The borderless Italoboyz

The borderless Italoboyz

30 September, 2009 | 4.51AM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: italoboyz, mothership

It was always clear from that opera sample, that the Italoboyz’ imagination stretched further than most. The lonely female soprana on 2007’s ‘Viktor Casanova’ helped introduce paradoxical samples to techno and house, a small spark ahead of today’s wacky sample furnace.

Irony and contrasts are everywhere now, but the Italoboyz were one of the first to cause surprise - and laughter - on minimal techno dancefloors with a beautiful curve ball, and with the release of the Italian duo’s debut album ‘Bla Bla Bla’, Marco Donato and Federico Marton have moved on, yet again.

This time there are no bizarre samples, because the pair created their own strange and exotic musical flourishes from scratch by recording live jam sessions with musicians.

Donato explains from his studio in London, how the pair arrived at their debut album.

What did you want to achieve with your debut album?

We had no intentions when we made it, I don’t really know what we wanted. We just want to see what happens.

Mothership’s label boss convinced us to do an LP a year ago, but we didn’t feel ready to do it at that point. We didn’t just want to collect seven or eight tracks and stick them on a CD. The goal was to try and find a music dimension for the album, a concise idea. And I think we have found that with this record.

So what is the music dimension of ‘Bla Bla Bla’?

To my ears, it sounds a lot different to what we’ve done in the past. The music we did before this LP, you could tell it was Italoboyz, but ‘Bla Bla Bla’ takes our music to another level, we hope!

There are more musical elements, more organic drums, and a lot more live parts, because every track on the album - all of the musical parts on them - were played by musicians. Every bassline, every drum hit, every piano line, was played by a musician. We hardly used any samples at all.

Why didn’t you play the musical elements yourselves?

We don’t really play instruments, but I am trying to learn bass guitar at the moment - actually after our chat I have to go to a bass guitar lesson.

Do you hope to be able to play guitar in your live sets too?

Eventually maybe, but for the moment I would be happy to be able to reproduce some of the simple basslines that are running about in my head.

I want to be able to play live bass, and record it for our tracks. The bottom line is, to make a nice groove, you only need a simple bassline, which is a normally just a combination of two or three notes which work well together.

So which musicians did you use for the album? What were the recording sessions like?

We hired musicians and collaborated with friends, some people we knew and some we didn’t. We paid some of them to come to our studio and jam.

We always gave them a direction, a base that was our initial idea for the track, and then they started playing around and we recorded what they came up with. We did loads of sessions, hours and hours of recordings, and what you hear on ‘Bla Bla Bla’ is just the tip of the iceberg really.

Even though you say this record is a new sound for you, I can still hear Italoboyz in there. For instance, your music is quite timeless and you can’t really tell what era it is from, and the musical flourishes are global.

For me, one of my biggest aims is to deliver music that is timeless, without following any trends.

For the last few years, club music has been affected by too many short-lived trends. First there was minimal, now there’s deep house, and the sounds are too short lived.

We’ve never been into trends, and instead we try to create something that is our representation of music. It’s always designed for the club though.

For the musical parts we actually took great care making them unique.

Like what?

On ‘Where Is London’, which we made with Masomenos, the piano line was elaborated and we did some tricks with the piano strings to make the piano sound like a guitar.

It sounds like you went the extra mile creating these musical elements.

Everything was played live. There are no samples. There was a lot of editing and re-working, arranging, and splicing. It takes a lot of time to work with big musical parts.

So how do you two work in the studio?

We don’t actually share a studio and work mostly separately. He has his studio, and I have mine. We usually start everything independently, and then when we have one loop, or a track that’s already coming together, at some point we meet up, and we swap projects.

We go back to our own studios, and then keep what the other person has done, or change it up and give it a little something extra. This is how we work and there has only been a couple of instances where we were both in the studio together.

That’s very strange, considering you’re a duo. Why don’t you share studio space?

We both need absolute control of our studio environment. When a groove is building in front of you, you have to interact immediately with the machines to get whatever ideas you have straight from your mind. Neither of us can sit there and watch somebody else build the groove.

