Mathame are an Italian techno pair who bring real depth of emotion to their grooves. As such it makes perfect sense they come on labels like Tale Of Us’s Afterlife, where they return with a new one in the form of ‘For Every Forever’. This brotherly duo grew up with parents who ran their own radio and then moved deep into the forest to run their own idyllic holiday getaway. They say they have an album on the way and continue to headline some of the world’s best clubs. Here we speak to them about all this and more.

WWD: Hey Mathame, how are you both doing? What’s busy in your life aside from music? 

Hello! Yes all good here thanks! Is there a life beside music? Really? Joking aside, yes actually we are busy building our first studio and arranging some new business..

WWD: How long was it until you guys started making music together? 

Actually we are brothers so from the birth of Ame we are making music together in a certain way you know…we can say we became serious 6 years ago, when we lived on the slopes of Mount Etna, and at the beginning it was an escape.

WWD: Are you similar in your tastes or is it more opposites attract? Who does what in terms of the studio?  

It takes some time to work it out but definitely we can say it is working. Was a matter of finding the right balance between us is something spiritual, because you really can’t explain how it works, we have totally different tastes regarding music, Matteo is more for ambient and classical stuff, Ame loves hip hop and American culture, as well as contemporary music and he also in constant search of talents. So in the studio the two worlds tend to collide and explode in something new. Something we have learned working in fashion advertising for a few years is that everything needs to be original, simple and at the same time unique. We can say we work in a studio like a fashion research brand, yes.

WWD: What is it about Italians and melancholic techno do you think? They seem to go together well!

Italian musical culture derives from melodrama and opera, such as Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti: in every work there is this tragicomic feeling that is at the same time beautiful but sad, it’s a work of balance between distant feelings. Also, popular folk music is full of serenades and ballads in this minor key that hint at sadness and melancholy in general. That’s why Italians have a great comprehension how to put this contrasting feeling into a dance system.

WWD: How did you hook up with Afterlife? Do the boys give feedback and help with your releases? 

We’ve known Matteo and Carmine, Fede and Alex since their release on Life & Death. At the beginning and still we have great esteem for them because they have always shown as every great artist does to be in constant search for something unique and original, exactly like us. At the beginning it was not easy, because as we say the “background noise” was a lot, but slowly we managed to get noticed, thanks to the sound of music…you know we lived on Mount Etna, away from the big dance centers, where the games happen, you know what I mean? So demo after demo mutual trust has solidified and we must say that the esteem and advice they gave us has spurred us to the point of bringing our sound to the level it is at now. As already said in the past, for us Afterlife is like the “Den of Tigers”, do you remember it? Where we met some precious mentors and we developed our technique working out and research.

WWD: And when you DJ, do you go back to back? Or do you prefer playing live? 

We have rarely done back to back because it is not something that really belongs to us. We prefer a dimension of our own, we approach the DJ set as if it were a Live concert, we use Dolby files to maximize the sound impact, and interact with the public, these things … that you know in a techno world maybe sometimes it seems out of tune, however, are things that come from the inside, are spontaneous and have built during this incredible year our identity.

WWD: You play a wide range of settings – smaller clubs and huge festivals – how do you switch up your sounds for each? How have you prepared for playing festivals instead of clubs? Is it more challenging to play festivals?

Obviously this seems like a trivial question but it is not. You have to adapt substantially because the sound impact is totally different. One thing is the sky opens on you outside, another thing is the ceiling in a club. Bass and feelings are totally different. And above all, a full mass around you absorbs energy in a different way while in a small club the energy is almost all disponible and therefore you have to go slower, longer, because you know.. it can be too much. So basically in my opinion these are the reasons why you have to adapt, the energy propagated by the speakers is different. In clubs therefore there is a tendency to make longer journeys, to reach the apexes more slowly to give the body time to absorb and process, while in festivals, since energy is more shared, to have the same impact, you can allow yourself to go more strong immediately. Unless there is a particular weather condition that changes the whole scenario…

WWD: What else have you got coming up/are you working on?

We are working on a lot of material, maybe an album, let’s see, but soon something that we have worked on for almost a year will see the light, something really new and surprising, probably a turning point for us.

WWD: Have you got any fav bits of studio gear?

At the moment, we try to maximize the whole digital system and therefore maximize the hardware, processors, storage capacity, ram speed and hard drives. I think the difference is now there. Are we moving to a scenario where simulation will be preferable to reality? I don’t know, perhaps, certainly the direction that techno progress has taught us is “efficiency”.

Mathame’s For Every Forever is out now via Afterlife. Check out the release here and keep up with the guys on Facebook and Instagram.