DJ Tennis

0:12Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly. For today's show I speak with veteran Italian DJ, producer, chef, and label owner Manfredi Romano, known as DJ Tennis. He tells me more about the early days of his career and his latest projects.

0:31I studied computer science at uni and to pay my bills I was doing every kind of job. I was a chef in a restaurant and also I was working in a record shop. And every time there was a... And a record shop was actually very famous for punk hardcore music. and every time there was an American band coming to Europe, they were asking the record shops or friends of friends, anyway, they were asking if there is someone who can drive us throughout Europe because we need somebody who knows how to handle European traffic, Italian roads, etc., etc. And I was always the one, yeah, it's me, I want to go. And so I ended up with bands with the Stinky Bands around Europe many times as I started my tour managing career.

1:22But was that the music that you love? Or what kind of music did you love back then? I actually love every DIY punk, I would say, derivated music. Either it was hardcore or post-rock or emo core. I loved bands such as Black Flag, Fugazi, June of 44, Sonic Youth. These were my bands. The bands I was listening on a regular base. And do you still, because you have a new label, Life and Death, as well, there is some elements of that, of post-punk? I mean, not quite. It's more electronic music. But do you think there's still some of that, that you've fallen in love from the beginning of your career?

2:07It's definitely, I think, no matter what, like the music you listen, you like influences your music and the label you run because also you go to find similar approaches into making music. Of course, it's different. As you say, it's electronic music, it's dance music, but there is dance music and punk music and electronic music had life together at some point. The similarities were punk music was DIY and electronic music was DIY. Electronic music was never produced to be mainstream. It was always produced to fill a small community of people who wanted to dance, rave, etc. So in a way, this small community approach is derivated by DIY attitude and punk music as well.

3:04So you can find a lot of also points of contact between the two. They both in a way have this punk attitude in a way. Yes, at least at the start. And tell us, you're a very international man, you're Italian, but I believe now you're based in Paris, right? Where did life take you after Italy? Well, Italy, I worked in Italy for many years, not as a DJ, not as a music producer, but as a promoter, an agent, a tour manager, I was a curator for events. As soon as I started making music, I got to tour, I got to explore the world much more, and I got to start DJing, actually. Until then, until the age of 40, it was only a passion for me.

3:52and there I moved to United States, to Miami, to Amsterdam, Barcelona, a little bit in Mexico, a little bit in Lisbon and then now in Paris. So I get bored very easily, I think, of a city. So I need to explore. But yes, this is more or less. And remind us again what brought you to London. I know you have this new audio-visual project at W1 Curates, which is basically in Oxford Street, which is, I mean, it's such a renowned place, right? Yes. I met Mark, Mark, one of the owners of W1 Curates, and he's trying to build, to give a space where you get artists, instead of creating a music and creative community around W1 Curates, and offered us this space, which is a building that is covered in lead walls outside and has a gallery room inside where we can have installations, shows, showcases.

5:07And in the last four months, we worked together to create this audiovisual show. And that's what brought me to London this week. But I come to London very often. I'm going to be here for freeze, then I'm going to play a Coco, and then I come very often. For me, London is one of the places where I perform the most. Is this a new thing for you, this sort of audiovisual project? Because I know, was that something that challenged you or you've done those before? I've never done, but in the past, especially early 2000, there was a big, massive movement where experimental music artists were meeting with experimental visual artists.

5:50This is also because of evolution of technology was allowing that. So UVA, United Visual Artists, Mode Selector, Mode Apparat were working with Fat Fiender Eye, for example. And there was a big warp record that was very visual with Chris Cunningham. And the music was meeting visual technology at the early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s. And I was a promoter for that. So that's not my background as an artist. My background as a promoter and curator. After, I think, an overdose, like we have noticed in dance music now, visuals are more and more used more and more extensively. You can see mega concerts, like, for example, Tale of Us have visual structures, and a lot of other artists do as well.

6:43What is missing is missing the art. unique creativity, I think, is going to come back. Very interesting. You're talking about this kind of bringing back a little bit of that art to the electronic music scene. Do you see that with some of your artists from your label? Actually, I want to know more about your label, what type of kind of music are you looking for? I would like to know. So Life in Death is a label that is not based on an idea of having a main music genre as a focus. It's based on a community of artists working together and it's based on an idea of quality, but also it's a fine balance between quality and accessibility.

7:23So all the artists work on different genres of music but can totally be part of the same, for example. And also we want performers that are really good performers and not just very good producers together. There have been waves in Life and Death where we created a community of artists working together. then some of the artists grew a lot and then take their own way again now we are gathering like very young promising and visionary talents to work together again so kind of that's that's what i'm trying to do with a label it's not just putting out music because the music is good or releasing an artist because the artist has a good name and can sell records i look at the things differently also nowadays labels as brands they they count much less because attention span of people doesn't allow that it's not the same like once i was buying every possible for ad for for ad record or every possible warp record uh or every possible ninja tune record back in the days now i really check who is the artist myself and imagine the younger generation and they're like oh i like this artist this song from this artist so they're not even listening to the full album So now the work of the label has changed.

