opener ‘aspen’ (not the ski resort) bares a passing resemblance to the work of pantha du prince for it’s poly-rhythms and reliance on very musical percussion. it sits on the optimistic side of melancholia and makes for as pleasant a listen as you can get from electronic music. ‘undefined season’ heads indoors to a log cabin, away from the biting cold outside and snuggles up next to a warm crackling fire. the sounds are similarly warm and vintage sounding (this time more like john roberts production) and the beats thud that bit firmer. closer ‘signals’ heads back outdoors, laying the first footsteps in freshly fallen snow as a few tiny flakes continue to fall, reflecting the crystal clear blue sky all around them. various harmonies ring out as slinky cymbals roll, and the whole thing sings like an orchestral arrangement. that there is a full length of this to come – also on löffler’s own ki records – is a tantalising prospect indeed.

listen/buy it

impressive young label fullbarr has managed to pull off a masterstroke here. not only has it managed to coerce a rare new single out of classic records boss luke solomon, but so too has the bradford imprint secured some high profile remixes in the form of micro-house man losoul and perlon associate kalabrese. what’s more, the nonstandard house results are as pleasing in your ear as they sound on paper…

the titular track is first up and is characterised by many layers of different wavy lines… bass, drums, horns, melodies and dark spoken words all weave around each other to form a thick liquid groove. the percussion seems tropical where the bottom end is a little more menacing, and it’s that duality that keeps you locked from start to finish as the whole thing subtly shapeshifts right in front of you. there’s also a more twisted, freaky version also supplied by solomon: this time the synths are untethered, allowing them to reach out through the arrangement in all directions and thus make for something more paranoid, sinewy and sleep deprived than the original.

kalabrese gets intimate with his version, drawing you in with a more prominent melodic and meandering bassline and what sounds like distant gregorian chanting. it’s imbued with a subtle funk as each little element dances and dangles in its procession from start to finish, where losoul rather forces his version burrowing underground with gnarled bass and shinier drums. overall, a disparate and dynamic package.

listen/buy it

anyway, all this was enough for me to track down the man behind the music and ask him a few questions. read on for plenty of juicy insight…

so have you actually got tourettes? i saw you’ve done a track for tourettes hero? explain the name if you can…

i like a lot of edits and detail in my tracks, things that only appear once or twice and also an air of unpredictability, or a wild streak, so the name came from those ideas. i thought it made sense to relate the two as tourettes. audio tics if you like. tourettes hero got in touch as they’d heard some of my music and asked me if i wanted to make a track using tourettes hero’s tics. so i was very honoured to work on that track.

next fact check – are you from bristol or norfolk or what?! how long have you been in either of those cities and where did you grow up?

i was born in norwich and grew up on the north-suffolk border out in the country in a little hamlet called blyford, which is close to southwold (famous for adnams beer and overpriced beach huts). it was a great place to grow up. for one thing i could make a shed load of noise thanks to my very understanding mother. i had 10k of sound-system in my back garden on my 19th birthday, which was a slight error on my part, as it turned out the village didn’t like techno on 45. (once again sorry about that noise abatement mum x). i came to bristol in 2002 to study creative music technology at bath spa uni. so i’ve been here 10 years and i love it.

so when did you first start listening to electronic music? what sort of stuff? how did you come in contact with it?

my late brother was a break dancer when electro was in its infancy so the crucial electro tapes were the first electronic music i heard. prince’s ‘sign of the times ‘ was also a big record for me as a nipper. when i was about 10 my mate’s older brother gillon used to go to the fantazia and universe raves so i remember hearing the jungle and hardcore rave packs he was playing. i’m a drummer so hearing the frenetic jungle rhythms sounded totally bonkers to me, though i had no idea of the context it was being played. i got into drum and bass in my early teens, djs like ray keith and ed rush so started going to nights and buying it.

it wasn’t till i by chance ended up at an outdoor norfolk rave on an airfield that i heard techno and fell in love with it. it was a classic uk rave experience in every sense. at that time it was acid techno’s heyday (when it still had acid lines in it) stuff like rowland the bastard, guy the geezer, cluster records, smitten, routemaster, boscaland… really banging, savagely deranged acid techno was what i ioved when i was 15 (and still have a soft spot for to be fair!). a little later i got into more bassy, swung techno like cristian vogel, neil landtsrumm and si begg. i used to go to dragon discs in camden when jerome hill worked there, so he put me on to all that stuff. i got (back) into electro about a year after that thanks to my friend james elston who ran a sound system called molotov, which i later became part of. world electric, ur, electrix records, satamile and so on.

