I loved the days spent watching my uncle Massimo doing any kind of magic on his guitar. One day he came out with something I had never heard before. “Wow! What’s that?!”. He put aside the guitar and went looking for something in between all his records, tapes and CDs. “If you liked that, have a listen of this and let me know!” he said giving me a music cassette with a yellow cover and six black figures playing some instruments. I played that music probably more then a milion time, I knew the lyrics by heart even if at that time I was not speaking a single word of English.

It happened that randomly browsing CDs at Disco International (a tiny music store in Ivrea, the city where I come from) I found the same album, yellow cover and six figures, behind it was another album by the same artist called Remixed.

“What does remix mean?” 18.000 Italian Lira less in my pocket and a quick run back home reading at the names on the back-cover: Masters At Work Remix 96, Rogers Ultimate Anthem Mix, Nu Yorican Dub, Daniel Maunick’s Mix, Pete Rock Remix, David Morales Remix, Roger Sanchez Uplifting Club Mix… “Who are them? Are they part of the band?…” That is how I stepped into Dance Music, House Music to be precise.

By the way, the yellow cassette given to me was Positivity by Incognito.

I was very young when I told to Valentina “I like being there playing music for the people, I would love to be a DJ”. She gave me a Gemini PS-626 Pro as present for my birthday few weeks after. My love story ended, but my passion is still alive becoming bigger and bigger day by day since 1999. At the age of 15 nobody gives you credibility because you are too young, you do not have any experience, you do not have flow in your set. I have heard any kind of story and my bedroom became my private club for some years.

The really first opportunity to play in a club arrived when I decided to move in Turin. There I met Alessandro Altieri and Mirko di Bella, great guys with big ideas in their minds. They trust me, they love the music I play, they want me each Friday and Saturday playing in Q-ba, their hi-quality cocktail bar in Turin.

January 2004, I am 19 playing Not Tonight (Dim’s DJ Friendly Edit) by Macho in the center of Turin when outside the Minimal wave is poisoning club and discos.

Here Luca comes. Luca Ferrero also known as Panno has always been the guy who was buying the last copy of the record I was interested in. Sometimes I really hated him for that. We attended the same high-school. I knew he was a DJ, he knew the same of myslef. He was the cool and trendy guy, I was the underground spirit. It ended up one Saturday afternoon, always at Disco International in Ivrea, while he was about to “steal” my record as usual that I stopped him saying “Listen, you can take it. I really do not mind, but next Friday you come to Turin and you play it, deal?”. He came.
In March 2004, behind four 1200 MK-2, at the Q-ba Cocktail Club riverside the Po in Turin, project The Pipesmokers is officially founded. Here below is how The Pipesmokers have been described after their first performance.

A disc jockey is not a disc jockey for standing behind two turntables and a mixer. A dj becomes such when, as well as going from one song to another, gives an added value to his selection. A re-processing, an intervention, a nuance, a breath of aromatized smoke, that extra that makes that listening moment unique and unrepeatable.

[…] This, the Magrittesque principle on which the dj-ing project The Pipesmokers is based.

The Pipesmokers Project was born in March 2004 in Turin from a musical need of Luca Ferrero and Alessandro Vigo. In countertrend with the electro minimal style that is of major influence to the city and the Po’s riverside clubs, their project proposes to carry ahead the Garage & Funk style that had brought House into the spotlight in Italy in the second half of the 90’s. Soul, Funk, Acid & Nu Jazz, Garage, Deep House and a touch of Bossa are all defining in a Pipesmokers’ dj set. […]

Since then many episodes happened, and tons of others still have to come; this page has been written in China whilst planning to move to Brasil and here I am in Spain after United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and USA. Who knows where this story will end… Initiative and a bit of irresponsibility helped me in making music my daily job. Beside The Pipesmokers I work as music consultant, author and DJ at Partygroove Radio and thanks to my design studies and experience in the communication field I have been image director at The M Agency, China.

I know some people do not like to read a lot.
The world taught me that HRs love dates, years, numbers, job descriptions and so on. Click here to access my CV and a quick table resuming everything I have been doing living my life.]