Knowledge _ Interview with Dadub

That is terrible. Has it made you not want to invest your time again?

Giovanni: Yeah. Well, this is a very Italian way of doing things really. Haha. When I moved to Berlin and began to play with Daniele, I just thought I could use the same software, but instead of using ambient loops, I could use our drumbeats or atmospheres and their results inside our arrangements. After that, I thought I could reproduce the same functions and implement them in the Ableton plugins. In a way, what we do live is quite heavily derived from that part of my life. It really helps to expand the horizon of techno music, bringing sounds to the dancefloor that don’t work on an intellectual level, but on a physical level.

Daniele: For us our backgrounds and percussion are very important. It’s like you are on 2 levels when you play afterhours, one being the groove that you are building and the other is the communication with the dancing people. The mood and movement of the people influences our playing and how the intensity builds. It’s complex because its managed by our points of view and so it is logical, rational and everything must be formal; but it should just be a tool. It’s not the main inspiration of being a musician.

Yeah, it should be transparent. People don’t realise that any of this is happening to them, so well done (Starts clapping).

Daniele & Giovanni: Exactly! hahaha

Giovanni:  I don’t want people to focus on how I do it. I want them to be presented with a soundscape and enjoy it. As a consumer of music myself, I really don’t give a shit if you are using your mobile phone to make a track or drumming your fingers on a table. If I find it involving and interesting I love it. Even if you use the most expensive modular synth in the world and it sounds like shit, then I don’t care. It’s a tricky thing for producers because when you are learning how to use instruments. You don’t get the satisfaction with simple sounds because you know there is a really complex infrastructure behind it. That’s why you should never let your tools get the upper hand on your inspiration.

Wise words! Haha

When I was doing the review of the album, I thought that the general epic feeling of the music hinted at film soundtracks or commercial sound design. Is that something that you would ever consider? I can imagine your music working very well with visuals..

Giovanni: I would love to do it. I like when music and pictures go together. You can use music as a way to make the visual level more abstract. Perception is mainly based on vision. Our eyes are the main way we gather information from the world. If you can combine sound and vision in a way that sounds organic, you can use it as a way to look inside yourself. It’s really powerful and I’d love to work on something like that. When I compose a track, I really try to visualise something to build a scene or a soundscape. Like actors doing something in a certain space. Since I’ve been doing this, arranging a track has become much easier for me. Before that, I didn’t know how to build a complex arrangement from a simple loop. Now, it can take 50mins to arrange a track from the beginning to the end. The track with King Cannibal was really quick because the loops that Daniele and Dylan created were very visual for me. To build a story from those loops worked really well.

Daniele: It worked really well haha

Giovanni: If you listen to the arrangement, it’s not done in a classic way. It starts off with a heavy full beat at the beginning and then breaks down in a way that is not the classical way. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for years in techno. I wanted in a moment to stop time and go into slow motion, almost ambient and then go back inside the heavy beat. That track is the first time I managed to do this type of thing and make it sound natural.

Great. Well I’m definitely going to go back after this and listen to that track in a different way.