In Conversation: Naconda Selects Sunshine Vibes

It's never to late to celebrate summer and we are clawing at all the remnants of sunshine that we can get. With that in mind our favorite French man Naconda has curated a playlist full of deep flavours, groove and jazz coloured keys perfect for playing as the last rays of summer fade into Autumn. We also chatted with the Bel Air Festival member and 909 Connection founder to find out about future festival plans, upcoming productions and more.

Hey Naconda! Firstly can you introduce yourself and tell us what initially inspired you to start DJing and producing?

Hey there, my name is Nicolas, I’m from Toulouse, France and I’ve been DJing and producing music for the past 5 years. I first started to play the guitar almost 10 years ago now, I started DJing at uni and I quickly found an interest in digging for tracks and mixing them together to create a sort of story. Then I also started to get interested in understanding the way music was produced so that’s pretty much how I started to produce mine.

What's your favourite piece of hardware for producing?

Among the ones I’ve got, my favourites are my Fender Stratocaster and my Yamaha Reface CP. I really love the Stratocaster for its clean and bright sound and the Reface for its warm Rhodes vibes. My dream keyboard is an original Fender Rhodes from 1973, I think I’ll get one someday.

We saw that sadly you had to postpone Bel'Air Festival due to corona virus. How do you think the virus has impacted the music scene?

Obviously the impact is already huge and it will probably keep going this way for a while making this situation tricky for a massive amount of cultural structures. Fortunately for Bel’Air we made the decision to freeze everything at the right time. We’ll keep it up all together to make the next edition even better than it was supposed to be in 2020.

You're a part of a few collectives including 909 Connection and Motoring in Coventry. What do you think the importance of collectives is?

I created 909 Connection with my friends a couple of years ago because I wanted to get involved in some music projects, including organizing events, DJing and build something together around a common thing; passion for music. Something I especially love about that is that these projects are not something which are money driven but are fed by passion in our spare time.

When I moved to the UK, I heard about Motoring thanks to a friend I met at Lab11 in Birmingham. I gave them a listen and quickly figured out that we had a common groovy and Deep House vibe. So after that I just contacted them without even knowing what would happen and they gave me a chance to play along them and Humans On Wax. An amazing thing about this is that I realized that passion for music has no language, a thing that I had never experienced before. I have to say that I’m endlessly grateful for the warm welcome they offered me and all the vibes we've shared together so far - and it’s not finished.

After spending a year in the UK how does the scene compare to France's nightlife?

Based on my experience and mostly focused on the House music scene, I would say that Minimal House is more popular in the UK than it is in Toulouse for example. This has been a great occasion to expand my music influences. Also party people are more likeable in England generally which is great to make new friends easily.

What can we expect from you in the future?

I’ve got 2 upcoming tracks. The first one is a mellow jazzy vibe which is going to be released on the next Various Artists of my label 909 Connection (you can catch the preview below). The second one is Deep House remix of a track from Hunvre EP’s which is going to be released soon on Motoring. I’ve got also in store a couple projects which could form an EP soon.