An Interview with Yoyodisco

What a pleasure to be able to introduce you to such an interesting and special artist as Yoyodisco. Someone who experienced fame back in 2000, when owning a PC or a Mac was still a thing of the few.

Now we interview him in the grecas on the occasion of his new release entitled Future Fatale. Four tracks of pure funk energy, which you can discover exclusively with us.

First of all Michele, tell us first something about yourself and your beginnings up to here.

It was 1999 and I was just 18 when I started working in the music biz. In just one year with my band Lùnapop I went from going to school everyday to playing live in front of 10000 people. With no clue of what a recording studio was, without even playing in small clubs I had to learn really fast to do my own shit. The whole Lùnapop experience ended in just over two very intense years so in 2002 I decided to sell all of my guitars to buy a record player, computers and several different tools for my home studio. That was the first step in my journey as DJ and producer. In my set and in my work as producer I’ve always tried to merge the “playling live” part with the electronic side. Those were the years when LCD Soundsystem first singles were absolutely dominating the scene (as a matter of fact you can find most of my musical references in the lyrics of “Losing My Edge”). What does this have to do with Lùnapop? Absolutely nothing, but that’s just the way it is . And by the way I was lucky enough to host many of the bands mentioned above at Locomotiv, the club I founded a few years later (October 3, 2007). But that’s another story.

Locomotive club is your home in Italy, since when do you program and what has been the trajectory of the venue?

Locomotiv opened on October 3, 2007 with a play. The following Saturday we hosted the very first DJ, Dandy Jack. A couple of weeks later, Built To Spill took the stage, months later there were Mouse on Mars, Thomas Brinnkmann and so on. We founded Locomotiv with the goal of offering the city a multi-purpose venue, focused on the quality of the proposal. In all this time we have been lucky enough to host terrific bands.  We have been together for 15 years; the working group is now a family really. And as in any family we all do everything but we can say that one of my main tasks is to work on the clubbing side, curating everything from the artistic choices to the rest. I’ve always tried to create a venue that was open to the alternative rather than doing the same mainstream stuff, looking for live acts, performers, focusing on sounds such as Nu disco, Disco Boogie and Indietronica.

You have started to release some interesting disco style releases through your own label, but do you plan to release on other labels?

My goal is to find a label with which I can share the same professional and stylistic points of view. I know perfectly well that being part of a working group is never easy, you have to follow the work schedule and try to fit in, dealing with a very precise mechanism. On the other side working in a DIY way, by yourself or with just very few people gives you the strength of being totally free. That being said, we all know that in order to achieve something you have to work really hard so a label can be helpful to bring your music to a bigger audience, that is the main thing for a musician.

And what should we expect from you for this 2023, tell us more about it.

I plan to release an EP of remixes of “Future Fatale” soon, in DIY mode again. I already have a new track to be ready for this Spring (Katarina is working on the vocals). Meanwhile I’m setting up my home studio with new synths and drum machines to work and produce new material, I’m still keeping in touch with people in the music biz and different labels. Let’s see what happens.

Bandcamp