Every artist has an origin story and most of them are lies. Mine involves a cellar, so at least it is a damp lie.
I was twelve. It was the winter, which in Sirolo means the tourists have gone, the beach clubs are stacked chairs, and the whole town is inside our trattoria arguing about football. My mother sent me down to the cellar for a jar of passata. Under the wine rack, behind the passata, was a cardboard box that said TONINO on the side in marker.
Uncle Tonino had moved to Milan in the eighties "for a bit". Nobody had heard from him since about 1991. The box was his records: warped italo-disco, a few battered twelve-inches, and a Giorgio Moroder sleeve that the mice had eaten exactly half of, as if they were sharing.
Half of them skipped. I played them anyway, on the record player in the dining room, after closing, with the volume at "my father is asleep". I played them until the needle gave out. Then I saved up for a new needle, which took most of a summer of clearing tables, and played them again.
What the box taught me
Three things. One: a bassline is a bassline even when it skips. Two: nobody in a kitchen at 9 p.m. wants to hear about your feelings, but everybody wants to dance at 1 a.m. Three: never move to Milan "for a bit".
Then I DJ'd anything that would have me. Weddings. A cousin's baptism, which I still think went well. The August festa in the piazza, where the speakers blew at midnight every single year and every single year the town acted surprised. Eventually I moved inland to Bologna and spent my twenties learning to build the songs instead of only playing them. Disco Dorèlli came out in 2025. Italia came out in 2026, one song a day, which is the same tempo as a dinner service.
The box is fine, by the way
It is upstairs now, out of the damp. The Moroder sleeve is framed. The mice have not been invited to anything since. And everything with a mirror ball in it in this shop, the whole Disco era, comes out of that box. If you want the short version on a chest, it is the Disco Mine Tee. If you want the long version, keep reading this journal, I will get to it.