Celebrating your 12th anniversary at the Soul Session Summer Closing Party, can you talk us through some of the highlights from your career – both Live and releases or anything else that springs to mind?
Well this has been a long journey… 12 years isn’t a short adventure. Leaving from a small city in the heart of Italy and arriving to DJ in many countries around the globe has been an incredible experience. There’s been too many experiences to choose from but some of our highlights are DJ-ing in Tokyo, which was a massive experience for both of us and the vibe there is truly superb.
London is our second home, and we love EGG LDN and we’re sure the Soul Session Summer Closing is going to be a marvellous celebration for our 12th Anniversary.
We’ve put out dozens of releases during our career, including releasing ‘Origins’ our debut album on Tribe Records which had a great reaction but founding our own records label Excedo was a new and unforgettable but determined step!
Souldynamic – Excedo
House music afficionados, how did you guys first get the bug and where there any specific moments or clubs, people, tracks that first inspired you?
Both of us probably had this ‘Love for House music’ deep in our souls since forever and we just needed to unlock it. We met in a small records shop in our town almost 20 years ago and we were both already in love with House music. It was around 2000’s and this genre was very popular in the scene and incredible artists like Masters At Work were on fire releasing tracks which very soon became classics. Let’s just say their records brought us to House Music, definitely marking our destiny.
From DJ-ing to producing, how did you first transition into making music and do you guys have specific roles or do you approach each track differently?
It’s the opposite story for us, producing to DJ actually. We didn’t have any clubs around our city to DJ in so the only option to let the world know about Souldynamic was producing. We spent years in the room arranging demos, till our very first release on Bobby & Steve’s Zoo Groove Stereo Recording in 2007. Roles in the studio are quite smart we guess, Stef is the “music hero” who spends days listening to music, any genre of it and he get’s the inspiration 90% of the time. Luca makes everything happen technologically. It’s a mix of ideas – Stef loves the deep atmospheres and Luca is the beats guy. Not easy to explain how the construction comes out in the lab, it’s a spiritual thing and it looks like it works 🙂
Souldynamic – The past as the future
Lil Louis championed your mega anthem ‘Equatoriale’ and how did you feel when you first became aware he was a huge supporter and then how did the remix come
Thought most people knew this story by now 🙂 Lil Louis actually did his own edit adding the well known acappella from Mr. Fingers, and the video from Concrete created the myth. Lil Louis is a legend and nothing could make us more proud than knowing he was playing our music. ‘Equatoriale’ surely is the biggest track from us and this never happened to us before so it’s satisfying when you travel to the other side of the globe and people know this track. This taught us the real and huge power of music.
Souldynamic – Equatoriale
You’ve worked on tracks with an incredible array of artist including Josh Milan, Peven Everett, Ultra Nate, Monique Bingham, Angela Johnson, Melba Moore, Robert Owens and Darryl D Bonneau and do you have a favourite track or experience working with these artists? What makes it so special to you?
These are HUGE names in the scene, and we could never imagine working with them in our career and we’re so glad we did.
Stay with Me (Souldynamic Old School Mix)
https://www.discogs.com/it/NYC-Peech-Boys-Stay-With-Me-Remixes/release/2251018
Your first Boiler Room set three years ago, and was that a special moment in the Souldynamic journey and did it expose you to a wider audience?
Unforgettable moments for us 😉 That Boiler Room episode in Naples during the sunset left some marvellous pictures in our mind. Exposure is always big when you DJ for Boiler Room and we tried to do our best in 55 minutes which is actually not that easy. We played almost all Souldynamic tracks which we think is a brave thing to so and some of the tracks like ‘Excedo’ were still demos and so it was quite emotional to test them for the very first time on BR 🙂
Your debut album ‘Origins’ on Tribe Records was another major milestone, and again an incredible list of collabs with artists such as Dana Weaver, Mr. V, Miranda Nicole, Wunmi, Jocelyn Mathieu and can you talk us through your personal highlights?
‘Origins’ is also really important for us. We released it to celebrate 10 years of Souldynamic and it took 2 years to put the 12 tracks together. We actually arranged 22 but then chose 12 – only the very best. We love challenges and this surely was the biggest ever for us. We worked with 10 different singers from different countries all around the world which was mad 🙂
Every time we received the vocal stems for the instrumental tracks it was so emotional. Normally you first do a Skype call with singers, you talk about words, melodies, they sing something live to find the right direction, but putting the vocals on the track for the first time is such a strange feeling. We were in Croatia when Dana Weaver first sent the“Live Your Life” vocals, which was an incredible highlight! Anyway we love all the tracks for the album and it’s been the most important job in our music career and producers may understand how complex it is. Hearing it now 2 years after its release brings up strange feelings…all the instruments in it, the piano, vocals, organ touches…it’s mad. We collaborated with 5 musicians on it and their patience with us in the studio was priceless.
Souldynamic ‘Origins’
Celebrating your 12th Anniversary and your Excedo Records imprint, what spurred you on to set up the label and what’s your favourite release to date and why is that so memorable?
Excedo Records was the step forward “Origins” as we had released tracks for 10 years on other labels, many which are BIG, and we owe a lot to each one of them. We felt we needed to discover something new, release ourselves from too much planning and this new adventure brought us to another level in the studio and in the DJ booth. The track “Vatosoa” is the most “memorable” as it reflects what we wanted to do by launching our own label.
And lastly you’ve been residents at Southport Weekender’s open air festival SuncéBeat in Croatia since 2010 as well as playing at the SW Festival, and can you leave us with 5 tracks from 2019 and give us a line on what makes them stand out?
SuncéBeat and Southport are home for us, and we’ve played Croatia since the very first edition when it was a small event for 800 people and now it attracts 4000. 10 years ago festivals were not so popular, Croatia was different and we love that country. Southport Weekender for us is the father of all festivals and we’ve had the opportunity to play for it several times in Minehead, which was always 3 incredible days of quality music for 10000 people. It still give us goose bumps when I think of our first set in the Power House… love it.
‘Hart’ – Vince Watson
Proper summer vibes during the Excedo experience on the beach!
‘Vohibola’ – Souldynamic
This was the first vinyl on Excedo Records and we loved playing this in Liverpool at Constellation.
‘My Body’ – Louie Vega ft Luther Vandross
Boat party vibes
‘Orange Blank’ – Chaos In The CBD
Smoking vibes during our set at Basic Club in Naples, Old School!
‘Baianà Pablo Fierro Remix – Barbatuques
SuncéBeat Beach Stage 1.30 am, perfect summer atmosphere
See ya in London at the Soul Session Summer Closing Dat Party at Egg LDN!
Souldynamic celebrate their 12th Anniversary at the Soul Session Summer Closing Day Party flanked by DJs Dennis Valentine, David Bailey, Martin Lodge, Lady T, Anthony Ranz, Boogie, Chewy with hosts Lloyd Life & Snoops and on Percussion, Paul ‘Fistfunk’. Taking place on Sunday September 29th at Egg LDN, 200 York Way, Kings Cross, N7 9AX from 12pm Midday till 11pm and all info at
