The live stream site Cercle has been a breath of fresh air, and hosted some brilliant sets, showcasing some excellent DJs and producers, bringing them to a bigger and wider audience. We’ve loved a lot of sets on the site’s youtube channel, none more so than Frenchman N’To’s, who we discovered last year. His sound is one of beautiful melodic techno, and he is one of the best producers we’ve heard in recent times. We recently spoke to N’To about his productions, influences and gigs so far.
Hi N’To, how are you and what have you been up to lately?
Hi guys, I’m quite well, thanks! I’ve recently released a new single on Hungry Music called “Charlie”. It’s a track I made for my son and I had much fun working on it! Also I enjoyed some very welcoming gigs in Barcelona, Amsterdam, and France with strong vibes in each venue. So things are going great!
Brilliant! Tell us about how you first got into music?
I started out playing guitar at the age of ten, which quickly brought me to discover many cool bands and genres such as rock from the seventies, jazz music, classical music, hiphop as well, then onto electronic music, which was of course a huge crush.
Who were your early musical influences in your career?
The first names that became references to me were guys like Pink Floyd, Django Reinhardt, Georges Brassens, The Doors …
Tell us about your early gigs.
Haha, those were really stressful. I realized this was a full time job, completely different from production. The learning curve is really long before you can feel comfortable and truly enjoy it, that’s especially true for playing live.
We love your productions Chez Nous and Carrousel, they’re beautiful! Which of your tracks are you most proud of?
Thanks, I like those too! But I guess “La Clé Des Champs” must be one of my favorites, it was a piece I made for my mom, as a reference to one of her own music stories at a young age.
Check out Chez Nous, Carrousel and La Clé Des Champs here below;
Tell us about your studio, how you produce your tracks, what’s your set up?
It’s quite basic actually! One computer and speakers around it. A lot of VSTs mostly, no hardware, no rules. Sometimes inspirations comes from creating and creating again, sometimes it comes from a feeling or an idea in my head.
Tell us about your record label Hungry Music, and it’s releases.
We’re now into the sixth year of our label, which was created to allow us to produce without codes or limits. It’s been a true gift for us to have that, we’ve been releasing a lot of music with Worakls and N’to as well as Stereoclip. The response has been overwhelming and people really support our process!
Great to hear! You’ve played some pretty cool gigs including the Cercle ones in which we discovered you (Tour Saint Jacques, and Concorde with Joachim Pastor as Sinners), which we have enjoyed listening to several times on Youtube! Tell us about these 2 gigs, how did they go for you?
The Tour Saint Jacques live was a unique experience, because there was no audience there. It’s been great to work with Cercle as I’ve been following their work for a long time. The result has been great. With Sinners and Joachim Pastor, it was just so enjoyable to play with a friend and truly awesome producer. That was really rewarding.
Check out N’To’s and Sinners’ Cercle sets below;
Do you have any other favourite gigs you’ve played?
There were too many, it’s hard to pick one above the others… The one that comes to mind now is Osheaga in Montreal, that was mindblowing.
This is a tough question for any DJ, but could you name us a few of your top tracks of all time?
Sure, here’s a shortlist :
Nathan Fake – The Sky Was Pink (James Holden Remix)
Pink Floyd – Shine On Your Crazy Diamond
Radiohead – Nude
The Doors – Riders On The Storm
Mozart – 25th Symphony
Some great music there! What other DJ/producers are enjoying right now?
There’s many producers I respect as well so it’s hard to say, off the top of my head, guys like Stephan Bodzin, Solomun, Tale of Us, Kollektiv Turmstrasse, Maceo Plex…
We agree with those! What’s your plans going forward? Other than your upcoming gig in London at Electric Brixton, where can we catch you DJing and do you have any releases forthcoming?
Yeah I’ll be traveling soon to Montreal, several gigs France, Turkey, Germany, Netherlands and the festival season is coming up as well!
Check N’To’s website and social medias;
Web site : http://hungrymusic.fr/
FB : https://www.facebook.com/nto.music/
Insta : https://www.instagram.com/ntomusic/