and when and why did you decide “i want to dj/produce this stuff?”

very soon after going to that rave. some mates and i were in a band prior to that but we all switched up pretty much instantly. i got decks and bought an atari, emu sampler and korg m1 and started attempting to make techno of some description. my dad’s a musician so making music was certainly encouraged (though he still says to this day he wanted me to be a doctor which is absolute bollocks.)

how long were you making music before you sent it out, and where did you send it? how long after you started did the release with ‘blim come on aus last year?

i started making electronic music when i was 16 (i’m 28 now). i was very nervous about sending stuff out when i started and didn’t really have the confidence to do so for many years. even now i don’t like sending stuff out unless i’m completely happy with it. in 2006, while i was working at chemical records i sent some tracks to neil sir real who ran a label called [k]racktroni[k]. he loved them so put out my debut ep called bodies collide.

and how did you end up working with him? you did so again on the bowman remix for glass table, right? what do you like about that collaboration?

we met at a house party in bristol and quickly became friends through our shared passion for techno. he’s a really good mate and though historically we’ve come from different places musically, we tend to agree on how things should sound. he’s a bass player, i’m a drummer which i think certainly helps us work together coming from a live music background. we generally have the rhythm section pretty much locked.

was it then a conscious decision to do something on your own? ie this new base ep? how different was it working on your own?

as i said i’ve been making music for a long time so it wasn’t really a case of deciding to do stuff on my own, more a case that the work with laurie had been happening more regularly which meant my own productions took longer to finish.

in the year between the aus and this new base, your sound seems to have veered more toward… dunno; electro and idm? is that fair and was it on purpose or…?

i think there’s always been more than a hint of those styles in everything i’ve done so far and so to some extent it’s a continuation of those themes. nevertheless i can’t say i’ve ever really felt i fitted into one particular genre so your ra review hit the nail on the head for me. the aus release was mine and laurie’s first proper collaboration that wasn’t a remix, so we wanted to try something different and combine our styles.

do you feel you’ve found your groove with this release or will future stuff be different again?

i try to experiment all the time and like to think i don’t have too much of a formula when i’m writing music but i guess there will always be an electro / psychedelic funk influence in anything i do in the future.

what did you want to achieve with it? did you have aims to start with or is the ep just results of studio experimentation?

each of the tracks were inspired by different events. for instance ‘badger’ was written in a hotel room in manchester after i played there for wigflex (top bunch). i wrote it initially just using the laptop speakers while my girlfriend was trying to sleep (unsuccessfully). i thought the bass line sounded like a badger rummaging around in the dark. a bit of an outcast, but ultimately a badboy. so i thought it would be a good counter point to the intensity of the title track swan sketch, which was originally an idea for the club scene in black swan. universed started off as more of an experiment, seeing how far i could push a simple repeating phrase using various studio tools…

do you have goals or underlying things which tie all you do together do you think? are you always aiming for something or do you work more freely, ad hoc and loosely than that?

though there is a common thread in my music i often approach a track as a separate entity in itself. i like to explore the sonic potential of most of the sounds i use and not have too many static parts so things are ever changing. which means the outcome is of course going to be different depending on the palette, rhythm that i’ve chosen. despite this my ultimate goal is always to retain the funk element whatever i’m approaching. or if not that then a complete mind-melt of some description!

so you did some music for black swan – is it something you’d like to do again, film scores, do you think? did you do anything different when making a track for the film to making a normal 12”?

i’d love to do more film work. people have said my music often has a certain filmic quality, so of course i’d like to expand on that idea by doing more soundtracks. it’s a completely different discipline to working on personal projects. there’s a hell of a lot more towing and fro-ing for one thing which can be quite intense at times. in that respect the track i did changed a lot from it’s original inception as the brief changed gradually. recently i’ve contributed some music for a forthcoming graphic novel ipad app called ‘the heretic of ether’, which was written and produced by raz mesinai (who’s also the musician badawi). it features music from kode 9, space ape, falty dl and sepalcure amongst others, with voiceover by mary anne hobbs.

