I grew up in a house where music wasn't a trade; it was the way the world was understood. My father, César Isella, was one of the figures of the Nuevo Cancionero movement and composed the music for «Canción con todos», declared by UNESCO the anthem of Latin American integration. During the dictatorship he was kidnapped and tortured. He survived. I learned early that a song can be dangerous, and also a refuge.
At nine I started studying music after picking out Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' by ear on a Casio. I was obsessed with technology from an early age — building my own studio recordings by hacking tapes and whatever electronics were around the house. By twenty I was already producing for Sony Music, starting with Soledad Pastorutti. Fifteen gold and platinum records, millions of copies sold. But what I really wanted, deep down, was to study music.
A Fulbright grant brought me to Berklee to study jazz composition. Then seven years playing keys and producing records in New York: Tonic, Nublu, Bowery Ballroom, Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto), Joy Askew (Peter Gabriel), Karina Zeviani (Thievery Corporation). In parallel, productions for Sony and Universal, collaborations with Mercedes Sosa, and a Latin Grammy nomination. I was a voting member of the Latin Recording Academy. I learned how to make records. I also learned to distrust the records the industry makes.
I came back to Buenos Aires and in 2006, with Cinthia Novick, we founded limbo/. We ripped CDs on a single PC for iTunes. We were one of the first Latin American companies to sign with the store. Along the way we were a label, a festival, an agency, a distributor. The British Council named me Young Creative Entrepreneur of the Year twice. I coordinated music at MICA (Argentina's Cultural Industries Market) for five years. When the pandemic cleared the air, limbo/ redefined itself as B2B infrastructure: APIs, white-label, DDEX integrations. What began as a micro-label is now the invisible infrastructure through which much of the world's independent music flows.
Since 2020 I've lived in Madrid. I'm a father. I play every night I can: a Nord Grand, a Prophet Rev 2, a semi-modular Moog, a Zen Delay. I was on the Merlin board (2024-25), I'm part of the founding committee of EarthPercent with Brian Eno, and we're founding partners of Sounds Right, the project that won the 2025 Cannes Lions Grand Prix for crediting nature as an artist on Spotify. I write every month in The Music of Conversation, which this year became a podcast too. We built limbo/Chat, the music industry's first MCP server.
I keep releasing music on my own label, The Piano Label. In 2024 came 'My Father's Heart,' a piano concert built on the last recorded heartbeats of my father's heart. It started as a way to move through grief during the pandemic. It ended up being, perhaps, the most honest thing I've ever made.
Same as ever: piano and code, at once.
limbo/ exists because independent music couldn't keep renting infrastructure from its own competitors. For twenty years we've been building B2B distribution technology (APIs, white-label, modular Music Blocks, royalty reporting, artificial-streaming protection, a conversational MCP server) for labels, aggregators, and platforms that refuse to depend on a major to exist.
We're bootstrapped. No majors, no VCs, no strings. Members of Merlin. Clients like Real World Studios, UN Live, EarthPercent.
«Own the infrastructure, or you're renting.»
The mission, stated plainly: grow the global GDP of independent human-made music. Not to be the biggest distributor in the world. To grow the whole pie.
More about the company: limbomusic.com