A personal look back at four decades of gear, from the turntable to the laptop — and what stayed the same along the way.

I started working in nightclubs as a DJ at a very young age, at a time when music was still entirely rooted in the analogue world. Vinyl, mixers, early electronic gear — nothing was virtual, everything had weight, and every mistake was audible in real time. Looking back, I think that’s exactly what taught me to listen.

Late 1980s. Forte dei Marmi, Tuscany. This is where I took my first steps into the world of music. Behind that DJ booth, surrounded by vinyl records, mixers, and the lights of a nightclub, I began to understand that music was not simply something to listen to — it was something to experience, to choose, and to share. At the time, I had no idea where that path would lead me. I only knew that standing there, behind those turntables, I felt exactly where I was meant to be. This is one of the first images of a journey that, in many different ways, continues to this day.

The first computers in the studio

I’ve lived through the evolution of the tools that shaped different generations of producers — from the Atari 1040ST and the earliest sequencers and software, through Emagic and Logic, and many other technologies that gradually changed how music is written, recorded and produced. Each new machine felt like a small revolution at the time, even the ones that look almost quaint today.

I’ve never seen technology as a replacement for creativity — only as another instrument through which new possibilities can be explored.

Curiosity as a constant

That’s still true today. I’m fascinated by the new systems and technologies emerging in music production, including artificial intelligence, and I’m experimenting with them in my own work as well. Not because they’re new, but because I want to know what they let me do that I couldn’t do before.

My musical journey has crossed a lot of ground — from the funk and disco of the ’70s and ’80s, to soul, jazz, lounge, nu-disco and electronic music. Different rooms, different decades, same thing I was chasing every time: atmosphere, groove, and emotion. Maybe that curiosity, more than any single tool or genre, is what still guides the way I make music today.