you’re also famed for your live show – can you tell us about it? how long did it take to devise, how often does it change, what are you actually in control of?

i’ve been using ableton for some time now so i started building the live set around 5 or 6 years ago. i also use a roland spd-s sampling drum pad for drumming over loops that i’ve built up. at first i was somewhat limited by computer power so couldn’t control as many things as i would like. now i have a whole load more power i can do a lot more real time control of synths etc so there’s many more variables. for instance, a jam might have 2 or 3 synths that i’m tweaking, along with 8 or 9 loops while i’m improvising hits on the drum pads around them. it takes a long time to build initially and can be quite laborious at times bouncing endless stems and midi parts, but it’s worth it. aside from being an excellent way to test out new material much of the music in the set will never be made into full tracks so it definitely keeps things fresh.

what else you got coming up/are you looking forward to? (that sneaker social ep ready yet?!)

yes the sneaker social club record is coming out in feb/march, as well as a remix i’ve done for a new slovenian producer called bownr on ricochet records. the tracks called water & fire. i’m currently working on an ep for schmorgasbord records which is a split ep with german producer paradroid, who i’ve been a fan of since the days of his work with s-max on boogizm records. i’ve also got a remix i’ve done with appleblim of raudive which will be out later in the year on us imprint halo cyan.

i wonder if you feel more pressure now you know people are listening? does that enter the head when writing/producing?

no not particularly. getting bogged down with other people’s expectations isn’t really the best vehicle for creativity. i do feel a personal pressure to keep things interesting. it may seem very obvious but my dad has always said you have to love what you’re doing first and foremost, otherwise how can you expect other people to like it. though weirdly enough, there are times when you find that a track you may not have thought was all that at first people go nuts for, as opposed to the original track on a record. i think it’s a case of presenting people with different moods and leaving it up to the listener to decide.

in fact what does enter your head? are the sounds you make affected by the day you’ve had, where you write etc, or do they come from a more deep seated, ingrained and internal place?

what enters my head? hmmmm – a long list of totally unprintable memories and wild and savage hallucinations? no, i like music to transport me somewhere else, be it a swamp full of toxic decaying flesh, trash compacting combustion chambers or some medieval jazz-funk utopia etc…. so a lot of what i think about while writing music relates to my imagination and what i visualize and not just my musical influences. it’s not all totally abstract by any means but i like to have an essence of travelling somewhere.

finally, who are you day to day? do you do music full time or?

yes i do music full time. though i take my time doing it. i love cooking and eating food. i take inspiration from it. in fact i mainly watch the good food channel on tv. it’s amazing.

‘the middle of’ is less busy but more twisted. the serene and reflective swirls of ‘jx2’ have been replaced with taught, spangled synth lines as a knotted bassline pries menacingly below. at the core of the track is a mesh of what sound like tensile wires and cables that get repeatedly pinged and twanged from start to finish. raw but warm, it’s a taught ride where closer ‘into the wilde’ starts much more downbeat.

lazy kicks and heavily dusted, shuffling drums start things off before a downtrodden guitar riff beings to loop over and over. it’s a muggy, claustrophobic affair until some starry keys add distance and the mood grows reverential. until, that is, a deep acid line makes its entrance, at which point the track seems to sit upright and bounce to a less sombre beat. the thing forever seems to shape-shift, achieving more in 3:48 than many producers do in a lifetime. fans of boo williams, virgo four et al… this one’s for you.

listen/buy it

that said, the man known to his mother as andrew cook is about to release a new ep on lukid’s nascent but excellent glum label. this one finds him operating in a fuller world of sound, it’s still dishevelled and dusty, but techno and house seem to be the starting frameworks in stead of beatless hip-hop or anaemic r&b. it’s great, frankly, and so when it landed i was glad i’d already bugged him for a mix.

