Guillaume Perret is a French saxophonist and composer, born on June 21, 1980, in Annecy, who plays a tenor saxophone fitted with microphones, sensors and effects pedals. He leads Guillaume Perret & The Electric Epic, a jazz-rock and fusion group whose self-titled album came out in March 2012 on John Zorn's Tzadik label and earned a Victoires du Jazz nomination that year. Beyond that group he has made solo albums, scored a feature documentary, and played as a sideman for leaders such as the pianists Giovanni Mirabassi and François Lindemann.

His parents were not musicians but listened to Frank Zappa, King Crimson and 1970s fusion, he told franceinfo in a 2013 interview. He started on flute at the conservatoire at six and took up the saxophone at eight, trained classically at the Annecy conservatoire until he was 18, played in a junior big band from the age of 12 or 13, and later studied jazz in Chambéry. French Wikipedia says he holds conservatoire prizes in classical music and jazz and a state diploma in jazz and contemporary music. At 18 he joined the big band Collectif Le Bocal, whose album Collectif Etc... was recorded at the Brise-Glace in Annecy in May 2002, with Perret on alto and tenor saxophone. Its next record, Oh No!... Just Another Frank Zappa Memorial Barbecue (Le Chant du Monde, recorded in September 2003), was a tribute to Frank Zappa with the pianist Rita Marcotulli, the trombonist Glenn Ferris and the violinist Laurent Zeller as guests; Perret played tenor and soprano saxophone on it and is credited as an arranger on the limited-edition Alternate Episodes disc. On Le Bocal's Ego (Bee Jazz, 2006) he plays tenor and soprano saxophone with effects and composed two of the pieces, "Lego" and "Rouge Coït".

By his own account he spent time in Geneva around the age of 20, working steadily with Swiss musicians, and at 21 spent several weeks in New York going to jam sessions. German Wikipedia says he founded the quartet No Square in 2004, which toured in Switzerland, Poland, Germany and Latin America. Around the age of 25 or 26, in Lausanne, he began using effects pedals, which led him to play bass-like lines on the saxophone and move toward a rock-inflected sound. He settled in Paris in 2006. In the same years he appeared on Organic 3: Live au Caveau des Oubliettes (Black & Blue, 2005) by the Hammond organist Stefan Patry, and on Friends Friends Friends (TCB, 2012) by the Swiss pianist François Lindemann, recorded in Fribourg and Lausanne in August 2011 with Glenn Ferris, the bassist Michel Benita, the trumpeter Flavio Boltro and the drummer Alvin Queen among the players.

He formed The Electric Epic in 2008 and drew attention through a residency at the Paris club Baiser Salé. The group's first release was a self-released live CD-R in 2009; Perret spent about a year editing the studio material that followed and sent it to John Zorn, who put it out on Tzadik in March 2012. Credited on the record are Perret on electric saxophone and effects, Philippe Bussonnet on electric bass, Jim Grandcamp on electric guitar, Yoann Serra on drums and sampler, and the cornettist and singer Médéric Collignon as a guest on five of the seven tracks. The franceinfo interview ties the record to strong press, the Victoires du Jazz nomination and festival invitations. The group released the 10-inch EP Doors in 2013, a title piece first composed for the choreographer Kaori Ito, played the 44th Deutsches Jazzfestival in Frankfurt on October 24, 2013, and recorded Open Me (Kakoum Records, 2014). A North Sea Jazz Festival programme lists it for July 11, 2015. He has also been named a Talent Jazz Adami.

In 2014 his name turned up on two records from outside his own circle. On Harvey Mason's Chameleon (Concord) he is credited on the bonus track "Looking Forward (Breaking Bad)", playing tenor saxophone and keyboards and as its writer and arranger, and on Fly Superfly by Laurent de Wilde and Otisto 23 he is the featured guest on "Monkadelik". His solo album Free (Kakoum Records, 2016) was made, according to the release notes, entirely from the sounds of one instrument, his "Electric Sax", a tenor saxophone with microphones, sensors and audio mixers attached; Tony Ozuna's review in Jazz in Europe called the music hypnotic and thumping jazz and noted that some critics had likened him to Jimi Hendrix on the saxophone.

In 2018 he composed and recorded the score for 16 Levers de soleil, Pierre-Emmanuel Le Goff's documentary about the astronaut Thomas Pesquet's mission to the International Space Station, released in cinemas on October 3, 2018, with the soundtrack album out on September 28. According to the Centre national du cinéma, Perret worked from timecodes and a brief, built the sound from his electrified saxophone with pedals and loopers, and brought in the rappers Lino and Nya and the countertenor Fabrice Di Falco; Pesquet played one of the pieces on saxophone from the station. His 2020 album A Certain Trip (French Paradox and Kakoum Records) returned to a band, with Yessaï Karapetian on keyboards, Julien Herné on electric bass and Martin Wangermée on drums, and Perret adding an electronic wind instrument, the Sylphyo, to his tenor and soprano saxophones. In 2022 he played tenor saxophone in Giovanni Mirabassi's quartet on The Swan and the Storm (Jazz Eleven). New singles appeared in September and October 2026, and Apple Music lists a new album, From Silence, for release on November 27, 2026.

Perret's sound is built on a saxophone that has been electrified and extended: pedals, loopers and a mixer turn one player into a bass line, a rhythm bed and a lead voice at once, and he describes himself as a sound explorer. The Electric Epic records sit between jazz and rock. Discogs files them under jazz-rock, fusion, funk metal and thrash, one reviewer places the solo music in a mix of ethio-jazz, trance, and Middle Eastern and Brazilian music, and Perret himself points to 1970s fusion and classical music as influences, with Zappa and King Crimson in the family record collection. That puts much of his catalogue closer to fusion and jazz-rock than to straight-ahead playing, and some of his projects, such as the improvised sessions released as DR(DR)ONE's Alphatron (2009), lean toward free and electronic music. His acoustic jazz side is documented in the Le Bocal big band, the Lindemann and Patry sessions and the Mirabassi quartet. The two subgenre tags above are the nearest canonical matches for the Electric Epic work and do not describe every project.