Mowgli - In The Jungle-
3D’s Nina Bertok talks with Mowgli, AKA Michele Savasta, about his beginnings in the scene, ahead of his set at Stereosonic.
If you’re going to make it, you’ve got to be where it’s at – that’s the lesson producer and DJ Mowgli has come to learn early in his career. At just 25 years of age, the Italian-born Savasta may be a newcomer to the London dance scene but he’s already an international force to be reckoned with when it comes to all things house.
Savasta recalls his decision to relocate from Italy to the UK: “I moved to London a year ago,” he says. “Italy is absolutely controlled by the techno scene and it’s really quite difficult for a different type of sound to break out over there. So, of course, I got bored very quickly there and I wanted to go to London.”
Upon his arrival Savasta was lucky to find the right management in a short amount of time. “It just started working out for me very well and everything is so good now,” he enthuses. “For one, I have my own label now which I never would have had in Italy because of all the taxes that you have to pay because the system is 10 years behind. It’s just really bad like that.”
Savasta claims he was impressed with the UK’s standard of professionalism when it came to dance music. “The good thing about London is that here the music is really important, it’s a serious industry. In Italy, if they ask you what you do for a living and you say you’re a DJ, they will start laughing. So it’s sort of a cultural thing in some ways but it’s also literally a business thing. In England, music is a big industry with something like 300,000 people making a living from this business.”
While it’s an enormous number, Savasta says he couldn’t be more thrilled to belong to it. “It’s actually one of the biggest industries in the UK. From the 1960s it’s been like this and it’s been taken very seriously ever since the bands first started coming out of Britain. It’s most definitely more organised in that way than any other country.”
According to Savasta, while London may be the capital of the dance world, New York is the home of the hip hop. “I was really into hip hop music and the hip hop culture when I first started out,” he explains. “When I was about 18 I got more into the rave scene which is where drum n bass came in for me.”
In 2003 Savasta began his own label Touchresponse with mates Clark Able, Leg.No and Baunz, with their first release being a huge success. “I spent quite some time producing drum n bass so a lot of those elements showed through when I started experimenting more with house,” Savasta says.
Before he knew it, Savasta had created his own sound distinguished by the unique bounciness of his productions. “I’m working on new releases all the time, I have done a lot of them on different labels. On average I’m producing a record every 20 days but I’m a producer before anything else that I do, there is nothing I love more than being in the studio surrounded with music.”
WHO: Mowgli
WHAT: Plays Stereosonic at Manning Bar
WHEN: Saturday 22 November
MORE: stereosonic.com.au