I remember very well, it was 2016 when I became aware of the 12″ Quetzalli/Cohuätl by Luigi Tozzi. It might not have been the first material I had heard from him, but it was definitely an EP that I still haven’t forgotten, have played countless times in the club and still feel as fresh and inspiring today as I did back then. In the meantime, more than a dozen 12 “s and two albums (mostly on Hypnus and Non Series) have been released by him, which consistently follow a line or idea of his sound. Fortunately, we found the time to deal with some questions concerning his music and especially the realization of it in his live performances.
JS: When I look back at your 12” Quetzalli/Cohuätl and your album Deep Blue 2 from today’s perspective, I see that you have been working on your idea of music over a long period of time, undeterred by short-term hypes/trends. How would you rate your creative path in recent years, would you say that you have come closer to your ideas? Are there stylistic elements or project ideas that you haven’t found in your work so far and that you want to integrate in the future (or, for example, an alter ego project that takes a completely different musical path)?
LT: 2024 will be an important year to look back at everything I did because it will be the 10th year for me releasing music. I have always thought that ten years is a good amount of time to commit to a craft, get deep in the learning curve and then have a perspective on what the creative process is with all it’s ups and downs. I can definitely say that there’s a clear direction in coming closer to the core of my ideas: I feel that I understand more who I am and why I do things, which makes composition more difficult in a way, but also more stimulating. Technically I’ve been evolving and improving a lot in the knowledge of instruments and most important I’ve been developing my ears in a way that I have a very clear picture of the frequencies that are important for me to create compositions that are both very rich and dense but in the same time empty enough to respect the concepts of space and silence (which are crucial in music from my point of view). These two concepts are related to the idea of minimalism which is also something I’ve been understanding and translating more and more in my music: sticking with very few elements and transforming them rather than constantly adding new sounds is a key approach for me.
Comparing Volume 2 and 3 from my Deep Blue series is a good example: I am very attached and still go back to Volume 2 a lot, I think it is more diverse, naive and that it gets to higher emotional peaks in some tracks compared to Deep Blue 3 but I feel that the latest album is more mature and incisive because I reached a stronger technical identity, and the way I’ve been sculpting the frequencies and the space in every track gives it a lot of coherence as well. For sure there’s many new projects and ideas that still haven’t found a place in my discography and that I look forward to try out for future compositions, but I don’t think that necessarily needs to translate into an alter ego.
JS: Recently I was able to get a glimpse of your liveset and then, after your performance, I could imagine how the whole thing is organized live in Ableton. When did you start thinking about a live act and what conclusions did you draw from it, which way is the most coherent for you? Having recently started presenting your music live in an ambient format as well, where do you see the main difference to a live gig aimed at the dancefloor?
LT: I’ve always been thinking about playing live as it makes a lot of sense for someone who is a musician in the first place to present his music in such format. I am collecting stems from almost every sound I make since 2017 and I got to a point now where I have hundreds of stemmed tracks from the past 6/7 years. Then the main idea is to have this huge puzzle of sounds in ableton and play with them in a way that I can always finding new solutions to keep it fresh and interesting for myself when performing.
To be honest I am very pleased with where I am now in terms of setup and knowledge: what I do is extremely versatile, with the same project I can do a very peak time and dancefloor oriented session aswell as a deeper and slower one (I’ve also tried out playing a warming up set with my live set in Tresor last year and it turned out pretty well). Being able to adapt to every situation with live was a goal for me since the beginning. Regarding the ambient live project, the way it’s built is very similar to the techno one, but my aim there is less to adapt and interact with the audience and more to radically take the listeners on my own wave.
JS: Going through your fave tracks (on Orb Mag a while ago) I find a lot of intersections of music that influenced both of us. If you now zoom into the cosmos of Basic Channel / Chain Reaction (which marked a fundamental starting point in music production for both of us), what would be your top 5 tracks (with a short description)?
LT: I’d focus on concepts rather than single tracks here. Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound are the main responsibles for me starting to make music and the more I listen to their works the more I understand why. All the concepts that for me are key in approaching music are there in an incredibly complete way in their compositions. They achieved the strongest identity both technically and creatively in their tracks. Also lately I’ve been very obsessed with Substance and Vainqueur’s discography, I love how radical and pure most of their compositions can be. Especially Vainqueur’s ‘Ranges’ and ‘Elevation’ for me are a huge source of inspiration these days.
JS: Starting with Basic Channel / Chain Reaction, the topic of “FX Chain” / Delay / Reverb inevitably comes to mind. I still remember when I started producing music, I often imagined how a modulation of filters and effects could have come about on a Maurizio track… Then I realized that it would make sense to start my own experiments (instead of thinking too much about it) to get interesting modulation results… Exactly because of this, a working method was established that is constantly updated, but this probably leads to the music getting its own character, and people feeling it when listening to the music… How has it changed that behaved with you in the beginning? Which paths did you take to generate your FX Chains?
LT: Playing with very long effects chains on relatively simple sound sources has always been crucial in my composition since day one. I also can relate very much to studying deeply and trying to figure out how exactly a certain producer achieved a certain modulation or tension effect. But in the end it feels more natural and fun to just experiment following your ear and most important your intention to find effects chains that will then define your identity both musically and technically. I’ve been saving all the work I’ve done with FXs since the very beginning so I can still play with ideas and concepts I was looking at years ago and update them or just have fun using them in a different way. As an example on my live set I have few very long FX chains in my return channels that are key to how i play with modulations and one of those I used it for the first time for my first releases in 2014…it still does the job!
JS: Mastering plays a role that is sometimes greatly underestimated in what is actually translated from the musical idea onto a sound carrier for the listener. I have been working for Affin and my own music exclusively with Artefacts Mastering since 2015. Before that I had never been in the mastering studio and for a long time I didn’t really fully recognize the importance of long-term cooperation and feedback with a mastering engineer. After my first mastering session, I understood relatively quickly what can be possible if someone takes care of the material and understands where you want to go in terms of sound. That set a process in motion for me that had a strong influence on my subsequent productions and made things possible that were not defined enough up to then (and that goes on and on, one is never good enough)… How involved are you yourself in the mastering process of your work?
LT: I actually have a very different idea on mastering compared to yours then! For me the best case scenario is that mastering keeps the track as close as possible to my mix without messing too much with the dynamics (that should of course be a compromise with gaining loudness). Also I absolutely prefer not to be in the mastering studio or to influence the work of the engeneer in any way until he at least finished his first versions, then we can of course get into a bit of a ping-pong dynamic until we get to a result we’re very satisfied with. This doesn’t mean that I’d like to do my own masterings by myself tho, I still feel it’s important for me to have someone with a different perspective and in a different sonic environment/studio to be involved in the process.
Joachim Spieth 