Notes For Sale

Assembled in South London (UK). All music by Antonio De Nuevo & Le Denim Bleu.

Liner notes:

I couldn't believe that such beautiful melodies could have been crafted there. "Are you sure this is right?" I asked my producer as we passed through New Cross in South London on the way to Antonio De Nuevo's home, where he lives with his fiancée and where he set up his multifunction studio. Apparently, the Uber driver was not lost, I was told.

We found him doing some work in the garden, impeccably dressed despite the manual labor. When I asked about his outfit, he laughed. "You gotta have a dripset when you work," he said. It's either that or he wanted to look nice for the interview. He doesn't do many of them. Not the typical reclusive artist you would expect, De Nuevo has somehow managed to stay relatively low-key and hidden, even in the local scene. Most people don't seem to know him in London, even though he is incredibly prolific. We're here to talk about Notes For Sale, his new album with jazz outfit Le Denim Bleu.

Selim Sivad: Notes For Sale marks a shift as your first collaboration project. You worked with Le Denim Bleu. How did you end up working together?

Antonio De Nuevo: They contacted me on Bandcamp and told me that they had been playing over some of my records. I think Surfaces By Faces, which is crazy, because I didn't think that that's even possible. And yeah, we met and talked about projects and London and stuff and I told them that I would come up with something. Something that we could develop together. I was working on something else at that time. I think my Triptych installation and some other small bits, so I had to finish that first. So nothing happened for a while. Until at the end of summer I managed to sketch some ideas and things. Nothing too defined. Just enough to have a couple of sessions with the band. And yeah, we recorded it over five days in their studio not far from here.

SS: When we spoke to Le Denim Bleu they told us the sessions were pretty loose and improvisational.

ADN: [laughs] Yeah, that sounds about right. I wanted to use their sound as a band. I had loads of riffs and patterns and things I wanted to do with them, but keeping their sound. I used to read a lot about how Miles (Davis) used to work with Teo Macero in the late 1960s and how they would just jam and Teo would edit things and stuff. I wanted to do something similar. Of course, it wasn't that simple. It was crazy editing all the material and somehow getting the coherence that I had in my head. But I'm pretty happy with the result and the process. And they are amazing to jam with.

SS: Was that something that you were planning to do besides this project, to play again in a band? I know you've mentioned in the past that you didn't want to be in a group anymore and that you preferred working on your own.

ADN: I don't miss playing in a group at all and I wasn't planning on doing something like that. I don't think it would have happened if they hadn't reached out. Of course, I'm happy they did. The thing is that even while I was still playing in bands, I was already making beats. And I would layer samples in a way that you would think it's a band playing. It was pretty bad, but I loved the sound of a band. I still do. So somehow my music often has tried to follow that thread. You know, I grew up listening to bands, and my heroes were people like Mingus, Zappa, Miles Davis. I feel like that's what I'm really into. It's my DNA as a producer. People often ask me what other producers I listen to, or if I know this or that electronic music thing. And the answer is often no. I just happen to make electronic music, I guess. But it's because I'm interested in the tools and the process. I'm interested in the fragility of what I do with it. In my head, the music sounds different. I'm an old head I guess.

SS: This is your eighth release for 2025. You're incredibly prolific.

ADN: I don't think I'm prolific at all. I've just been thinking and cooking ideas in my head for a long time and somehow they are materialising now. I'm thinking about projects and taking notes all the time. Most things don't ever happen, but some do.

SS: Your music often feels very immediate, very raw. To me, it sounds like you capture specific moments, rather than work on pieces over long periods of time. Would you agree with that?

ADN: Well, it's that jazz thing again, you see. My work is more an improvisation than something planned. Most of my music has been created in the moment, without preparation or edits. I'm not a perfectionist and I try to keep things as they come. I want to be a vehicle for the ideas, and I'm happy with them being imperfect as you might think sometimes. I see them as brushstrokes, and the more immediate, the more I can see later. Sometimes I listen to something I released a long time ago and I don't remember how I did it. Or I hear things for the first time myself. I love that feeling.