Miguel Ramirez
Ever serving the needs of Trance lovers, the master of melodic gold, Giuseppe Ottaviani, makes a grand return to Australia’s music festival scene.
Heavily requested, Giuseppe Ottaviani will perform magic once more in Sydney Showground on Saturday November 30 and Melbourne Showground on Sunday December 1 for Australia’s newest music gathering, Festival X.
Giuseppe Ottaviani has built himself a stellar reputation in Trance music, conjuring smiles to everyone’s faces with mind-blowing performances, impressive albums and astounding tracks like ‘Crossing Lights’, ‘Firefly’, ‘Dreamland’ (As Nu NRG with Andrea Ribeca), ‘Linking People’, ‘Through Your Eyes’, ‘Slow Emotion’, ‘Panema’ and ‘8K’.
To ease the wait until his much-anticipated appearances at Festival X, we caught up with the Italian maestro and he opened up about dealing with criticism in the scene, how he keeps his sound ‘fresh’, he gets real about the about the misconceptions of the Trance world, and more. Here’s what he had to say…
We’re absolutely thrilled for your Live 2.0 performances at Festival X and with less than two weeks to go, what’s going through your mind right now?
First thing, I can’t wait to escape the cold and rainy Europe for some nice sunshine in Australia. Second thing, I’m really excited to play at the very first Festival X, I’m sure it’s gonna be a memorable one and I’ll come down there well prepared.
You always give 100% of your energy on stage, what is it that drives your live performances and makes them so melodically astounding, powerful and unique?
Probably because I just really like what I do, I enjoy the music and I play as if I was dancing in the crowd. I always bring on stage all my electronic toys instead of a simple DJ setup. I know it’s a lot of work but I really like all those buttons and flashing lights and the fact that I can improvise and even create music on-the-fly makes everything more enjoyable.
Also, from another point of view, I’m aware that technology can easily fail and anything can go spectacularly wrong at any given moment (it has happened of course) but finding myself sometimes fixing problems during my show, it generates adrenaline in me, which excites me even more. It’s a lot of fun when things goes right, of course.
After being in the music business for so long, how do you keep things fresh?
Well I try not to be stuck in 1998. I obviously like to bring those feelings back into my productions like I just did with my latest album ‘EVOLVER’, but usually I really like to be influenced by many other artists and pick up elements from different genres and integrate those elements with my music in order to always create something new, which then stays true to my roots. I think this is also how music constantly evolves in general.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about Trance music and its scene?
The main issue for me, is that a lot of people tend to classify Trance as just only one specific sound and BPM. The moment you move away from that, you suddenly don’t play Trance anymore.
For me, Trance is more a feeling, rather than a specific sound and it is all about the melody, because the melody is what carries emotions and is capable to manipulate your mood. You can be in a state of trance even listening to classical music or some amazing chill-out/down-tempo music, actually this is what mostly happens to me. Now this doesn’t mean that you can play whatever you want, otherwise you’ll kill the genre by killing its identity, but I think that Trance can embrace a wider range of sounds, elements and of course a wider range of BPMs, and this, I believe, is how you bring Trance music into the new era.
Talking about BPM, I’m currently working on my 4th concept-track called “Slow Emotion”, which is basically a 110BPM Trance melody with some super hard kick and bass. I still call it Trance music. You can check out my previous Slow Emotions 3, 2 and 1 and let me know what do you think.
Criticism runs strong in this industry all throughout social media. Have you experienced this and what’s your advice to aspiring DJs and producers on dealing with it?
Unfortunately 99.9% of criticism on social media is not constructive criticism, where you can actually grab information and take it into consideration. Instead, it’s just people who like to talk bad about pretty much anything and everything, and this could be quite a big issue if you are an aspiring young DJ or producer because you are at the point where you still don’t know if what you’re doing is going to work out or not. So my advice is pretty simple, just ignore it and don’t even think of replying to these people. Believe in what you’re doing and carry on without distractions and I can tell you, social medial is a huge distraction, so be careful and focus on your goal.
Do you have any exciting plans for 2020 or any new music coming in the new year?
I’m working on a big update for my Live 2.0 show 😉
Would you like to share any final words for all your die-hard Aussie fans?
When I was a teenager, I couldn’t even imagine that one day my music would reach out to people across the globe, especially all the way to Australia, so I’d like to say thanks for being my fans and thanks for being awesome.
I always have a great time playing in Australia and I’m sure we’re gonna have some proper fun at Festival X. See you soon.