and so to teshcast p, a 45 minute mix recorded on tape which is as roughly put together as you like. tracks start and stop randomly (and in fact the thing starts with a trippy tape squeal as if it’s getting chewed up by the machine – a nostalgic sound people of a certain age will know/love/hate well) whilst at times there are simply large voids of tape hiss and the whole thing is rather dreamy and hypnagogic, jumping from here to there like a broken stream of conscious in your most tired moments. it’s one you need to listen real close to, on a sunday morning or late at night; one you need to allow yourself to dissolve into and swim around in. missing track titles are either unknown or samoyed isn’t allowed to share them, so sit back and enjoy…

my wife-to-be wants to know if you are named after this stupid cute dog?

yeah, i am. i came across a couple of them in a forest in sweden and that was me infatuated.

i want to know why you are so brooding nowadays? according to the new glum pr you used to be a happy chap? what changed?

ha. i don’t want to negate glum’s carefully constructed image of its roster, but i’m generally happier now than i have been for a long time. or at least more balanced. the last year has been a rough one for all sorts of reasons, the big ones being coming out of a relationship after the best part of a decade and my dad spending a long time in hospital really quite ill. i went in every day for a couple of months expecting him to die. it’s a cliché, but it made me reassess my life and realise who and what is important, and i’m really very lucky to still have those.

is it really you? or is it, as bill hicks might have said, the “tortured artist dollar” you are going for?

there’s definitely some of me in there, but a lot of it is just me finding it funny, compounded by my friends goading me into playing up to it. it’s just always been in my personality to be self-deprecating and make fun of the personality traits that i know are ridiculous but that i can’t stop. i’m not sure if everyone else sees it that way. i’d hope that people don’t think the internet me is the real me. it’s just 4thelolz.

what or who makes you most angry?

it would be unseemly to say in a public context.

do you use music making as a way to vent anger, or does it make you angry, or do you make it to escape or?

not anger so much – it takes a lot to make me angry really (although i realise the last couple of weeks directly contradicts that). i’d say that whatever comes out, though, is an expression of how i’m feeling at that point. which is mostly sad and/or hungry.

you recently tweeted that everything you’d made for weeks was shit – how do you know? what are you aiming for? is it just a feeling?

yeah, it’s a feeling. i’m looking for something that resonates with me, and nothing i did was.

are you out of that rut? how did you get out?

one day i just did something that worked and that was that. i realised that for me it’s all about having an idea before i sit down, no matter how vague, otherwise i’m just fumbling around in the fog and that’s just frustrating.

when did you write this new glum ep? it sounds quite full and housey /techno-y for you… do you listen to such sounds? it always hard to pick influences out of your stuff…

yeah, i listen to a huge amount of house stuff. it’s the people that make dance music with a real emotional depth that i really admire though – larry heard is the biggest that springs to mind. there’s real beauty there. i think ultimately that’s what motivates all the music that i do. i know i sound like a bellend but it’s true.

are you happy with it now you look back? would you change anything?

i tend not to listen to my own music that much once i’m reasonably satisfied that it’s finished. i’ve got to leave it alone for the sake of my sanity. i’ve had some really lovely feedback from people that i respect, though, and that means i’m happy with it.

so about your apparent love of knackered old sounds – why is that do you think? where does it come from? does it take ages to get them sounding so knackered?

i just think there’s something special in sounds that don’t have that gloss that pervades so much music at the minute. it sounds like it’s never left a computer until it goes to get mastered, and i’m not into that. i try to get as much of the outside world in there as possible.

mostly though, it’s just a function of me being an absolute idiot technically. i haven’t got a clue about engineering and mixing down and stuff, but i’m quite happy with that. i’d rather things sounded like samoyed than like some studio-obsessed borderline autistic johnny mixdown type.

so you seem pretty tight with lukid – you seem to like being obtuse and miserable together – is that fair?

luke is a very good friend of mine. he’s a very funny, warm person and he just happens to make some of the finest music around. he’s got just about the most finely tuned sense of sarcasm and self-deprecation i’ve ever come across though. we’re certainly not miserable people, we have great fun. there’s a really great little community of music folk that hang round together taking the piss out of each other in a very supportive way. i think it’s very healthy.

did you finish your phd yet? did you do it with a view to a career in the field, or with a view to not having to get a proper job after uni?

yeah, it’s in product design. i did it as an apprenticeship more than anything, the chance to learn how to be a proper designer from someone i really respect. design is definitely the other love of my life apart from music.

