We attended Tomorrowland Belgium for the third time in a row as media-press, sharing the highlights of the best dance/electronic festival in the world.
During Weekend 1 of this 20th anniversary edition, we had the opportunity to interview PARISI, an Italian musical duo composed of brothers Marco and Giampaolo “Jack” Parisi, winners of the Grammy Award for best dance/electronic album during the 2024 Grammy Awards for the album Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 9 2022) by Fred Again..
STEFANO: Good morning. We are here at Tomorrowland with the Parisi brothers, who have just finished their live set at the Freedom Stage. A huge crowd, an ocean of people. How do you feel, guys?
GIAMPAOLO: It was incredible. We are super happy. We didn’t expect this many people in some aspects, so when you’re on stage, you start playing, and you see that gradually it’s all full. You turn around for a moment. It’s a different energy, and it was wonderful. We had a lot of fun.
MARCO: You know? It sounds a bit cliché. There was real electricity. Tomorrowland is just as they describe it, if not better.
STEFANO: You started your careers, as brothers Marco and Gianpaolo, primarily as producers. You began by working on Clementino’s album “Miracolo!”, one of the first projects you did. After that, you kept moving forward, staying behind the scenes initially with Ed Sheeran, the Black Eyed Peas, bigger and bigger names, until you ended up with Fred Again…, with whom you collaborated on both “Actual Life 2” and “Actual Life 3”, winning the Grammy, the only Italians along with Benny Benassi in the electronic field to achieve this award.
GIANPAOLO: We are honored.
STEFANO: And primarily, as we said, you are brothers. How is this artistic relationship on stage? I mean, how do you cope with all the challenges that various DJ groups and duos face: stress, mental health, tour life?
GIAMPAOLO: A beautiful question. First of all, I can start by saying that we have a great relationship outside of work. We have always been very close, always together throughout our growth. We started playing together. We did a lot of things together. Now, when we are on stage, first of all, there is nothing more beautiful because, of course, we share the stage together. It’s what we did when we were five or six years old at music school recitals.
MARCO: But also, it came to mind now, I don’t know why, when we played with Legos, do you remember? We had the toy cars; we would get in the car, Jack and I would go from one room to another, and the other room was the stage. We would get on it and pretend to play. It was always our dream, always.
STEFANO: A harmony indeed from when you were little until now, clearly.
MARCO: As you say, the beauty that I think we have is that we complete each other in everything. So he does everything I can’t do and he too. But then there is something magical on a subconscious level. The fact that I understand when he is tired and push more. And the same thing, he understands when I am tired and pushes more, but there is no need to tell each other.
GIAMPAOLO: It helps our psychological stress and mental health. Especially since everyone has their ups and downs.
MARCO: It’s not easy. Also, because we always have a lot of things to think about: the music, the right identity, the right sounds, always being innovative, always changing. It’s always a challenge against yourself.
GIAMPAOLO: We help each other, and therefore we relieve each other’s stress when necessary. We have found a good balance, and we are grateful to have managed to find it.
STEFANO: You have a lot on your plate. At Nameless, you teased a track to be released with Joy Anonymous. Today you also announced a track with Fred Again…
GIAMPAOLO: The collaboration is this piece we did together, taking the vocal sample from “Vent,” a piece by Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem.
STEFANO: Okay, so it wasn’t a sample you threw out live?
GIAMPAOLO: That’s a track by Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem that we decided to flip when we were together in the studio. We were in Mexico together; I was playing some drums, and Fred thought, “Ah, this vocal would fit perfectly.” From there, we created this edit that we play live and that Fred is also playing live in his sets. Now it’s an edit; maybe it will become something.
STEFANO: Does it already have a name in the works, or is it still a work in progress?
MARCO: For now, it’s an edit.
STEFANO: As for productions, because you have actually started releasing things under the name PARISI in the last two years, are you already planning an EP, an album, something in the works?
GIAMPAOLO: For the moment, we are concentrating on finishing as much music as possible. Our idea is to try to have as many releases as possible. If it were up to us, we would try to do a release every month, but we know that it is really difficult. We are trying to finish a lot of music. We have a lot in the works.
MARCO: Too much. There’s this stress in the back of your mind where you say, “We have to finish what we started.”
GIAMPAOLO: But we are starting to finish. We have no idea for now of an album. The idea is to do as much as possible, maybe have all the singles. Maybe they will become an album. We still don’t know. We want to finish this first.
MARCO: When the time comes to make an album or an EP, it has to be a cohesive sound and have that identity.
STEFANO: Speaking of other projects you have, there’s also Casa Parisi that you have scheduled for next July 24 in London.
MARCO: Exactly.
GIAMPAOLO: We can’t wait.
STEFANO: Among other things, this project will see fans following you in exploring your projects and sounds. Do you want to include other artists in it by collaborating with them? Or do you want it to be a purely Parisi project?
GIAMPAOLO: Our idea of Casa Parisi, as you can imagine from the name, is to invite people to stay with us in our home. Invite them into our world, and we will start with the hope of being able to invite other artist friends to come into this home and play for us. So maybe we play first, then them. This is the idea: to create a family concept, being all together, and, of course, the possibility of inviting friends to say, “Why don’t you come and play with me?” This is one of the ideas of this project.
STEFANO: As we said before, with “Actual Life 3”, you have perhaps reached the pinnacle every artist seeks: winning a Grammy. Has your life changed since then? I still see you as down-to-earth guys, so surely you haven’t let it go to your heads.
MARCO: We know the value of sacrifices. We have built, we have always started again, and when you have strong and healthy values, I think that’s the most important thing. Then we work with people around us who are like us.
STEFANO: Was it perhaps a signal to say, “Okay, let’s go on our own. Let’s start releasing things as Parisi,” the Grammy?
