Live music is something that brings us all together and really allows us to experience music in its purest and most raw form. The maestro of trance and label head for GO Music, Giuseppe Ottaviani has been bringing us his spectacular live performances for years now. With his ability to ‘wow’ the crowd each and every time he takes the stage, it’s for certain that an album based off these live performances would ‘wow’ his fans even more.
Through ‘EVOLVER’ – his upcoming fourth artist album, Giuseppe has sought to remove the producer/audience fourth wall down to its last brick. The album sees a swing back to Giuseppe’s instrumental origins, with maximum concentration placed on the power of the studio’s boxes. With no vocals to assist in the emotive support, it all comes down to his ability to summon the magic from within.
We had the opportunity to get a word in with Giuseppe Ottaviani himself and spoke about his forthcoming album, ‘EVOLVER’ and many other topics that are sure to be of interest to any ‘music lover’.
FMF: Lately, you’ve been dropping track after phenomenal track off your upcoming album, ‘EVOLVER’. The records that you’ve released so far from this album are mind blowing. How did you get inspired for each of these new tracks?
Giuseppe Ottaviani: ‘EVOLVER’ is a different kind of album. It’s something that hasn’t been planned in studio or anything. It just happened in a natural way. These are tracks born from my Live 2.0 shows during the past few years. Let me see if I can make a long story short.
My Live 2.0 setup allows me to create music on-the-fly while on stage or at the sound check or in my hotel room. I make simple melodies and add simple loops. All easy stuff that can be played live straight away, improvising a structure of the track, which is being performed live and so it sounds more like a demo than a polished finished track. I used to save the good ones and delete the not so good and I ended up having around 20 demos. Some time later I thought, well let’s turn these demos into a full studio production and the ‘EVOLVER’ idea was born.
I premiered the original demos live at the ASOT studio not long ago and soon you will see the “evolution” of these live tracks into their full studio production with the release of ‘EVOLVER’.
I’ve noticed that some of the tracks off of ‘Evolver’ are named after some of the venues you’ve played at like Panama and Soundbar. Did the inspiration for those tracks begin with music you created during your live sets at those venues?
Correct. Those tracks got the names from the place where the first idea was born. This is usually how I name my demos, silly names or just a venue or city or airport name. Simple as that. Then because of the concept of the album I didn’t want to change the names so it makes more sense this way for me.
Speaking of your live sets, how do you prepare for those sets versus how you prepare for a regular DJ set?
Well I don’t prepare at all for a DJ set because I never play as a DJ. I mean sometimes it happens for various reasons but rarely. For my live shows I don’t prepare either. I go with the flow, I just jump on stage and start playing whatever comes to my mind. Sometimes I tend to prepare a sort of tracklist in my head, especially when playing a festival having only one hour and the time being very strict, but I always, and I mean always mess it up. If I make a plan, that plan will never happen for some reason. Not sure if this is good or not but that’s what it is.
I ask this question a lot because I always seem to get a different answer. What does trance mean to you?
My friends Aly and Fila just released a new record called ‘It’s All About The Melody’. Well, that title perfectly explains what trance means to me. I don’t really care about the BPM or all those diversifications and subgenres we have these days. When it comes to trance, a good melody is a good melody anyway and that’s what carries the message and all the feelings for me.
You’ve performed all over the world at so many different shows and festivals. What’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you while on tour?
I’m one of those that never pickup a microphone for any reason, but a couple of months ago I had a major technical problem with my live setup and so for the first time, I picked up a mic and entertained people while moving from my stage to the DJ booth so I could continue playing as a DJ. Fun fact, I thought this would turn into a disaster, but it was so spontaneous that people really liked it and went off when I started playing music again after four extremely long minutes of silence.
This year has surely been an exciting one for you so far with the upcoming release of your new album and performances around the globe. What else can we expect from you in 2019?
I’m totally focused on the album right now and I’ll carry on with the ‘EVOLVER’ album tour for the rest of the year, I suppose. But in the meantime, I will also start working on new music and since the album is entirely instrumental you can expect some vocal tune coming up in autumn for sure.
Lastly, I have to ask because you’re Italian. What is the best pizza topping in your opinion?
Ok, I never told this publicly, so you’re the first one to hear but although I have to keep the Italian flag flying — I actually like pineapple pizza. That said the original and simple pizza margherita is still my favorite one.
*Featured image via Giuseppe Ottaviani*
