Daniel Tagliaferri is an Italian DJ, producer and guitarist who has experienced incredible success in the world house scene in the last few years. As someone who doesn’t build his career solely on image and uses his own talent and passion for music as a driving force, he managed to rise to the top of the renowned Beatport Indie Dance and Melodic House & Techno charts with his first track, ‘No Scale Can Resize You‘.
After IVORY achieved this incredible success in July 2019, praise followed from established names and leaders of the electronic scene such as Adriatique, Ame, Dixon, Lehar, Tale Of Us and Trikk who have been playing his songs ever since. In a very short period of time, his music has seen the light of day on Afterlife, Innervisions and Kompakt, which secured him numerous bookings throughout Europe, Africa and Asia.
In addition to all that hype and success, he remains faithful to the MicroCastle label, which helped him break through an endless sea of performers and get into the spotlight of the world public and prove that a combination of passion, authenticity and great effort is the only way to success.
As an avid book lover and a filmophile, he draws his inspiration from movies and books, among many other things that he experiences deeply. He singles out Ingmar Bergman, Nabokov and Faulkner as some of his favourite artists in this interview. Before his performance on Saturday, October 11, at the OMG club in Belgrade, I talked with Daniel about how he experiences music, things that inspire him and what sets him apart from other producers and DJs.
Your sound is very specific. It has been showcased and supported by Innervisions, Kompakt, Afterlife and MicroCastle. There are a lot of details, moments and micromoments packed with intense drama that feel more in the foreground than the background. How do you perceive details and drama?
I would say that there’s no specific reason or purpose behind my sound. Quite simply, as a listener I naturally tend to prefer very emotional music with a good amount of melancholy (even if I like different genres and moods in music, of course). That’s why I like to give emotional feeling to my music; I’m also quite sure that kind of feeling is universal, a way to speak to everyone.
„Feelin’ brings life to a gloomy/melancholic world.“ This is a loose translation of what I’ve read from the announcement for the party you will be headlining in OMG Club in Belgrade. Can you explain how your music does that?
I don’t know; I mean, you wrote that “Feelin” brings gloomy/melancholic atmospheres, but it inspires in me totally different feelings. I think it has a liberating force; it’s very intense and full of energy. I believe that art in general is like a space, an empty room given by the artist where the viewer (or listener in the case of music) can put everything that comes up into it, driven by the artistic experience.
If I’ve understood correctly, Ivory Tower (a place where people choose to disconnect from the rest of the world to follow their own interests, usually mental or esoteric ones) is an abstract expression of telling a story through DJing. You’ve also said that there is a „healthy dose of alienation“. How do you use alienation in your sets to tell stories to the masses and go places while being high up in the clouds above?
Yeah, that alienation is very useful for me, more as a producer, I have to say, to bring all the ideas and inspiration out and give shape to my music. Alienation as a momentary state during a DJ set, I think, is more related to the people on the dance floor. Maybe not now (LOL) but back in the days when I started to frequent clubs and then play music, everyone was very focused on the music; it was more an individual experience, a personal journey through music but in a collective space.
While listening to your tracks, I get a strong feeling of being in the first years of the 2010s, when popular progressive was becoming more minimal and darker. It almost feels like I am back clubbing in Belgrade at that time. Gen Z is hungry for the sound of that time. How has that era impacted your musical journey and the development of your taste and signature sound?
That specific sound was very inspiring to me because I immediately understood that I really could use it to express my way of creating melodies and melancholic atmospheres. It was like the perfect moment to start thinking about my DJ/producer project.
I was a guitarist before, playing in several bands for years, but I also always wanted to make music by myself, so that specific era in club music helped me to understand the path to follow.
Where did you get the inspiration for the myriad of sounds and the blend that defines you? Can you explain how these sounds correlate with your life?
Oh well, not really easy to explain; it could sound a little bit weird to say, but usually it is the music that finds me and not the opposite. I mean, of course I get inspiration from life experiences.
“Rain” was inspired by a rainy day, contemplating a rain-soaked window in my studio and listening to the sound of rain, just to give you an example.
However, most of the time I have to say that when I’m jamming in the studio, trying different things, I focus on a certain element when I finally recognise the perfect vibe or it gives something emotional to me; that’s the way I prefer to make my sound.
Your music gives off a dancefloor introspection vibe. Do you want the crowd to go deeper within themselves and reflect on their own feelings? How do you do that yourself on the dance floor?
Through my music I wanna give a journey where everyone can go deep into their feelings but also bring a lot of energy and give them a way to let off steam. I really believe that music can be very powerful and drive us into a great experience when it is very intense.
So I see this cooperation between melodic dramatic sounds mixed with groovy beats as something that can lead the experience to a higher level, where you’re emotionally involved and your body is too.
So basically the idea is to stimulate your inner world and your body at the same time, without letting you get distracted but being totally immersed in the musical experience. It’s not like letting the crowd reflect on their feelings but more like driving them to embrace all the spontaneous vibrations coming from the music.
Do you believe that the music you are gravitating towards is becoming mood, dancefloor-orientated or home-listening music? Is it the future of music for clubs and open air?
Well, I really don’t know because I don’t mind about “where my music is gonna be played”. To be more clear, when I make my music, I don’t follow guidelines to make a product for home listening or for the club or open-air events. If you listen to my catalogue, you can notice very different kinds of approaches for different kinds of listening.
However, I believe that, compared to the past, electronic music now is designed to be listened to at the party, of course, but also at home, so structures and arrangements are more elaborate, and length is generally shorter, more like songs. In this way you make club music more accessible to a wider audience.
In the When We Dip interview, you said that cinema has had an influence on your music. How do movies affect your style? What was the most important movie, cinematographer or genre that affected your sound?
I really love watching movies at home, and when I’m travelling, I go often to the cinema. What I bring out of a movie is the atmosphere or the feeling that movie left me with. To reach this I can use different approaches, like using a sample from a dialogue or working on some arrangements inspired by the original soundtrack.
Because, you know, a good movie always stays with you after watching it; it poses questions, sometimes gives you answers, and makes you think about yourself and everything that surrounds you, the way you interact with the world within and the world without.
So any of these inputs can inspire a different kind of art, like music, so the goal is to bring those ideas into the music, translating that feeling into melodies or soundscapes. I can’t name just a movie or a director more important than others because a single movie can affect one track or a pack of demos but not my entire sound. To give you an example, my track “Persona” is inspired by the namesake movie by Ingmar Bergman, who is a director that I really admire.
I understand that you are a passionate reader of Nabokov and Faulkner. Can you explain in detail how your sets and music correlate to Nabokov’s and Faulkner’s styles of writing?
Not only Nabokov and Faulkner, there are so many writers I love from all around the world and of all time. Anyway, back to your question, Nabokov is famous for his complexity, intellectual stimulation, striking imagination and lexical richness; reading Nabokov is truly an aesthetic pleasure.
Of course it would be very hard to bring all that into music, but I like the idea of considering my production is full of that vivid imagery, richness and aesthetic pleasure where every element is different but patiently crafted to be one in order to give a precise feeling.
