With their brand new single Paradise now available on all platforms (check it out HERE), Italian dance music trio Meduza stopped by for a quick chat about their music, life in lockdown and plans for the future!
First of all, thank you Luca, Mattia and Simone for taking the time to chat with us today. How’s everything going?
We are good thank you we are still in lockdown here in Italy but we never stop working on new music, so we are in the studio every day working on that and waiting for the pandamic time to be over.
For those few people who may not have heard about you, can you explain a bit more about yourselves?
We are a house music / underground house act formed some years ago. We are three guys that love house music, making new kind of house being played by radio stations all over the world. What more can I say, we are just three normal guys doing what we love!
How did you guys meet?
Mattia: Simone + Luca they met each other 10 years ago and started working on an old project together but then they split and after 2/3 years I met Simone in 2014. I started sharing ideas with him being in the studio working on some demos and then Luca joined us one year after and then we started the project MEDUZA and we were signed with UMG in 2018 releasing our 1st single ‘Piece Of Your Heart’.
I am more a DJ this is me Matt. Luca is more the engineer of the group and Simone is a musician and that’s what we do!
How’s working together as a trio? Do you guys argue a lot?
Sometimes it happens but we are friends outside of the studio, so any problems stay in the studio. Its good to argue / discuss sometimes on music because you can see others point of view, its what makes great records in the end.
Sharing ideas is sometimes quite fun, we don’t always have the same ideas so trying to find the right way between our ideas and we talk and talk and talk for few days, weeks sometimes (then our manager will shout at us a little hahaha) but we are assured one thing… it’s good when we all agree on the same point so that’s positive.
Working together as a trio I think is also a bonus because like I said before you are not alone so you can compare your ideas with your friends and with the rest of the team and see if you are right or wrong and see their ideas and maybe they can improve your work, it’s a real team effort with everything we do.
How much is your sound influenced by your Italian roots?
Just a little bit only because we live here. We grew up, all three of us grew up with music from the UK + US. Our influences comes mostly from the UK and the US house scenes though so we grew up listening to BBC, and also listening to American Pop and American Hip Hop, Italy is not that big musically talking but we are of course influenced by it because we live here.
Your singles Piece of Your Heart and Lose Control are global hits and the former was even nominated for Best Dance Recording at the 2020 Grammy Award. Did you guys expect such a huge success?
Obviusly not ha ha we did not expect something like that especiallywith the first track but we were nominated so it means that we did something that was the next step in bringing something new for the scene and we are happy to be a project that can open doors to this sound on the day time radio, so this is really important for the scene, this industry and the future.
Your brand new single Paradise feat. Dermot Kennedy has just been released and it’s already surpassed 25M streams on Spotify, reaching the 2nd spot on the Irish Singles Chart. How did this collaboration come about?
We were under the first wave of the lockdown here in Italy, it was late spring and we decided to write a song with the same team as ‘Piece Of Your Heart’ and ‘Lose Control’. We were talking about the distance we had from each other during this pandemic time, we missed them as they are our friends.
You’re not only far from your friends or family but far from a place that you love or a place that makes you feel special, when this was finished we wanted to send this to Dermot because we discovered his voice remixing his track last year ‘Power Over Me’ and we noticed in that time that his voice was fitting perfectly on our sound. In classic music mode, our people spoke to his people (luckily we are under the same label in the UK, Island Records) and then we waited… When Dermot got it he loved it immediately and decided to be the feature on this track and we recorded after one week all the parts!
2020 has been a crazy year. How are you coping with this new reality? What impact is having on your creativity?
I am pretty good honestly as finally after years of touring I have time to stay home with family enjoying every day with no rush and no pressue of flights every day. So I’m enjoying the enforced hiatus.
In terms of creativity we try and make doing remote sessions through Skype or Zoom with other artists. Sometimes its worked but most of the time not because everyone is home on their own and they are free to do whatever they want. Its very different in a studio setting focusing only on the music, as when you are at home you are more relaxed / chilling. Sometimes its not possible to be creative like this.
We have been lucky because we wrote a few tracks after doing a lot of sessions. Two tracks are really good and one is ‘Paradise’ and the other potentially a new single for next year so we will see.
Obviously doing a session personally is totally different because if you have a feeling or a problem you can fix it or you can write in five minutes what you are feeling to the singer or song writer. Through Skype or Zoom its difficult because you don’t have that kind of personal feeling when writing with somebody else. We are Italian after all, we love the human connection so much as people !!
Do you miss touring? When do you think we could see you performing live again?
YES A lot!
Its not a question I can answer at the moment as it doesn’t depend on me. It depends on the vaccine and a lot of things bigger than just me but hopefully in the first half of 2021 we can start some touring again. Maybe not 100% like we did before but hopefully step by step.
The most important thing now is that everybody is safe in doing what they love. We need to respect everybodys health obviously that’s the most important thing, if that is sorted out we can start enjoying ourselves at clubs and festivals again.
Your Instagram profile has more than 130k followers. How is your relationship with social media in general?
We have a good fan base and we try especially on Instagram to answer to everyone in our DM’s or on comments if we can, we are from the dancefloor ourselves so know what its like to message an artist and how elated you feel when they respond and say thanks or hi…. we like to stay in contact with all the fans we can because you can feel what they think about your project what they feel about your music . Its really important to listen to what they have to say and maybe their opinion or if they send a remix or a demo, we were those people once, so that connection to them will never go away.
What do you guys do when you are not working on your music?
Mattia: I spend time with my dog (Moki) taking him out to the park running and playing with him. I stay with my girlfriend and family. I love cooking and go to the gym.
Luca is playing Playstation and working on laptop, new music and also staying with his family.
Simone also spends time with his own dog called Yoda and his girlfriend / family too so we all have normal lives and try to enjoy family as much as we can.
Let’s talk about fashion. How would you describe your styles? What’s the piece that can’t be missing in your wardrobes?
Its shirts. We love wearing shirts, obviously not all the time like we do when we play but we do love a good shirt!
And now, 5 Rapid Fire Questions…
1. If you weren’t producers, what would you be?
A chef
2. Your dream collaboration?
The Weeknd
3. A song you’ve got stuck in your heads recently?
After Hours by the Weeknd
4. Favourite festival you played at?
EDC Mexico
5. Who’s the most stylish of the 3?
Luca
Last question: what can we expect from Meduza for the rest of 2020 and 2021?
For the rest of 2020 there will maybe one or two live streamings probabaly one is on New Years Eve with Tomorrowland.
The video we shot in Iceland playing Paradise live is coming soon also.
And nothing more I just spend Christmas at home and hammering my Amazon Prime account as all the shops are closed hahaha
Fast forward to 2021…. Music…. a lot of new music, a new single for radio, club collaborations and hopefully back to our old life playing live again for everyone.
