Part 2
Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?
Well, each record has its own story and it’s particularly dear to me. There would be many anecdotes about it, and it would take a book to collect ‘em all. That’s why I’m gonna focus on a couple of pieces that have had a special meaning for me.
The first is the project Detroit Party Posse. It’s a project born back in May 2019 when I was in the States for a vacation.
I was in Chicago, at my pal Andrew’s (who’s the owner of the label Leisure Records) home, where he had me find some gear for production. At one point we moved to Detroit for 3 days for the Movement and we decided to take all the gear with us. Andrew and his Chicago’s friends rented a house on the 8 Mile, for something like 10 people. The house door wouldn’t open with a key, but with a code: 6699330.
One night, before going to MotorCity Wine to meet Mike Huckaby (it was the last time I had the opportunity to meet him and give him some records before his departure - may he rest in peace. Such a great human!) and Boo Williams, and then to TV Lounge to meet Jus-Ed, Malik Alston and Delano Smith, after dinner and a few blunts, we started playing with the gears and the microphone. In the house with us was a guy, David (Daddy), who started singing the door’s opening code, followed by “that’s the number of my heart”. That’s how the original piece was born.
After my comeback to Italy, Andrew (PTO) worked on his own version. My buddy Michele and I worked on the KETAMA’s version (it’s another project of mine more based on Balearic vibes).
Also, when in Chicago, we linked up with Vincent Floyd. Still remember the day we had a meeting with him outside the dance school he was attending. We went to Starbucks for a coffee and had a few fantastic hours with him, full of anecdotes and lightheartedness. By virtue of our friendship, it was quite natural to ask him if he would like to work on a remix and he was happy about it. In fact, he asked Daddy to record additional vocals as well. It's been fantastic to see this project pressed on vinyl and being distributed worldwide.
Another piece that’s particularly dear to me is “Redemption”, included in my “Innermoods” 12-inch for Mike Grant’s Moods & Grooves. It’s a piece with deep meaning for me, as it was born during the pandemic when the period was a bit dark and I was definitely not in my best shape.
One day I decided to channel all my malaise into my creative process, and "Redemption" was born. It was healing, restorative. At that moment I really started to see the light again and leave the darkness behind.
Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?
I like both approaches, for both listening and producing.
As for listening, I do really like enjoying some music with other people and it’s always stimulating because it brings an exchange of ideas; as for production, for sure I prefer a more private approach for my very own stuff, but never refuse working on group and giving life to collaborative projects. If you check my Discogs, you can easily see by yourself I’m involved in many group projects.
Obviously, when you work alone, you tend to give priority to your feelings, to your ideas, to your mood, and you’re totally free to approach the creative process as you see fit; while when working with the others. For sure I think it’s important to find people who have, at least, some affinities with you and it’s not only important what you think, but you have to consider each one’s thinking.
Sometimes it may be necessary a compromise that would both work for you and the others. It’s not really easy working with others, especially if both parties have strong personalities. But that’s the challenging part that I like.
How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?
According to me, music should bring with itself an educational message. But I can see in many cases this has been lost in the last two decades or so. I always try my best to express a cultural message to the listener.
As for my work and my creativity, they are mainly based on the mutual exchange between humanity and nature, on how one and the other interface.
For sure, the role of music is to accompany and drive us through our lives and it can be our most powerful ally. Not everyone listens to music and, for sure, won’t benefit from its therapeutic power. Those who discover its power and make a connection with it will vibrate differently and have a much better life.
Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others – contributed to your understanding of these questions?
For sure music can help in some passages of life, both good or bad. It can have the ability to divert attention from a negative moment and cheer it up, as well as to make a moment of joy memorable and fix it eternally in our minds and hearts.
It's fantastic this duplicity.
How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?
Music has always found a stable place alongside the exact sciences: astronomy, arithmetic, geometry. In some encyclopaedia the science of sound is placed alongside the physical-mathematical disciplines in the study of nature. In the last three centuries perhaps more of the concept of music as an art has become established.
Music is both an art and a science, and music and science are closely related. Both use mathematical principles and logic, blended with creative thinking and inspiration to arrive at conclusions that are both enlightening and inspirational. As I once read somewhere, it could be said that “Science is the music of the intellect, and Music is the science of the heart”.
Science teaches us that sound is vibration, and the frequency of vibration is what makes different sounds. Music then is the study of the sound created by those vibrations, and puts them into patterns that elicit emotion.
Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?
Well, I’d say writing or performing a piece of music is definitely totally different from making a cup of coffee or any other mundane tasks. Not everyone can make or understand music, but anyone would be able to make a coffee.
When you’re making or performing music (whether it’s a DJ set or a live one) unless you’re making it just because you’re a mercenary and doing it for the hype and the money, you can rest assured that you’ll be squeezing your emotions into it and you’ll be speaking to the world, to your fans or more simply to yourself through the music.
You're making or saying something that you wouldn’t be able to do in more “mundane” tasks, which are simple routine, mere mechanical actions.
Music is vibration in the air, captured by our eardrums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it is able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?
Vibration and frequency are the very essence of life. Everything you are, have been and will be is nothing but frequency. And your DNA is the final antenna.
Everything is energy and everything vibrates, consequently we too are always in constant contact with everything around us - air, water, light, dark, earth, people, animals, plants or objects.
Here, we human beings vibrate with a dominant frequency and emanating this frequency we relate to everything around us. We come in contact with vibration in different ways and the simplest contact we perceive is through listening to music.
Again, we resonate with a certain kind of music at a certain time in our lives and not at another. It’s like talking about attunement between two people. That’s why, I think, you can be able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep music. Each genre will resonate with us in a different way and in each genre everyone of us will be able to find ourselves, to find their comfort zone, creating an “attunement” with the music.
