Lucky Luciano

It’s a dreary Monday morning but Swiss/Chilean DJ and producer Luciano sounds remarkably chipper. This isn’t really a surprise. He’s in Ibiza, where Mondays mean nothing except another party.

In fact, just a few hours after he talks to Hot Press, Luciano will play at one of the biggest parties of them all: the Cocoon closing party. The marathon bash is set to be the crowning glory of a year that saw the White Island pretty much united under one banner of music: minimal.
He’s going to enjoy the last big party of the summer but, unsurprisingly, Luciano’s mind is focused on the future, something different.
“I feel like I have to change. I’ve always been more of a house DJ than anything else, but today I am playing super, super housey music. It’s not that I’m bored… but once I hear all the hype, it pushes me to find something else. Creativity is about that. It’s about finding things that no-one else is doing. I’m really trying to go somewhere else at the moment.”
Luciano has, over the past few years, emerged as one of the more thoughtful producers within the techno DJ A-list. Apart from his excellent full-length “experimental” release on the Peacefrog label in 2002 (as Lucien-n-Luciano), his string of recent 12”s – usually clocking in around the 15-minute mark – have stood out from the ever-growing morass of minimalist releases.
“I think people get excited about my releases due to the fact that I play a lot. But when people go to record shops, they are sometimes surprised by my music. My recorded output is totally different. DJing is something I do for the moment, it’s about the energy, the place, the time. But my releases are something more personal, I’m more selfish with them. It comes more from my inner part. DJing is always a compromise between the people and I. But the music is no compromise. I’m really glad when people go to the record shop and listen to what I do, I’m very glad about it.”
Currently in the process of building a new studio in Berlin (the MyMy guys have set up camp in his old one), Luciano promises a return to the more experimental sounds at some time next year.
“I’m working on getting the acoustics right, and then, next year, my idea is to make experimental music again.”
Before that we can look forward to a new compilation from his Cadenza label, one that arrives with a similarly strong philosophy.
He says: “The idea about a compilation was going around for a long time – but we (he runs the label with fellow producer Serafin) wanted to do something different, we never wanted to make a retrospective. What I really wanted to have was the forthcoming music – and to choose the tracks from the past that marked the evolution of the label. So one CD is forthcoming music, and the other is the key tracks.”
A firm believer in the ‘less is more’ approach – both sonically and physically – the label has had just 19 releases since 2003’s still-stunning Orange Mistake.
“I never wanted to push the label too far – I am always very careful with the releases. I don’t release music by my friends. I receive a lot of demos, but I have to be convinced 100% to agree to a release. Sometimes I work with artists and it takes a while to get to a release, but I’d rather have a long-term relationship with them than a short one.”
His philosophy mirrors that of Perlon, the influential German house label that is, effectively, his second home.
“Perlon is like a model for a label. Cadenza is different because there are eight of us, and (label boss) Zip works alone, but the idea behind it, I took a lot from it. Not so much on the music, but on how to work with the artists, how to be with everyone. From all the labels I have worked with, the people who respected me the most are Perlon. And this is what I have tried to do also.”
The last 12 months have been a whirlwind for the man with the most famous moustache in techno. Without relentless self-promotion or high-profile extra-curricular activity, he has become one of the top DJs in the world.
“Since I was 16, this is the only thing I knew how to do. So I had to survive, to make money, to make a living… I was always like, ‘I’m going to make it, whatever happens’.”b

Luciano plays Tripod, Dublin on October 12 as part of Heineken Green Synergy. Cadenza Contemporary is released on November 1.