Introducing: Matisa

When the Italian house DJ and producer was coming up, Matisa had no community around her. But with the release of her debut album, she plans to change that.

Alice Austin
9 min •
Jan 27, 2025
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Isabella Erculei (aka Matisa) doesn’t do anything by half measures. If she’s going to do something, she’s going to be the best at it, which is why you’ve probably been hearing her name a lot recently. She’s spent the last three years touring and releasing relentlessly, and now with the release of her debut album In My Head on Seth Troxler’s Slacker 85 imprint, you’re about to hear a whole lot more of her.

Today, Matisa's chatting from her home in Milan. Her hair is pitch black and pulled back, and she wears the usual black eyeliner with perfect flicks. She sits on the sofa, relaxed, chatty, and open, more than happy to share the intricacies of her unusual journey.

Most people know Matisa as the creator of transportive, emotive house tracks, like 2024’s Incantesimo on Permanent Vacation or 2023’s Tongue on Gudu Records. But before that, she was a classical pianist.

“I was five when I started playing piano,” she says. “I was just taking private lessons, and then my mom bought me a piano in my house so I could train. I was doing performances at the end of the year, and then I started at the conservatory.”

By the age of 10, Matisa was playing organ, piano, and oboe. She compares that time of her life to being in the military: “You wake up, you train and train, then you perform, then you go back home, and you train.”

But Matisa’s piano career was short-lived. The conservatory was a two-hour drive away from her father’s work and he couldn’t make the journey four times a week. “My other big passion was football, so I focused on that and I reached professional level,” she says modestly, mentioning only when prompted that she played for one of Italy’s most prolific women’s football teams, AC Perugia Calcio.

“It’s always the same,” she says laughing, referring to her work ethic.

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Matisa's entry point into electronic music was through Crystal Castles and Grimes, but when she started going to raves at the age of 18 she was drawn to the music rather than the partying. “There was this little club I went to called Neutra, near Rome,” she says. “They played house and techno and booked people from Club der Visionaire and DC10.”

When Matisa moved to Perugia to study Political Sciences, she committed every waking hour to excelling in her studies, and playing music became a distant memory.

Then one day, a teammate asked Matisa if she wouldn’t mind looking after a package for a few months while she traveled.

“Inside there were two turntables, a mixer, monitors, and then I just started buying records,” Matisa says. “I asked DJs to teach me but no one was into it. But I think to be a DJ there is a deep connection that can’t be taught."

Matisa turned her relentless work ethic to the turntables. She spent days mixing one record into another, connecting with this instrument in the same way she connected with the piano. “I think leaving the conservatory was a trauma,” she reflects. “I was 13, at that age where you’re growing up, and DJing felt like a way to heal that.”

She practiced religiously for 7 months before landing her first gig at Neutra in 2013. “I was mixing vinyl and was super focused on beat-matching the records perfectly to not mess up my show,” she says. “I remember the stress I felt to prove myself, but the party was amazing, so everything went well, but I still have this feeling before I play.”

Matisa felt strongly that she was providing a service. “I always want to be ready for my crowd, so I study,” she says. “I want to show you that I did my job. It's like when you do an exam and you don't study, and you try to improvise. My approach is I study and I improvise.”

Matisa still practices for hours on end, and when she experiences a magical moment she’ll repeat it until it becomes second nature. “Then you can present that little moment you had at home to your crowd, and it's gonna be way more special,” Matisa says. “And I know that in my head and my heart, it’s gonna work.”

Slowly but surely, Matisa’s reputation grew. “Someone noticed me and brought me to Rome, then Puglia, and then I built my career step by step,” she says.

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But her journey wasn’t easy, and she wished she had a community to help her along the way. “If you’re playing Rome, you’re playing Rome. No one’s going to call you from Milan,” Matisa says. “In Italy, every DJ is going by himself, so everyone is doing their party and if you ask them to play, they put you at the beginning.”

The turning point came when she learned to produce. After her debut EP Organza came out in 2019 on Optimo Music, she noticed an immediate change in her bookings. “This helped me so much because people were finding my name in record stores,” she says. “But I don't want to say that to be a DJ, you need to produce music because this is not correct.”

Soon after that release, she met Jackmaster, who invited her to play in Glasgow. “I hadn’t performed with bigger artists before, and it showed me how important community is,” she says. “I missed all of that in my past.”

Amongst all this, she was plugging away at a career in fashion in Milan. But music kept pulling at her heartstrings. “I had a great time, but going there every morning from 8:00 AM until 6:00 PM... it wasn’t what I wanted to do,” says Matisa. “I wanted to wake up, listen to music, make tracks, tour. So in 2021, I left.”

Once Matisa went all-in with music it was impossible to ignore her. With the productivity levels of Bill Gates, she spent the next two years either in the studio or on the road, releasing music on powerhouse labels like Permanent Vacation, Biologic Records, Dischi Autunno, Butter Sessions, On Loop, and Steel City Dance Discs. She bulldozed the European festival and club circuit, playing iconic venues like DC10, fabric, and Panorama Bar.

In 2023 her Tongue EP on Peggy Gou's GUDU Records won her thousands of fans, and her Cuddle EP on SOS Music thousands more. She kicked off 2024 with her Baby Disco EP on Jennifer Cardini's Correspondant label, followed by Notte Paradiso, a collaboration with Italian producer Volantis, followed by two singles on Future Classic.

“My release on GUDU Records and Moxie’s On Loop label gave me the mark – like, yeah, okay, this girl is going places,” she says. But one particular set last summer changed everything."

“Lost Village made me realize that I need to be in environments where I can see the beauty of the production,” she says. “This crowd was educated, and I could express myself the way I wanted. And now this is my priority.”

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Matisa is committed to recreating this in her shows and her productions, starting with her debut album released on January 31st.

The LP is called In My Head because she had the entire project mapped out long before it became tangible. “This album means a lot to me,” she says. “It came from a deep need to turn everything swirling around my head into music.”

She began work on it two years ago and says that every city, DJ, and artist she encountered has had an influence on the album. Across seven tracks Matisa explores the full range of her influences, from disco in Italy to techno in Berlin to house in Ibiza. These tracks are versatile. They make sense on Tomorrowland’s main stage, fabric’s second room, or Amnesia’s terrace.

Matisa uses her lyrics and vocals on several tracks, exploring a variety of themes and mediums. The atmospheric opening track “Fuite” is a reflection of how art, technology, and nature can intertwine in a way that sparks new ideas, while “1234 Bisous” captures the bittersweet end of a love story as a new one begins. “My Healing” was inspired by her Lost Village set, and “Love Love” was written after three days of digging through record stores in Detroit.

And the final track, “The Beat,” was inspired by a musical journey in London. “There’s a sense of emotion and nostalgia that I wanted to convey here,” Matisa says. "It’s a track that reflects both a moment in time and a feeling I wanted to share with my listeners. I wanted to close the album on a note that would leave you thinking with a bittersweet, lingering feeling.”

With In My Head, Matisa’s passion, skill, and creativity will leave fans both deeply satisfied and thirsty for more. And if her past track record is anything to go by, there’s no doubt she’ll continue to deliver.

Check out Matisa's debut album 'In My Head' on Beatport
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