Q: Although we've known each other for a while, I feel like I still don't know you well enough. I remember when you visited the store you said you'd just moved to Lisbon, would you like to tell us what brought you here?

A: I came to Lisbon back in march 2023, I wanted to escape Paris, experience another stimulating city, and more specifically attend the Beija Flor party of my friends Silvio&Sofia. I spent two months wandering the city, discovering the cultural side as much as the people involved in the party, would they be at the core of it or regular faces and dancers who take a key part in the community. That’s the first time I came to your shop and realized I would easily build new habits in Lisbon, with people I already enjoyed spending so much time with. I officially moved in September, and slowly find myself in the city.

Q: As a customer of the store and also knowing your taste in music, I can see that your musical spectrum is surprisingly broad. Is there a musical genre you listen to most regularly?

A: I'm not sure, it really depends on what's on my mind and what is my curent obsession. I had a really intense jazz / hiphop / downtempo phase back in Paris, listened to a lot of ambient while at work and now I would say I spent much more time discovering music I could actually play in parties. But even those can be on a very large spectrum, those having been to Beija Flor or similar parties might understand. At the same time, I try to update the Nuance library often enough, so I keep my ears open to whatever would be suitable for any time of the day / week. I have lots of ways of discovering music in the end, and I could end up listening to a spiritual dub mixtape or checking the news on Youtube channel focused on French pop songs or Caribbean music. My favourite musical thing is to fall in love within the first listen and think: that would go well in the Nuance morning playlist / I would love to play that record sometime / I want to know more about this artist-label...

Q: I know you're a lover in the way you listen to music and also in the way you share it. There are moments in our day that can be very happy when someone does it in a delicate way. Do you want to tell us a bit about your idea for creating Nuance Radio?

A: Nuance Radio was created back in 2017 with a group of friends I met in school. The idea was to gather music each of us love to listen throughout the day, and build a common library we could access at any time, with a selection that would make sense whenever while being completely random. For a small circle at first, and we slowly opened it. The platform has evolved a lot since then, but the general idea was to find a middle ground between music for curious minds and music diggers. A radio offers a selection you can't escape, the streaming is unique and there is no skipping, so this collection has to be easy to listen to (waking up, at work, in the evening...) while offering music sometimes more peculiar than traditional and mainstream networks. Also, we wished to put artist at the center of it. Online radio are often based on mixes these days, and while you can listen to really stimulating human selectors, you may also be frustrated by not knowing what is currently aired. On Nuance, every track is scanned and displayed, so you can save it easily. There is a Discogs connection for physical format diggers, and a Spotify link for a more popular approach (hopefully a Bandcamp link soon to connect the audience directly to artists).

Q: The other day I was talking to friends about how to discover music and also about the desire to have it on a physical record. Sometimes, even though it's hard to find some records, are you one of those people who loses your mind when you find it or is it not an urgency for you?

A: I tend to loose my mind, more and more. My record budget has increased over the years (and I've been lucky enough to do so), so it happens that I go a little crazy at times. Specifically when I know I'm going to play for a specific event and I stumbled upon a record I really want. There is no pragmatism anymore, just intuition - which is not always right, let me be honest. With online buys, I take more time, and I manage to be more careful. The traps are in record shops, if you find gold, why not bring it home? :)

Q: Nowadays, music is everywhere and easily accessible to almost anyone. Do you feel that with this total freedom of access, people are also more interested in discovering new music?

A: That is a really tricky question to answer and I could easily go on for a few pages to answer it. Naively, I would say: it depends. In a lot of senses, streaming platforms and online libraries offer endless possibilities to discover music. Would be on DSPs like Spotify / Apple Music / etc. where everything is built to keep the audience, making it an advanced version of a radio, where one could be leading the way, or accepting the flux offered by algorithms. Youtube has an hybrid take, while it can be used as an official streaming provider, there are tons of accounts unearthing tracks that are not officially licensed or distributed and only could be digitalized though a physical format. Bandcamp on another note (or Soundcloud even) with a more straight approach, the artist or their label handling directly the relation with fans. And I could go on the treasure hunts you can follow on Discogs, RateYourMusic, Mixcloud (thanks Shazam), online radios and press, and even places like archive.org (been listening to mixes there recently...). All this to say: if someone has a curious mind and dedicates time to discovering music, then it is probably easier today to be stimulated and actually find really interesting music in a lot of places online. While before digital platforms, you would have to buy magazines and fanzines, go to record shops, attend concerts and festivals... everything that we can still do today, but probably takes more time and money for probably less direct results.