8:40The work of the label for me is to create new sounds and to put artists together and create new sounds and create new waves and new trends and new communities. Create an idea. That's very interesting. And you mentioned about the attention span. In the world of electronic music, do you feel songs are also getting shorter and perhaps a bit different? They're having this kind of, you have to have that beat in the first 20 seconds to work for streaming. Absolutely. That's one of the things I do is producing other artist music. And also as a manager, I deal often with labels and I got asked. First of all, the song has to be under three minutes, two and a half minutes.

9:27And it has to be catchy in the first 15 seconds. and I say, oh, wow, this is something, like special DSPs, you know, like this is actually brutal that I don't say, but this is how it works. This literally attention span, and you see also on social media, if you analyze the data, it's like attention span is 13 seconds per video, and that's literally the new way to promote music. You need a video that kicks in before, in five seconds, and classic PR companies are struggling nowadays because there's no platforms that can get attention span enough unless they have a very solid and dedicated following community.

10:13I don't know, like, for example, it is something I would ask Monocle how you handle this evolution. Well, it is a challenge, I mean, but I guess I think there's still space for but maybe it becomes a little bit more niche. But yeah, it's certainly a challenge. It needs to be catchy but i think it's a shame with music because i do like i mean there was a period of many periods in electronic music where you have the long versions or how do you call the extended the extended versions i love those you know they're very kind of indulgent i like that i think we're missing that a little bit in a way i miss that too because i i come i come from a generation where i was paying a lot of money to buy an album and the album was actually a journey that i wanted to understand the artists throughout.

11:01You said the right word. Yes, the narrative of the album is something that I was looking for, not just a single song. And this is missing now. I manage a lot of very young artists and sometimes I listen to the album and they literally listen to the album and end up picking one song and putting it in a playlist and then they forget about the rest of the album. Also, what works for me on the dance floor on a DJ perspective, which means repeating beats, mesmerizing sounds, sound design, it's not really possible to achieve on digital platforms because people want to listen, doesn't want to wait and get into the song because there's not a flow.

11:49That's why for me DJing is very important nowadays because DJing teaches you to just jump into a state of mind and start listening to music in a different way that now digital platforms don't allow you to anymore. So for me, I listen to a lot more DJ sets than before because I learn a lot about music through DJ sets or radio show or selectors rather than listening to one song by one song. I learn a lot of new music just listening to selectors. right. Looking ahead to the end of the year, you're a very busy man, you're traveling, you have literally your suitcase here. What can we expect? More plans from you?

12:37Because I saw that you're also involved with the world of food, a munchie town, right? Tell us a bit more about that. So like, I get bored, as I said, I get bored very easily. So I need to keep myself busy. And one of the passions I always had is food. I learned since I was a kid to make food. because of my family. Because when we were kids, we were never going to restaurants or ordering delivery. It didn't exist. It was like going to a restaurant was a once-in-a-month occasion to celebrate something special. But the daily routine, it was like cooking at home. My parents were hard workers, were never there, so I was helping them cook at home.

13:17I learned that. And nowadays, I think that I always cook for myself and for my friends as a routine. during pandemic I had a chance to cook private dinners and collaborate with chefs and I found this cooking again like such a beautiful thing sometimes more interesting it's very similar for me to DJ because you're delivering an experience you're telling a story through a dinner through cooking different plates and then delivering to your friends make them happy and you're happy so in a way this came natural and I started I branded it Manchitown because at some point people started I started getting requests not to DJ but to cook.

14:00And I said, okay, we need to kind of organize this. It shouldn't be necessarily linked to music. It should be a completely new thing, and that's what we're doing. This coming week, I'm cooking in Ibiza. In two weeks, I have a dinner in Ibiza, then during ADE. So I'm getting busier as a chef, which makes me so happy because sometimes I need to step out from the DJ nightlife bubble. Amazing. And what's your dish of choice, if you could make something right now? I mean, there is many dishes of choice. I am obsessed with improving, improving and making the best ragu, which is like the meat sauce, using different kind of meat, changing the quality of the tomatoes, the onions.

14:44For me, ragu is one of the classic Italian things. Nobody has a unique recipe, and so it can become a very personal recipe. Ragu was nothing else. Historically, it was just the leftovers of the piece of meat and veggies you had in the fridge. And to preserve them, you made a soup out of it, and then you're dumping it on top of a pasta. So that's why there is no receipt. What meat would you use in a ragout? I'm curious now, because I like ragout. I like, besides beef and pork, I like to add liver, chicken livers, for example, and rabbit, sometimes wild boar. So to give a more gamey kind of twist.

15:26I love rabbit, actually. Rabbit is amazing. The rabbit-only ragu is one of my favorite things ever because it's very delicate in the taste and very sweet. For me, it's a balance of different kinds of meat, spices, just very good tomatoes and veggies. and this is super comfortable food like you. This comfort food is like family food for us in Italy. It's something that recalls memories of your grandma and your family and your land. Good food and good music. Thank you so much, Manfredi. Pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

16:15Thank you very much. Manfredi Romano, known as DJ10, is there. The show was edited by Elliot Greenfield, and I am Fernando Augusto Pacheco.