Coffee break with Glowal
Their long-awaited track Cries, after being teased by some of our favorite DJs around the world for months, has finally been released on Innervisions’ Secret Weapons #11 collection.
Fabio Giannelli - who we already know from “The Three”, released two years ago on Secret Weapons #9 - and Alessandro Gasperini have now joined forces to create Glowal, one of the best new music projects we have encountered in the last few months. Today we asked them a few questions about their journey and their plans for the future.
First, we were wondering about the creation of the duo Glowal, as you both had solo projects in the past. Can you tell us more about how your collaboration started, and why you chose this name?
We met because of music. We were not thinking of becoming a duo at first. The only collaboration we were planning was the release of an EP from Alessandro on Fabio’s label, Perpetualis.
After that we kept in touch for the following two years, exchanging ideas and working together on some events related to the label.
It’s only after establishing mutual trust, sharing ideological and artistic affinities, that we decided to join forces and create this new project.
The actual word Glowal has a special meaning to us that we would prefer to keep to ourselves :)
How does a normal day in your studio look like? Do you always work together or also on your own?
As we live in two different cities, Lecce and Pisa, we can't spend every day together in the studio. We work in separate locations but constantly communicate via mail and WhatsApp. Then we meet for 10 days and work very hard together to finish some of the ideas that we had individually, or make completely new tracks like we did with ‘Cries’.
How do you prepare for a set? I think this is something we could wonder for many duos: when you play together, is it different from a B2B?
We actually use two headphones, so both of us always know what's happening and what is going to happen. We wanna sound like one DJ - so it's not properly a back-2-back - but sometimes we also need to surprise each other so we let the music flow without knowing what the other is going to do.
Do you think of yourselves more as DJs or as producers? What do you like the most?
The two activities are quite different but at the same time very connected. For this reason, we don't have a real preference.
For us it’s like two parts of the same process, because we like to play our own music, and we tend to also edit most of the tracks we play so one thing is needed to complete the other. We can't imagine DJing without production.
Fabio [Giannelli] has already released a track on an Innervisions’ Secret Weapons two years ago; was it easier the second time as Glowal? How did it happen?
It helped to already have a direct contact with Dixon and Âme in order to send them our music but everybody in the scene knows how much the IV family cares about every single track they decide to release, so in the end we think there has been no substantial difference.
We sent 6 demos and after 10 days we got the reply from Kristian confirming ‘Cries' for their Secret Weapons release. It was back in July, we were very happy when we received that email.
What are your musical influences and what brought you to electronic music? Is there a track that has a special meaning for you?
Alessandro: my brother was an event promoter and from an early age he took me with him. The music they played at their events was my first approach to electronic music. I have always been fascinated by progressive sounds and a track that I remember with a particular pleasure is ‘YOMC - Oesis’.
Fabio: my parents are not big music collectors but for a period of time my brother has been djing at private parties in my hometown and when I was 8 years old I fell in love with some vinyls from his collection. I can remember records from Robert Miles, Prodigy, Daft Punk... that was the first time I got in touch with electronic music, djs and turntables in a totally childish way. I have always been listening to almost every kind of music out there, I'm very curious and love to listen, listen and listen, so I tend to grab influences from everything but in the end there's like a natural filter that brings me to what I really love. Pink Floyd, Ennio Morricone, Radio Head, Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Chemical Brothers, Queen are surely some of the artists who made my days better. It’s very hard to choose only one track but if I had to pick one it would be "Robert Miles - Children”, because it represents my very first approach to electronic music.
Tell us about your future projects. Do you already feel satisfied for what you are doing or the best is yet to come?
We have new music and a special remix on the way but can't reveal more at the moment. Of course we are happy with what is happening around our track Cries, we had a very good feeling about the track since the moment we exported it for the first time. Receiving tons of messages and videos of some of the best djs in the world playing it made us very happy and grateful for their support, but we are obviously looking forward to the next steps. And yes, as you say, the best is yet to come.