do you have any goals? will you push to do music full time or?

i’m in the fortunate position of being able to do two things that i really love, problem being that i make barely any money out of either at the minute. as long as i can keep doing both and getting by, though, i will. i teach undergrad product design students at the minute which is great fun and pays the bills. but yes i think i need to make some plans and work my life out…

would you ever compromise your sound to get gigs, releases, fame, blow jobs, whatever? sure everyone would say no but if offered a deal on, say, defected that could keep you out of an office job… would you be able to justify it?

if i thought i could i wouldn’t have any problem with it at all. but i don’t think i have the skill or detachment to make music other than the music i make – whatever comes out comes out. i’d give it a bloody good shot for some decent coin though. are you offering? i want 50 quid at least.

do you think all the constant chatter about dance music is ok? the reviews, the categorising, the hype, the backlash, the pseudo intellectual debates, the hardcore fucking continuum? do you give a shit?

i’d love to say that i don’t give a shit, but i care deeply about what people think. of course i do. it’s difficult not to get sucked into considerations of how your music will or won’t fit into that landscape – will it sound tired already by the time it comes out? i think there’s a lot of very earnest people motivated by a deep love of music writing about things, and some of them have said some very nice and on-point things about me. it’s just a shame that it’s so difficult to navigate that over-crammed space.

to be honest, it’s the ‘big’ writers that get to me, the ones that over-intellectualise everything and write impenetrable prose littered with references to a million obscure artists you’ve never heard of. i fucking hate the wire generally. i know writing about music is difficult, but stop treating it as an exercise in showing your own intellectual faculties for fuck’s sake.

tell us a bit about the mix, your aim and why you did it on tape…

there’s a lot of music out there just now that i think shares some sort of aesthetic, but that wouldn’t fit into a ‘mix’ as i’d normally do one (two decks and a mixer). mostly it all just strikes a chord with where i’m at just now. i love the sound of tape so much, and it just seemed to fit with the music. also rather than trying to beatmatch i could just press stop and record when i got bored of something. that was nice.

want to big up anyone or anything else?

oh lots of people, but i’m trying to do that on a personal level. suffice to say i am very lucky to have the people around that i do.

finally, what do you look for in a good jumper?

good question. i don’t think you can separate out the components of a good jumper – fit, material, colour and pattern all coalesce into a perfect whole. you’ll know it when you put it on. stop searching. it’ll come to you.

listen below or download teshcast p ~ samoyed

tracklist:

1991 – reborn ice horn
? – ?
theworld – ᑸᕔԇᕔԃ҂ϟѯ⇜ ̵̷̡̃́̓ͭ̐̓͜͜ ̵̡ͦ͐̿ͦ̓̅ͯ̄ͨ҉́⇝ใไใ
? – vhs generation loss
inga copeland – trample
oval – happyend
ross 154 – til my heart stops
1991 – open to the dark
? – ?
jhene aiko – stranger
samoyed – a small good thing
lil noid – death row
? – ?

freeing itself somewhat from the dry and pristine minimal palette of the first two tracks, this one gets loose, bouncing along a nice house beat as classic hi-hat ringlets race alongside. some buried-in-the-mix vocals keep things human sounding, whilst woody hits and scattered drum fills thunk satisfyingly each bar, keeping you firmly locked onto the groove at all times. the filsonik remix of the same tune is just as groovey, though this time there’s a pleasing us garage shuffle to the drums and perc.

for his part, circoloco’s andrew grant re-visions ‘44’ as an eerie tribal tool with loud shakers, mysterious, distant synths and a raw, primeval groove. on this evidence both lilith and memoria are ones to keep an eye out for.

listen/buy it

anyway, next saturday he plays for one more in london at hearne street car park with bass culture boss d’julz, arnaud le texier and more. i was given the opportunity to ask him ten questions ahead of the event (more info and tickets at ra), so i did…

before you read the interview, you can win yourself a pair of tickets to the event simply by emailing kristan@teshno.com with a reason why you should win….

how did your sounds evolve last year? what were you feeling most, musically?

producing music for me is a very spontaneous thing. i don’t see any straight evolvement, i am just curious about almost every kind of music. on the dancefloor i am mostly feeling the tracks of smallpeople and friends right now. their last 12inches are the blueprint of nowadays deep house.

