Playful is as Playful Does: In Conversation with Piezo

Talking with Luca (Piezo) is a bit like a crawl through Wikipedia with an excitedly distractible fact-lover: each sentence out of his mouth seems to spark a new neural connection, a new additional thing to say, which leads to something that needs some special emphasis. Information comes in clumps needing dozens of commas in order to be accurately transcribed, and there’s a characteristically cheeky twist in his voice which speaks volumes to his approach to music, DJing, and quite probably life.  

Piezo and I met years ago, when I was a student in Bristol: Clap! Clap! was in town, fairly fresh after releasing ‘Tayi Bebba’, and we bonded over sweaty drunken cigarettes on the street, having clocked our attempts to dance as exuberantly as the performer, and laughing at how far short we fell of his energy. 

Wading through the green-tinged smog of the university annals, I’d guess it was sometime around Piezo released ‘Antelope Swing’ on Subaltern in 2015, which was almost the last “pure” dubstep release that Luca released, just prior to him establishing his Ansia label and not long before he returned to Milan from South West England’s drizzly bass music cradle.

Since then, Piezo has become a producer associated with electronic music made by one with a wandering eye and a broad pool of influence: EPs for Wisdom Teeth, Idle Hands and No Corner tell of friends made and Bristol’s outcast-dub influences on the producer, while more recent material for the likes of Nervous Horizon, and his superb and wonky debut album ‘Perdu’ for Hundebiss, draw a more up-to-date line in the sand of his ever-developing sound. 

Piezo’s post-pandemic rise as a DJ probably owes something to a relatively internet-famous free-for-all masterclass in genre-swapping at Terraforma’s 2022 edition, which seems to have springboarded the Italian to play events like Rural in Japan, and haul in a brace of mixes for Crack, DJ Mag, and their esteemed ilk. 

As Ankali’s 7th birthday fast approaches, with Piezo stepping toe-to-toe with one of the most acclaimed DJs on the map today, CCL, on the Saturday afternoon in Planeta Za’s garden. Here, Piezo shares some insights into what makes him tick sonically, both in terms of his DJ sets and in his recent productions, his collaborative Cortex of Light AV project, and what we can expect from the birthday shindig’s most in-demand B2B.

Freddie: Ciao Luca! Really looking forward to seeing you back in Prague after you played here last, at a No Borders event in Ankali. I’m curious if you could give an update of things in the life of Piezo, what you’ve been up to lately, and let’s go from there?

Luca: Ciao! I’ve been working on music a lot: next EP and LP are nearly finished, and the first Cortex of Light album is done, and I’m working on a number of remixes and some tracks for compilations and other labels. By the end of May I’ll be done with these, but I can’t share it publicly right now. I’m also putting a focus on DJing at the moment. I’ve always been incredibly varied, in terms of BPM and genres I like to play, but I want to be more flexible, if that makes sense.

Is there some special focus to this new round of music you’ll be releasing? I’ve spotted a growing tendency in your recent sets, and some of the music released on Ansia lately, to lean towards the faster ends of the BPM spectrum.

What I’m trying right now is to find the next iteration of my sound. The [upcoming solo] album was partially born from that urge. I’m trying to convey a certain feeling — or many different feelings — without necessarily conferring to… uh… let’s say… “contemporary leftfield club music tools and paradigms”, haha!

The fast pacing thing, increasing the BPM, writing and playing fast music, is part of this. It reflects an urge that I think we all have, worldwide, in the sense that everything has become more tense. But at the same time [the music] must stay playful. And also be emotional. So what I’m working on now is to try and inject a little more emotion into things. And my forthcoming material is about that. Euphoria, nostalgia, ecstasy. Feelings, you know?! Which sounds a bit cliché, but I’ve tried my best not to be cliché in the sound.

Sounds really exciting, definitely feeling this tenseness lately and a bit of freaky fast music always seems to help. Moving on, it’s really nice to see Ansia becoming a real label, rather than just releasing your own music, like you did at the start of the label. Can you share anything you’ve got upcoming with the label?

