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INTERVIEW: Mike Opani

Actualizado: 24 oct 2023


With his second album, Mike Opani delves into the cultural heritage of his father and therefore also dedicates himself to the history of his hometown, Naples. The inspiring splendor of this city, founded by the Greeks as Neapolis (New City) and later expanded by the Romans, forms the basis of his new work. "Charon" witnesses the unique influence of these two great civilizations. Mike Opani's fascination with Greek and Roman mythology unfolds in all its glory and results in a passionate engagement with these rich cultural traditions. With "Charon" he has created a remarkable work of art. It is a musical melting pot that impressively displays the diversity and fascination with its historical roots. With two programs you can listen to him on Evosonic Radio for a long time. It's good that he is now also represented on Evosonic Records with his second album.


We have had the pleasure of interviewing the producer and this has been the result.


Can you tell us a bit about your experience? Where are you from / how did you get into music? I am the son of a German mother and a Neapolitan father and live in Germany. In the early 90s I was a raver from the very beginning. It didn't take long until I bought my first techno vinyls, started working in a record store and took off from there with first DJ gigs. At some point I came also into contact with drum & bass vinyls for the first time in a record store and then started a career under my drum & bass pseudonym CATIVO for over 25 years before my first techno release came out about 8 years ago.

How is your sound evolving? What artists and genres do you like to mix at the moment? I had a trip from techno to drum & bass and back. That doesn't mean that I don't do drum & bass anymore, it just means that I've expanded when it comes to sound. Ambient music is also a big passion that I have and also produce. I'll come back to this in one of your later questions. And I find electronics in general exciting. I always produce tracks whenever I feel like it. The direction that emerges is sometimes exciting for me.

How do you feel your music influences or impacts your listeners? We have to ask the listeners. I hope my tracks can arouse one or two emotions or the dance floor tracks can create beautiful hypnotics moods. What projects are you working on right now? What can you tell us about your last job? My current project is my album „Charon" promoted with a small tour. The exciting thing is that the clubs that book a date also have the opportunity to have the whole evening live on Evosonic.de to

stream:

So we reach clubbers who can´t come to that gig with “listening to sounds” and feelings directly from the club in comparison to only short cuts on social media. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Furthermore, I'm always working on tracks. Especially, in the first half of 2024, as already briefly mentioned above, I will be releasing a mainly “ambient” mini album on “Opani Rec.”

Where are you and what have you been doing now? I was a freelance artist for almost 20 years but after this time I decided to switch back to my old professional field. I work in the health sector and manage a department. This means less pressure for DJ gigs. And at my age, energy management is extremely important. And funny enough, my output has increased dramatically and my DJ sets are highly energetic. Which is a really great side effect for me – and the clubbers (I hope!) Has that sound changed much in recent years? What is your musical criteria? Oh, yeah. The “uptempo” techno sound that was currently being honked so extremely is not my thing. I'm more of an old school techno fan, as I think you can tell from my productions. However, I am not someone who generally rejects everything. I always say that in every genre of music there are tracks that I like or don't like and I try to design my sets according to these criteria. The songs either have to rock or have something very special that triggers something in me and I think and hope that this will be received by the audience and noticed. Do you feel safe now to play a more experimental sound?

Yes, that's not a problem because I also choose the criteria mentioned above and I stand 100% behind the tracks that I make or have selected. We all know that the digital revolution has affected sales, but has it affected creativity? To be honest, it really took me a long time to get from my analog studio, which was really nicely set up at the time. I had a Mackie 32-8 Buss mixer and various analog synths, 909, minimoog, etc. to switch to digital production. Nowadays I often produce hybrid but also purely digital and always try to have the analogue sound. not too clean as can be heard in many productions today. I like it dirty ha, ha. Can you tell us about your present and future projects? The current album „Charon" on “Evosonic Records” is very important to me. Next year there will be the tour and on top remixes for the album for which we are currently selecting remix artists.




Thank you for your time. Yours Mike




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