Does that freedom of access and multiplicity of networks make people more interested in discovering new music? I'm not sure. People are lazy. If someone has Spotify, there is big a chance that the main source of discovery are the playlists the platform offers, and everything is built to highlight what the algorithms figured would be popular. Then people end up listening to a really small portion of what is actually released. But in the end, wasn't it the same when the music industry was led by radios and popular tracks where played on repeat to keep the audience connected? (Still happening btw).

In the end, the freedom of access might have opened the gap between passive listeners and those who actually want to dig music outside (or within) the main networks. Everyone has a chance do to so now, people may not be more interested than before, but they have no excuse in case they are.

(I wished I had find some articles or review about this, because someone has probably written better things about it :)).

Q: Okay, now let's get to the part I'm really curious about. What setup do you use at home to listen to music?

A: Let's be straight to the point then:

Speakers: Klipschorns AK3 stacked with Tannoy Arundel

Amplifiers: Mark Levinson 334 (for Klipschorns) & Marantz 1090 (for Tannoys)

Mixer: Condesa Lucia

I'm not listening to records all the time, I have the classic rca / jack to connect my computer during work times, and even a DAC for wifi / bluetooth connection for the lazy times at home.

Q: One last question, I know you come from a generation when television was no longer black and white and movies were no longer silent. If you own a radio and consume music via streaming, how can you explain to someone the difference between listening to music on these digital platforms and on an analog setup like yours?

A: I feel they are complementary. Listening to music trough digital platforms offers the possibility to have music easily all the time at home / in the streets / wherever really now with phones / headphones. An analog setup brings something maybe more spiritual, in the sense of being really connected with the activity of listening to music. There is a dedicated process to turn everything on: mixer / turntable first, then amplifiers, selecting a record, opening the sleeve, the undersleeve, placing the records on the turntable, the needle on the record. Listening to one side, flipping the disc. This takes some time, and then there is something almost meditative in the process, where you can actually take some pleasure out of it, before even listening to the music really. Like rolling a joint. The process is as pleasant as the actually smoke and high you get from it. Adding to this the whole process that brought the record home, would it be an intense digging session in the crates of a record shop, a quick buy before a party, a gift, or whatever else. Each record has a story, and even if you forget some when the collection is big enough to even forget you have the record somewhere, it follows you somehow. Like every kind of collection, it bring a sense of familiarity.

Now I'm also honest enough to say that I use that analog setup to listen to some low bitrate uploads on youtube sometimes, and still find a great pleasure in doing so (specifically when after I can get the record, it's part of the process, nê?)

Q: You are one of the people who regularly help to build - together with a team of wonderful people - one of the most vibrant parties in Lisbon, Beija Flor. Your passion for audiophile sound began a few years ago, right?

A: It actually started in 2018, when stumbling upon a track on Youtube: Harer Nama, and edit of Rasa's Chanting by a mysterious CW. The label releasing the vinyl being called Beauty Bits, I ended up connecting the dots with the party called Beauty in the Beats in London, and found a really interesting article on their website, houseparty.org. This article relates 10 years of the party, and that's how I got passionate about audiophile sound: with words. Surprisingly, a party influenced by Beauty and the Beat started a few months later in Paris, Sweet Apricots. And that was my first encounter with that kind of soundsystem. I got hooked instantly. I remember you playing there shortly after, and I had such epiphanies during those nights, hearing tracks I knew with so much clarity for the first time, discovering new music and understanding why they made sense at this time of the night (would it be flamenco at 3am! I still cherish the memory of that Paco de Lucia track you played). We slowly gathered our own soundsystem with Nuance, organising a yearly festival in the French countryside, and went for the first time (and not the last) in London for a Beauty in 2019. What a slap I received. They surely finetuned their soundsytem (and selections) for years, and everything made perfect sense. I am really happy to take part in Beija Flor here, surely influenced by those nights they spent in London, but bringing something very peculiar, would it because of the people, the dancers, the place (Fábrica ❤️), or this brazilian influence they cultivate.