And so far so good. And actually, there are quite a lot of other duos that do it like this too. You see duos presented to you in clubs, but you never really know how these duos work together. Sometimes there is one guy who produces and one who DJs, or one who is more of a studio guy, and one who is more of a business guy.

In our case, we are both music producers and 90% of the productions we’ve released wouldn’t have existed without the contributions of either person. It could be starting the track or finishing it off, but there’s always a strong imprint from both of us on an Italoboyz track.

On ‘Bla Bla Bla’, the musical elements and soul is very global - there’s jazz, funk, blues, classical, techno - you guys have no boundaries?

The music we do represents the diversity of our music tastes. We don’t put any limits on our sound. We take grooves seriously, but we like to keep things simple and more often then not, a bit silly and humourus.

We don’t like music when it gets too serious. We don’t like stress, we like it funky and approach our studio sessions very spontaneously.

Of course, we are serious about what we do, but we have a pretty easy approach to making music. There are no predetermined rules or styles.

The Italoboyz is certainly a fun sound. Your ‘Viktor Casanova’ track had an amusing opera sample.

That was the biggest track we did, and it was done without any purpose. We didn’t sit down and say, right let’s make a big track with an opera sample.

We were just making music for fun, and it happened to turn into a big club track.

Is that how ‘Bla Bla Bla’ was made?

That’s how all our music is made. We just let things go, and they come automatically. The sound of this LP, is just the sound of ideas unfolding. It’s the right person at the right moment.

I can’t explain how we ended up with this LP - we didn’t decide to take things more musical, it was just a natural evolution. To play with musicians and record real music is the next level for us as producers. It’s not just about making simple club tracks.

Do you think the goal of most electronic music producers is to get more musical?

Perhaps. This might sound weird, but I think we are practically beginners, musically. There are a lot of real musicians out there and I would love to see how they create music and melodies.

For now our music is still aimed at the clubs, because making music just for pure listening is very hard. Maybe that will come later.

Why did you team up with the French guys Masomenos?

We decided to collaborate with them as we are huge fans. Their music is genius - so simple, but innovative.

I think it’s a real evolution for electronic music, and ever since hearing them, I’ve wanted to work with them.

The way our collaboration turned out was pretty amazing. The process was super simple and smooth. It only took one studio session, and then a little bit longer to polish and add some final details. It was really wonderful working with them, as tracks don’t always fall into place like that.

How come?

There are days when you play around a lot but nothing good comes out. In general we are very slow producers, I think.

I know there are some guys that can do three tracks in one day, but that’s impossible for me. We have to feel the track, really feel it, whilst we’re making it. Then we always play our tracks out, and test the grooves to see how they work.

We have to feel them and we need the dimension of the crowd.

It sounds like your studio sessions are pretty intense.

Yeah, they can be. I haven’t opened a sequencer for almost a month since the album was completed. I had to completely switch off from making music after the album was finished.

We definitely felt the pressure of our first album. It had to be perfect, and after we finished it, it was a big sigh of relief.

Ahhhh, time to reset. Now ideas are starting to flow again, and I’m almost ready to begin making tracks again.

Marco Donato’s guide to ‘Bla Bla Bla’

‘Where Is London’ feat. Masomenos

Marco Donato: “We’ve played ‘Where Is London’ a lot in our sets. It’s very deep, and works nicely on the floor.

It’s not peak time, but when we play a three hour set it’s perfect to bring down the energy and if timed right, it kills it!”

‘Techno Tower’

“Well the name says it all,” says Marco. “It’s a pretty straight forward groove, and a good DJ tool that does what it’s supposed to do. We had fun making this one.”

‘Oh Mio Dio’

“We played around with the piano line on this a lot, but the track is still pretty techno and works well on the floor,” says Marco.

‘Edo Breiss’

Donato: “‘Edo Breiss’ is very funky and quite housey, with a cool sax line. It’s been one of the biggest tracks for us in our sets.”

‘L’Anagramme’

“Originally I thought L’Anagramme was a good club track, but I realised after playing it many times that it is probably better suited for listening,” says Marco.

“It’s a very musical piece and quite deep, and one of my favourites from our album.”

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