Name: Agents of Time
Members: Andrea Di Ceglie, Luigi Tutolo
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: Producers, DJs, live performers
Current release: Agents of Time's "Zodiac" is out via Time Machine.

If you enjoyed this Agents of Time interview and would like to stay up to date with the duo and their music, visit their official homepage. The group are also on Instagram, Facebook, Soundcloud, and twitter. 

For the thoughts of one of their collaborators, read our Mathew Jonson interview. And for a conversation with their Afterlife label colleagues, head over to our Tale of Us interview.



The views of society towards technology are subject to constant change. How would you describe yours?

We’re both very curious people and we keep researching what new technologies have come to market and what has become possible. Although we do go back to good old battle-tested hardware machines when recording specific sounds for our tracks.

We embrace technology, especially when it enables us to reduce the time it takes to go from idea to sound. We live in a world that moves fast so we have to embrace new tech to stay competitive.

What are currently your creative goals and how are technologies helping you reach them?

New technologies are making possible what a few years ago would have been impossible. Tech has enabled us to keep working whilst we tour around the world. We’ve never flown so much and yet we have never been so productive. It’s amazing to be able to use a plug-in to test some sounds without the need of any hardware; that comes very handy when travelling.

Technology has not only impacted our music production but it also has a positive effect on the entire workflow. We use Muse extensively to work with our sound engineers whilst we are travelling. It has never been so easy; and we would have never guessed it could have been possible to do so one day.

How and for what reasons has your music set-up evolved over the years and what are currently some of the most important pieces of gear and software for you?

We’ve changed our setup quite a bit over the years. Our studio is filled with synths, both analog and digital; we love to use them but we also have to admit that sometimes a plug-in can be quicker and simpler to use.

We’ve extensively used Korg Monopoly in the past (hardware made in ‘80s); nowadays we use mostly VSTs like Serum or Diva. Diva in particular has the centre stage in our setup.

[Read our feature on the Korg Monopoly]

Have there been technologies which have profoundly influenced, changed or questioned the way you make music?

For sure. Take Splice for example, I cannot stress enough how much it has influenced the way we make music. Having a cloud platform with access to thousands of samples from wherever you are in the world … that’s priceless.

It has also enabled us to express ourselves in new ways that are becoming part of our sound.

From my point of view, the three key factors which have driven music technology over the past decades are mobility, affordability, and (easy) usability. How important are these for your own work – and did I miss any?

We share the same view. Those three factors have impacted everyday life and they have impacted music too. Everything has become more affordable, hardware has become smaller (and lighter), allowing us to take more machines with us on stage than ever before.

Electronic music and touring go hand in hand so having a fully fledged home studio on our laptop it’s extraordinary. You can make music everywhere. It won’t be long until we will be able to draft some ideas on our phones!

Within a digital working environment, it is possible to compile huge archives of ideas for later use. Tell me a bit about your strategies of building such an archive and how you put these ideas and sketches to use.

We’ve worked on our own archive of samples from day one. We wanted to have a vast array of elements that would make our sound. Having a distinctive sound is key for people to remember your music as well as to stand out in the crowd of music available online nowadays.

Artists used to spend countless hours fine tuning their synths to reach the perfection they had in mind, in order to then save the settings on their machines and re-use them in the course of their careers. Nowadays it’s all much easier with plug-ins. Building a repository of ideas, reefs or even entire parts of tracks is simpler.

We strongly believe melodies are the key characteristic of a track. We record and store hundreds of melodic reefs to be used later on. We then go back to that archive whenever we’re producing a new track and we have a starting point with hundreds of ideas ready to go.

In many of our 15 Questions interviews, artists have emphasised the happy accidents as a result of human imperfections and unreliable machines. What's your view on this and how does an element of surprise enter your productions?

That is what makes us human. Machines have been made by humans so they do carry that level of imperfection (and sometimes unpredictability). Sometimes you just find a bug in a VST, or an overloop in a synth; something that might be imperfect and yet it can become a distinctive feature.

It happens quite often, the trick is embracing it and making it part of the track; you can take some noise made by a synth and use it as a rise-up following a drop.

Production tools can already suggest compositional ideas on their own. How much of your music is based on concepts and ideas you had before entering the studio, how much of it is triggered by equipment, software and apps?

We almost always start a studio session with an idea in mind of what we want to achieve. We come up with a lot of ideas in the downtime between gigs; travelling helps open new creative paths that can turn into a track.

We often whistle a melody whilst travelling, we record it as a voice note and that’s our starting point for our next studio session. That’s exactly what happened in Mexico and the result is “Zodiac”.

To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. What are your hopes, fears, expectations and possible concrete plans in this regard?

There’s no denying how important AI is in our daily lives. It has been used in music production, too. We believe AI can enhance human minds but it cannot replace them. Creative minds work in a way that we do not really understand nor we can explain. AI can help but it’s not a replacement for flair.

Humans are unpredictable, artists are even less so and that’s what makes people beautiful. We have feelings and we make decisions based on them. That’s something a machine cannot replace.

Sometimes a DJ just plays a track because they feel to, with no logical explanation; and that’s the right track to play. AI will work with artists rather than replace us.

Technology has continually taken on more steps of the compositional process and "creative" tasks. From your point of view, where does "technology" end and "creativity" begin?

Knowing how to translate an idea into music used to be what made you successful. Today you can make music even if you don’t know how to play an instrument.

I'll give you an example: Ableton can translate sounds into a MIDI melody. The evolution in technology has opened the floodgates, now everyone can transform their own ideas into music, lowering the barrier of entry. What matters nowadays is having a good idea. Technology can only do so much, without a good idea you can’t go far.

That said, if you have a good idea you can now really make it shine, no matter how well you know how to play an instrument; and that’s just amazing!