and how about the year for your label now you look back – how was it?

fantastic! lots of great releases and only exciting music. the roman flügel album is such a masterpiece!

you ended the year with two long tracks on pampa – what was the inspiration behind those?

i guess mostly dj koze himself and our tours including some magic back-to-back dj sets were the inspiration behind the kurama release.

any plans for another full length album at all?

always, but i am not in a rush. last year i thought of definitely 2012 as the year. now i am sometimes like- oh, maybe 3012..

what is the most important thing to you when producing, feeling or a technical thing or the groove or…?

producing is kind of deeply diving into sound and structure. the technical thing is not the main part of it.

and what should people expect from you in the club right now? do you know from one gig to the next or… is it more random?

playing at a club always starts a few days before, preparing the life set or my record case. at one point i am starting to feel it.

how often do you spend looking for new music and where? do you switch up the contents of your record bag very often?

i am always looking for new music, mostly at smallville record store hamburg. the content of my record bag switches almost every time i am going to play.

what else you got coming up/are you looking forward to?

i am always so excited about other friend’s music. the next album of christian naujoks on dial records is the best piano music ever. and i am very much looking forward to the albums of dj koze and smallpeople.

have you any plans or goals for 2012 musically?

12”s, a sweet remix for my friend superpitcher and jamming with an experimental jazz band with christian naujoks and richard von der schulenburg.

and what about outside of music?

arts, vacation, movies, books, forests, cooking, eating, drinking, no sports at all, antifascism, label work, gallery, love, life.

“twirl” is the first cut and is all about the booming, warped bottom end which rolls over and over whilst clattering claps are suspended above. there’s a nagging, prying chord stab buried deep within which only adds to the overall edginess, with rusty flashes and snapping whip sounds providing the detail, should you go looking for it.

“pinkman” is less focussed on repeatedly punching the same target and instead ranges around with nicely swung kicks and syncopated beats. interjecting at various intervals are synths which sound like gates being shut, rising and falling wood block hits and some far-off and slightly trance-y melodies, all of which coalesce into a rough, raw but rewarding groove. building in layers like this brings a nice sense of hypnosis which never lets up: potent and punchy, yes, but also sufficiently charming for you to want it to last forever.

listen/buy it

it’s appropriate, then, that heavyweight master martyn is called in for remix purposes. throughout his ‘electromagnetic mix’ of ‘flux’ there are ever-present, deep and typically monolithic kicks stabbing a pattern in the darkened depths as swirls of fizzing game boy melodies and an unintelligible female vocal dart across the surface of the whole tight, lurching and airy arrangement: it;s not techno nor dubstep nor pure bass, but a forceful fusion of the three.

sei a’s ‘break the pattern’ is next and comes over all angry, angst ridden and rave-y. between broken beats and fulsome kicks, serrated and saw-toothed synths shoot about betraying the emotional delicacy and hollow brittleness of much of this man’s past work. closer ‘jus appreciate’ is another bold, barrel-chested affair that bounces along a clipped and well swung groove as various vocal samples come in and out of focus as if you’re moving a radio dial up and down the scale without honing in on any one station. some icy hi-hat ringlets make it all the more dancey, urgent and beguiling, and the whole thing is made from a pleasingly non-standard palette in much the same way as is “flux”. this one has taught, laser-like synths skewering right through a heavy wood-block beat and muddled, grimy, rumbling sub bass. it all adds up to an ep with plenty to say, and a producer with the ever more diverse skills to say it.

listen/buy it

across its four tracks, the ep rewires house, acid and techno into fuzzy, mutant forms which are both dense but dancey. as such i was keen to speak to the man behind. little did i know, though, quite how fascinating the interview would be – some people work a life time in dance music and dont have this much to say, nor this much theory behind their work. it’s interesting and exciting to read, but all the more exciting will be following this man’s out put from here on in… i predict big (by big i don’t mean cover of mixmag big; i mean revered by underground heads big) things ahead…

introduce yourself to us…

hazylujah here! my real name is massimiliano vianello, i live in jesolo, a seaside resort near venice, there’s nothing here much in terms of music, but my city probably has inspired me… the sea in winter, the lagoon and his hazyness. and, you know, venice is a mystery city, these lands have a power, i feel it.

