French producer NTO announced the release of his highly-anticipated debut album APNEA
The album is a beautiful collection of melodic compositions paired with NTO’s talent of making a track feel melancholic and uplifting at the same time. With the three already released tracks, “Zig Zag“, “Invisible” and “Petit Matin“, the French producer has already set the tone for his debut album with high-quality sounds and visuals.
Apnea is a collection of personal feelings, memories and milestones for NTO, which has taken him almost two years to create and finalise. “I have enjoyed the process of composing so much. The way I worked this time was way less isolated than usual, and I do feel that I made a lot of progress,” he says and adds “this debut album is also a little bit of my family’s history. Some songs and extracts wink affectionately at the people I love.”
The album includes collaborations with Monolink, Tricky, Louise and French 79.
The album’s title Apnea was inspired by the world free diving champion Arthur Guerin, who introduced NTO to his art. And as the term “apnea” is used to describe the suspension of breathing used in water sports, including free diving, it seemed only fitting for him.
A litte bit more about NTO
The story behind NTO started with a match made in heaven: A kid from the South of France, glued to his guitar and electronic dance music. “I believe the first time it all made sense to me was when I first listened to Underworld’s live album, Everything Everything”, he says.
After going to Sziget Festival when he was 18, NTO started to hang out regularly at La Villa Rouge, and Bar Live, two legendary clubs in the South of France. At the time, German minimal techno was booming and Anthony Favier would spend his nights listening to Stephan Bodzin, James Holden, or the very beginnings of Paul Kalkbrenner, who he calls his “biggest music crush of all time”.
The evocative power of music, strong kicks and the unifying atmosphere of dance-floors this is the triple focus that will inspire him to create and produce music without going through the usually mandatory DJ phase. The story behind NTO is also about his friendship with and Joachim Pastor, with whom he created Hungry Music in 2013. At a time when melodic techno music was not the media’s first interest, the three artists were absolutely convinced that the audience couldn’t get enough of it. Performing together on Olympia’s stage to the Vieilles Charrues Festival, they learned to mater the stage, and seduced a new generation that would follow them faithfully from this moment on. Thanks to his hits ‘Trauma’ and ‘La clé des champ’, which account for several millions of streams on DSPs, NTO’s career took off internationally: from The Netherlands to Germany, to Eastern Europe to Canada…
Today, NTO is about to start a new chapter of his career. With deep basses and lysergic harmonies, he filters different layers of his melodies to make them sparkle even more, just as if they emerged from the water after hitting rock bottom.
NTO is also currently on tour – Check the tour dates below
