoliberal logics reveals that while flexibility is often trumpeted as a neoliberal virtue, in practice flexibility of particular types is not always welcome. The flexible worker can also be the illegible worker [...] How does one respond using neoliberal logic when the neoliberal ideal of flexibility in practice becomes a burden?" - Gershon (2016)

I came across the above quote during my studies and it has since also found room for free accommodation in my skull. Largely because I am, and have been for a while, a flexible yet illegible worker. Over more than 20 years of being a quote unquote professional, only a handful of employers ever understood the value of my flexibility and, more importantly, nurtured it (eternal gratitude to TB on that front 🙏🏻).

As for the question Gershon asked, I think the only response is to just be who and what you are, take this supposed burden on and be as flexible (or inflexible) as you want to be. Neoliberalism cannot take from us the ability to refuse its demands, nor can it force us to do so in any specific way. Thus be quiet or bold, busy or not, angry or depressed, as long as you are.

Are these credits? 🫱🏻🦋

This website is inspired by 90s music magazines, and in particular The Source. Peace and eternal gratitude to the designers of that era for crafting a style that nerds like me would want to emulate 30 years later. It does not track you because it doesn't need to, nor should it. It is built entirely using html and css and should be fully accessible across devices. The photo was taken by my wife, shortly after I became an American citizen and we'd rushed to Carnitas El Momo in downtown LA for the most American of all traditions: eating tacos.