are you working on music full time or do you have a ‘proper’ job? (actually i see you are a freelance designer… can you tell us about that?)

i’m a full time music lover, i’ve worked for life on my love of music. also i work as a graphic designer for my own agency, but there’s no connection between the two activities, i see my job like a clean organization, with respect for some laws and overall it’s a business thing, hazylujah is the opposite. “my life is music and music is life.”

what music did you grow up around and how did you first come to electronic music?

i started to seriously consider music when i started work for the record shop in my city and the dance music was usually snubbed by the customers. this intrigued me and got me to search and start exploring electronic music, spending a lot of money on records, reading books and magazines.

the meeting with techno music has been enlightning as it has all the elements that get me out of my own head, and so the journey began…

what sort of stuff were you listening to and why did you like it?

oh, hard question.. i think i listened to 10 hours of music every day for 10 years at least (my job helps with this) and i’m certainly not only an “electronic music” listener.. i really listen to all styles, i’m too curious about music, i think this reflects on my dj sets, i’ve got too many records to only play a few limited styles.


when did you first think, ‘i want to make this stuff?’

i had built a “cultural agitator” called radiance records and after three years of battles in the field to bring the real electronic music to north-east italy. it was a battle lost from inside, so i thought that my energies had to be spent on my own productions. for more than two years i researched my sound, i didnt listen to any new records, i wanted stuff to come from inside me, in silence, and they were two years of strong relfections, travel within myself, for this reason the [new delsin] record is titled “too many ghosts.” it’s about the ghosts that turned up in my head when seeking the truth in me. my music don’t speak about music, hazylujah isn’t about this, it’s something else.

how did you hook up with delsin? not bad for early in your career!


delsin is definitely one of my favourite techno labels. when i had the ep ready in my hands, i sent only one demo and after that i decided i would not send another. i thought if the record was really good the first to hear it would publish it, and so i targeted where i wanted it to be published… luckily it worked out!

are you part of a scene in italy? is it healthy would you say? do you know many other producers or are you working alone?



i believe that in 2012 it’s inapproporiate to talk about scenes restricted to certain territories – there are no more boundaries and it is right to consider the path of an artist as a scene in himself. however, i don’t see any scenes in italy, i’m in contact with many italian producers, some of them are friends, but i consider hazylujah a closed project, very personal, not to be shared. it’s the result of a trip i made alone and alone it manifests… alone.


your music is fairly mature, tripped out and weird – what inspires that? is that things you like in art, film and other things too?

sources of inspiration can be found in the song titles and in the name, hazylujah, which is a compound… hazy + alleluia + jah. hazy is the fog between me and the others, alleluia is the elevation in music to god, while jah refers to my mixing tecnique, inspired by the dub mixes and above all basic channel, mixer + effects + overdubs. so “the hazylujah”, the catharsis of research, the moment of elevation, this is the final meaning, which is reflected in my sounds, the fact that the sounds are “trippy” and “weird” probably comes directly from this, but it’s not something intentional.

what are your goals when making music? a feeling, a beat, to make people dance or…?

robert hood said that a track isn’t techno if it has no grooves – i see many techno records which have forgotten this. for me the groove is really important.
techno is underground dance music, a concept that is precious for me, i believe in the groove and what that can generate – a thousand sounds in all directions.


what do you use to write your music? hardware or software and is that important?

i think hazylujah has nothing to do with the “hardware or software” thing, it speaks about other things. someone in detroit said “it’s about what’s inside”… i agree.

what else you got coming up/are you working on?

i’m currently working hard on the next ep, i think it will more groovy than ‘too many ghosts’ and, at the moment, more acidic. i’m going to analyze the groove under a microscope and put it in a microwave oven, i want to let the sounds burst.
then i’m going to pick up certain bits of my production, more house maybe. i have a lot of tracks like “second dance mania” style, it might be a side project, but they’re still in the construction phase. i’m in no rush… i think with music patience is a secret weapon.

what do you like to do outside of music?

i love nature, i love it in fall… i take my bike and run in the middle of lagoon, go to the final stop, take a moment and smoke a cigar watching the sun.. yes, it’s boring to read, but it’s real.