Mozzarella Minimal

About this time last year, I wrote a post regarding the new breed of Italian mnml. In a recent RA profile, Davide Squillace points out that Naples has always been a techno town. Specifically, he highlights the first time he heard the Minus bandwagon roll into town:

'Yeah, we had for the first time Richie [Hawtin] playing in Napoli and the Detroit wave blew our minds, because before that we were into this English sounding progressive thing and with this new wave from America, this was the sound we wanted to promote and what we wanted to do. We did Jeff Mills, Model 500, Derrick May.

I'm a huge fan of Richie back in the day because it seemed to me that he'd just put one huge record on, the flow was so logical. It didn't sound like mixing records, it just sounded like one big long vinyl. You know when you are a kid and you have a hero? My brother's was a football player. Mine was Richie.'

The Hawtin element is not hard to discern in recent Italian mnml. it can be found everywhere from the artists' stage names to their sparse, technologically driven (cheap?) sounds. Squillace goes on to note that 'Richie [Hawtin] is really big in Italy and Minus is huge there.' No surprise there. A current look at the Beatport Top 100 includes tracks from Luigi Rocca, Stefano Noferini, Andrea Bertolini, Simone Cattaneo, Alex Gardini, Gianluca Meloni, Simone Tavazzi (who actually did a great Italoboyz remix of 'Don't Talk' feat. Fadila), and Squillace himself. They dominate the Tech House and Minimal genre sections even more. So one year on, it appears mozzarella minimal has become an established part of the electronic music world. Demau5 must be quaking in his boots, that is if he hasn't already signed these guys up.