GIAMPAOLO: No, we had already decided before. The Grammy simply gave us more recognition that our art, in this case, Fred’s art, who is a wonderful person besides being an incredible producer, worked and gave us the push to say, “Okay, let’s keep making more music, hoping to maybe win.” That’s all there is to it.
STEFANO: Another question about your live set. You have chosen to make practically all your performances live. What reasoning is behind this choice? And what changes effectively from a DJ set in terms of connection with the audience and also in terms of artistic direction?
GIAMPAOLO: Another beautiful question. The choice was made because our background is super musical. Marco studied piano his whole life. I studied drums a lot before starting to enter the world of DJing and music production. Our dream has always been to bring our musicality to the stage in a way that is always beautiful for the audience, always something to dance to.
MARCO: Also satisfying from every point of view. For example, I have never DJed, but when Jack told me, “No, I want to be a DJ,” I replied, “What? We started with piano and drums.” Well, jokes aside, this was the most important thing with his decision to leave, so to speak, the study of drums generally after 10 years. When we get on stage, having the instruments in front of us makes us feel at home. We are much more expressive; every show is different, people feel it differently. One thing is too important for us.
STEFANO: In fact, you are, indeed, facing each other, so there’s a lot of harmony. Being brothers, having this synchrony between you, you can also support each other.
GIAMPAOLO: Exactly. The set works, of course, mostly live. We have elements, as you can see from the set, that come from the CDJs because we wanted them strongly there to not lose the statement and the feeling that we are there and making dance music. So the CDJs are always there; they are our base, but then we explore and go beyond with instrument discussions, live drums, live looping.
MARCO: We have a very complex setup that also allows us to loop live. We both have loop stations where we record live and then start layering one sound over another. This creates a unique sound for us because it’s true that the loops are all played live and can then be combined with effects and everything, making a hybrid thing that is the sound of Parisi.
MARCO: We have a very, very complex setup that allows us to loop live. We both have loop stations. He has a TR8, an MPC, and I have my Seaboard. We have many possibilities. The format is compact, it’s beautiful, but it’s incredibly expressive; it allows us to change something on the fly if we want.
GIAMPAOLO: It gives us a lot of freedom, and obviously, the idea behind this kind of setup is: “The more we start playing, the more music we start having, the more we hope to find ourselves in a moment that might be the best one.” So when it happens to go on a stage like Tomorrowland or “Casa Parisi” and we say, “Okay, what do we want to play?” Without having a super programmed list.
MARCO: When we get there, it means we have mastered our setup, our sounds, and we have 100% synergy, so we say: “Tonight, we don’t know what we will do, and we play live.”
STEFANO: You are among the strongest Italian talents on the scene right now, with very few others like Tale Of Us, Anyma, and a few others who can match you, but as we saw earlier in your live set: people want you. What advice would you give to someone who maybe wants to follow in your footsteps? Perhaps someone who is in a different environment, not a DJ, but starting behind the scenes, maybe as a producer, on how to break through or follow your path?
GIAMPAOLO: I personally think, and Marco may add his thoughts, that there is no written law. What we did, which I can obviously say, is that we never stopped. We always played, always studied. We listened to a lot of music, spent hours on Logic in this case, to learn to produce, to find sounds, spending time on sound design and new types of technologies.
MARCO: Even when it wasn’t accessible. Now you go on YouTube, you find everything. You find the insights of any producer. When we started, it wasn’t like that. To create the sound, the classic trance synth, I remember we spent ages on Korg, night and day.
GIAMPAOLO: Indeed, the advice I can give is to never stop, always try to go to the next step. Listen to a lot of music.
MARCO: Without being harsh in judgment. The music we made ten years ago was terrible. Now it’s different.
GIAMPAOLO: When we went to listen to the demos we made ten – twelve years ago, we thought, “Why didn’t they understand us?” It wasn’t the right time yet, but even then, we never stopped. We were hypercritical. Even now, despite fortunately having done many beautiful things, a lot of beautiful music, I don’t want to say we are never satisfied, but there is always that point in us that says: “Okay, what can we do better? What is the next step?”
MARCO: And then collaborate. We moved to London, we met Fred, being in the room with him, with other artists like Will. There was this moment of important growth because you absorb their knowledge, their energy. You are with them and make music.
STEFANO: Also by osmosis, being close to other minds…
MARCO: Be open! England is great for this. We collaborate. We stay together.
GIAMPAOLO: The time that maybe existed ten – twelve years ago, where the producer was alone in the studio making music for himself, finishing it, mixing it, mastering it, now doesn’t exist anymore. The beauty is in collaboration, in sharing the music and the sound, and that’s what we have found. In all the music we are making now, we always send demos to the people we trust the most, like Fred or Joy Anonymous.
MARCO: “Guys, what do you think?” and they say, “Why don’t you do it like this?” It’s very important and you grow much faster.
GIAMPAOLO: We let everyone hear it. Literally, even our mom and dad. We send the ideas and ask what they think.
MARCO: If mom doesn’t dance, it means there’s something wrong. Dad is much more precise in feedback.
STEFANO: Were they both musicians too?
GIAMPAOLO: Dad is a musician, mom is super musical, but she never played. Dad is a pianist and let’s say he doesn’t play professionally anymore, but he plays with us in the studio, helps us, and gives us a hand.
MARCO: There’s always his feedback. When we send him things, he always says: “Ah, but this thing sounds strange on my speakers.” We have fun!
STEFANO: Thank you very much, guys.
MARCO: Thank you very much. Thanks for what you do.
GIAMPAOLO: We are very happy to have done this interview.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C9rprTpsh_t/
Thanks to PARISI and Modest Management for the availability!