So, Ansia is not yet a real label. Probably it isn’t ever going to be. So I do appreciate you saying “I see Ansia becoming a real label”… but it’s not. Haha! It’s still mostly a little outlet for me to quickly put out music on wax, basically. Reasonably quickly anyway. If I’m sitting on some tunes and I want them out in three, four months, I release it on Ansia, because it can take a lot longer — a lot — on other labels.

It’s still “me” centred, but when I hear something that incredibly resonates with my sound, I kinda steal it, and make it a part of the Ansia sound. If a track resonates with me, and if I include it in my DJ sets more than 10 times, I try to release it on Ansia. That’s pretty much the philosophy. If tomorrow I come out with something that I make in my studio that I really like, a solid dance tune, I will put it out on Ansia. That’s it probably, nothing really convoluted.

[The label] has a very specific sound, I think, not BPM constricted; it’s more an approach, to make music sounding in a certain way. Playful, but still banging. Playful, with some humour as well, with a good representation of the artist’s sound. The next Ansia is a split release from Unity Vega and me, and with a remix from Foodman.

Can you be a bit more exact with what you mean when you say “playful”? Seems to be an important word in Piezo’s vocabulary.

With playful I mean fun, of course, but also an attitude of ‘playing’, in the sense of like a game, with different elements and new combinations in the sound design and composition. So, you know, finding sounds, but also new interconnections, and new solutions in terms of arrangement and structure. It’s like playing with LEGOs really. That’s playful to me!

Split releases are a relatively rare format these days it seems! What was your motivation behind doing the next Ansia this way? I actually just caught the release in my promo pool, the Foodman remix is so great! He’s always such a fun and inspiring producer.

The motivation was just to find a new solution rather than the classic Piezo release, or Various Artists. So the split was another idea, and kind of a playful one, again. There’s this contrast between A-side and B-side: A-side is 85 BPM-ish, drum and bass meets reggaeton, while the B-side is more like footwork-ish vibes. So there’s A against B, and also me against Unity, trying to get a nice double intersection. The title of the EP, Imago, and the artwork as well, try to reflect this.

With the Foodman remix… yeah he’s a fucking legend and a big inspiration. It’s curious that he slowed things down, we had a very fast BPM base but he was like “ah, I’m gonna slow it down”… it’s that playful attitude again!

Perhaps I can segue thanks to the Japanese connection, from Foodman to the recent Fast Fists Fests various artists release on Ansia… You really picked a great batch of artists with Hassam Abou Alam, Oyubi and Y.a.M.A! There was something you mentioned in a recent interview that you did, this “Gorge” music movement in Japan, relating to Y.a.M.A and Oyubi. Can you share any more about this movement, and why you decided to release music from these people?

So, as far as I know, with the Gorge music thing, there’s 3 commandments: Use toms; Say Gorge; Don’t say “it’s art”. How can you not fucking love those guys?! That’s exactly some great Ansia vibes. It’s got to be techy, sound design savvy, playful, non-conventional, but still fucking… you know… groovy and banging.

Dialling back a bit to something you mentioned at the start: one of the things I wanted to ask you about was this Cortex of Light AV project — it looks insane from the clips I’ve seen lately! I really loved this 2 track EP, with Mushroom Temple Dub. Now, it seems, you’re very open about the people involved, but back on that page you’re quite secretive with the project, so I’m curious about the secrecy, if any?

So, there’s nothing mysterious about Cortex of Light. It’s me and two of my best friends from Milan, Aitch, Davide, and Primordial Ooze, Francesco. We’ve been friends since I moved back from Bristol and got involved in Macao [legendary Milanese underground venue + squat]. Since then we’ve been quite close, then we started making music during COVID. The background [of the project] is definitely very Macao influenced; it’s our spiritual home, although it’s not there anymore.

The good thing about Cortex of Light is that we took things very slowly, without any expectations of even releasing anything. It was just laptop jams in the studio, jamming all night, getting a bit high as well and blah blah blah! That was the vibe, and it’s been the same for a solid couple of years.

It was actually born as a project within Macao for a Saturnalia event — which was Macao’s festival — held at Berghain’s Säule just before COVID. [Berghain] asked us to do a premiere there, at their venue, with all-new projects, so we created combinations of people within Macao to produce new music and new live sets, so me, Francesco and Davide joined forces. So it was actually a very one-shot live thing, but we loved it so much, and when the lockdown came we took it as an opportunity to make music in the studio together.

