Natives of the extreme Arezzo’s province, they begin to cultivate the musical passion since small, passing big part of the time listening to the unofficial recordings coming from the best clubs in Italy, thanks to which goes off an innate curiosity toward that apparently abstract side of music and what rotates around it.
After sometime, it makes even more stronger the desire to know and understand the world of the night life and the dj, deciding to learn in a totally autodidactic way the base concepts of the mixing, using in a first time special softwares, precursors of the actual Traktor and Serato, sharpening so technique and musical taste, starting then with the first sets in the clubs of Arezzo and Perugia’s areas, proposing sets where tracks of different kinds they meet in a soft sonorous style characterized by rhythmics nu-jazz / funky mixed with deep house sonority , built on repetitive, but still grooving, arrangements.
From about one year they have started to improve their productive skills: their debut record, Afterdub published on the German Underground Limited lands in a shortly time in the top ten of Decks’ chart; Bujulook, released by Herz Ist Trumpf Subtil, newborn sub label of more house imprint of Herz Ist Trumpf, it subsequently received good consents in the European circle, and Marfa has entered in the purses and in the graces of djs like Karotte, Matthias Tanzmann, Matt Star, Seth Troxler, Raresh, Luciano, Onur Özer e Ricardo Villalobos.
Since the summer 2009 they’ll be the residents of the I’m Afraid Party, party that regularly gravitates in the orbit of the Tenax Club.
They start the 2010 with the release of a maxi ep on Tenax Recordings and they give life to The Balboa Orchestra project.
1. Tzinah Records: So how did it all begin? When and where did you realize that music was your calling?
DD: Well…we don’t know if it can be consider as simply luck or not, but when we were children our father started to buy a tons of unofficial recordings coming from the best clubs located in the Adriatic seaside. Listening to them we started to appreciate this kind of music, so strange, monotone for the other people, and comparing with the other stuff that we were listening to, we asked ourselves a simply question: the drummer plays the drum, the guitarist the guitar, the singer, his voice, but the dj what the hell does??? Trying to answer to this stupid question, we started to follow the electronic movement, and step by step we’re arrived here.
2. Tzinah Records: What was the first event you ever played at/put on?
DD: It was about 8-9 years ago, in a summer open club located in Arezzo, great experience.
3. Tzinah Records: Which other countries have you played in?
DD: Unfortunately none: yes, in these last years we received a couple of proposals for country like Germany, Spain and US, but ,we don’t know if it was bad luck or bad management by the promoter, at the end we didn’t conclude anything (some people, often, talk more than they should), even if we think we would be more understood outside the country rather than in Italy.
4. Tzinah Records: Out of all the tunes you have, which one ‘never fails?’
DD: We truly love the sound made in Washington by Yoshitoshi between 1993 and 1998, and just to give a title Emily – Socks On Loan is the typical kind of track that, we don’t play so often, but every time we do, it’s always a pleasure and it still remain a dope killer tune. Instead, for what about strictly our own stuff, surely is a still unreleased track done with Federico Grazzini two years ago titled I’ve Got You: a simple piano riff upon a killer groove nothing less, nothing more.
5. Tzinah Records: Do you pre plan your set before a gig?
DD: No, never. Surely you have to be prepared, have an idea of what you’re going to do, but we prefer to follow the mood and the flow, looking at the structure of the club, specially how is big, in order to create the best musical situation that fit as well in the contest, always related to the people that you have in front. It’s an another way see the growing of the set, another way to involve people, even because, you can’t play big-open-air stuff in a small club room, and vice versa.
6. Tzinah Records: What do you think about the music scene at the moment, in Italy and everywhere else?
DD: As a customers, the music that is being released nowadays is great: it has atmosphere, it isn’t only groove, it isn’t something to listen only relatively to the dancefloor: it’s Music, with the capital letter. But, looking at the situation trough the dj’s point of sight, we’re unsatisfied: too many awesome records, but at the same time, too many shit records….there’s no balance, and it’s sad, specially for the breakthrough artist…so you have to dig more than the expected, and this steal a lot of time for studio.
About the italian situation: made exception of the well-known-world-wide-big djs, we retain that the bests are Italians, specially the not well known or so-called underground djs, because they play to let enjoy the people, and not for promotion like many big names do, that’s the positive note; the negative note is that the panorama is filling up more and more of “beatport-bed-room-lorry-djs”: people that have a poor (or in some case, none) culture about clubbing and music history, just take records from big artist’s charts, play a record only because the artist X played it on a gig saw on Youtube, without having a personal opinion about what they’re listening/playing to, download cracked software and in few hours make a track too similar or equal to the hit of the moment, and leave auto satisfied comments on social networks (promoting is one thing, complacency is another one, and is totally different), that play in clubs just because they bring people, fill a guest list, etc…This sucks, the meritocracy is dead.
7. Tzinah Records: If you could stage a rave anywhere, where would you choose?
DD: Truly we don’t know….When you have two turntables, a mixer, and a good sound system, you can be everywhere, in front of 10 or 1.000 people, the important thing is to enjoy the people, yourself and have fun.
8. Tzinah Records: Which artists inspire you the most?
DD: Too many, and listing them all it would be impossible. Anyway each one of us have it’s own personal tastes and just to give you a name, for what about Lorenzo surely is Mass Prod, for what about me (Gabriele), since a couple of years is Rondenion.
9. Tzinah Records: Tell us a little about your future projects.
DD: We decided to take a break, stop following the hype, trying to do our own stuff, giving our own vision, searching cool rare unknown stuff to sample, improving skills, re-define our music tastes and vision,etc…
We don’t know how many time we’ll need to do that, but we think that is the right way.
10.Tzinah Records: Describe your relationship with our label from your point of view.
DD: The project is good. Like all the newborn label has still to grow, but there is a solid base that can evolves in something of more greater (considering the times that we’re living nowadays). We respect the project, even because Dan believed in us since the beginning. When he asked us to start the project with a first release made by us, we don’t want to hide that were a little scared about that: we didn’t have anything of concrete in our hands (or we thought so), it wasn’t a great period, but he did a great work with the release, the remix packing, promotion etc…So, the only thing that we’ve to say is: keep going straight in this way.