That first liveset was just 40 minutes of drones and ambient, but during lockdown the vibe got more beat-oriented, but still weird and hypnotic and deep. I think it’s like this new slightly d’n’b influenced-ish vibe, with a definite techno approach, but the BPM is always around 160.

So what’s this bit on the Bandcamp page all about then: “No identification with actual persons, places, buildings and products is intended or should be inferred”? Getting playful again?

So there’s nothing mysterious about it, but we try to keep things as mysterious as possible… We don’t say much, there’s no Instagram profile, we don’t write anything. I think it works, especially when you have something to announce or show to the public. So far those three or four things that we’ve done, we’ve done really well, and with a great response. And the same thing goes for this new AV show, which I’m sure it’s gonna go well, because the video artist, Francesco Toscini, is just really talented (and another good friend of ours).

So, you said there is a new album on the way with CoL? I’m guessing most of the details are under wraps, but what can you tell us?

Yeah we’ve done a new album. It’s wrapped up, mixed, about to be mastered and it’s gonna be coming out soon, and we’re really happy about it. Weirdly, it’s way more melodic than you’d expect. So I like it. Relating to what I said before, about melodies and emotions, I think it makes a lot of sense to release it at this point in time.

So, besides having a lot of fun making music with your mates, what’s it like to collaborate with others on this project?

It’s good to make music with other people. Especially because Piezo has been a very solitary project. So this Cortex of Light thing helped me a great deal. It really helped me a lot to go back to my music and change things. It’s just different when you make music with other people, especially friends and if they are good at it (laughs)… you always constantly discover new things, new approaches, new methods. Even just the small things, the very small simple things, it’s so crucial. So I really like that. I’m very happy. I’ve also recently released a little collab EP with STILL on Hundebiss, which was again very fun to make. And there’s a lot more collaborative music to come out in the next future.

I was always curious to visit Macao… I saw a few videos on the URSSS channel from there — I’ve definitely rewatched the ASDA and Ossia b2b Miles Bokeh sets — and it looked like such a great spot. Besides Terraforma Festival events, I feel like I don’t see very much happening these days in Milan, which is weird for a city its size and significance?

With Macao dead there’s basically a huge void left. In terms of the magnitude — the physical magnitude, but also the spiritual one for the city — it will probably never be replaced. It actually killed the city’s vibes in some way, because there’s no big spaces left anymore for this stuff we love, let’s call it “experimental meets the dance music intersection”…

For good electronic music in general, there’s not much in terms of venues. This is a problem in Italy in general too but Milan, right now, has a huge problem from this point of view, huge. There’s lots of smaller spots. I have to mention my friends from C3, which is a tiny, comfy cosy place where more intimate events can happen. Together with them we have this thing, ARX (Ambient Rave Experience) which is a kind of ambient and abstract music event which we usually hold at C3, but also other improvised venues but yeah C3 is probably the only other space that kept the same mentality of Macao. There’s more historical, older occupied spaces, like Cox18 which of course have been crucial for the Milanese environment, but there’s a big, big, big need for new venues.

So, finally, since you’ll be going back to back with CCL, I wanted to ask about how you know each other, and if you’ve played together before?

Yeah the b2b with Ceci! I am really looking forward to it, it’s our first time. Ceci is by far my favourite DJ in the world. They’re probably… yeah not probably, definitely, one of the best. If not the best… they’re my favourite! So, to me, it’s an honour and a privilege to play with them. And it’s also a privilege to be friends with them. I got to meet them in Berlin at a Fitzroy party where I was playing a couple of years ago (promoted by another good friend of mine, Shy from 3XL). They enjoyed my set there and we’ve been in touch quite regularly since then.

You’re both now pretty well entrenched as anything goes kinda DJs (with class, of course!) and CCL has been getting a lot of well deserved respect and attention lately for their technique behind the decks. How are you feeling about the b2b? What kind of music can we expect?

I’m not really sure what we’re gonna do… Late afternoon slots can be tricky, but also very fun. We’re probably gonna go slow and fast at the same time. Tryna keep things…PLAYFUL, you know 🙂