A chat with natural/electronic.system. – one year on

natural/electronic.system closing Paral-lel Festival, 2016. Photo by Lorez.

Antonio Giova and Valerio Gomez de Ayala, aka natural/electronic.system, have been close friends of Patterns of Perception since the beginning. They performed at our first party at OHM Berlin last year and produced an excellent contribution to our mix series.

One year on, we caught up with the pair ahead of their appearance at Patterns of Perception’s anniversary party this weekend to see what they’ve been up to lately.

It seems like so much has been happening for you guys since we last spoke. What were some of the highlights from the past year for you?

Last September Paral-lel festival was a great experience, we have been there from the first day and we soon felt the right atmosphere. For us it was an honour to close those amazing three days with such a responsive crowd. Closer Club in Kiev, Elysia in Basel and our last trip to Amsterdam for FIBER festival were also pretty remarkable.

You have a new release coming out on Tikita in May – your first full vinyl release. Was there a particular inspiration or concept behind this release?

There is no particular concept behind the EP. We really like to make different music; it depends on our mood, the moment of the day or just following an inspiration in our minds.

We’ve both loved to listen to and select very different electronic music since we were very young, so we have many different influences. We just picked some of our productions that can fit well together but that are basically also very different from each other. We are usually very critical of our own music. Karim, the owner of Tikita, gave us the right support and motivation to compile this work.

You’re playing at Paral-lel Festival in Spain again this year. It sounds like a very special festival – what’s it like playing there? How is your music suited for an intimate outdoor festival of this kind?

We said already that Paral-lel festival was very inspiring. It’s not usual to find such a well prepared, polite and “really into the music” crowd in Europe but we stayed there from the first day and we experienced the first days as part of the crowd. We felt these things pretty clearly, so when our moment arrived (to play) we knew that we could just be ourselves, play what we love and enjoy that great moment with the crowd. Everything worked pretty well in the end, so we’re very happy to go back this year.

Valerio, you’re running a party called STRATI in Rome. Tell us a little bit about the concept, and how you approach the lineups for these parties. What have been some highlights from the past year for you?

STRATI is the club night I run with a group of some great friends in Rome. The main concept was to bring groundbreaking artists and music to Italy, mainly related to what we like. It can be techno, it can be deep house, but it should be always hypnotic. This is what we like! Probably this is the key element that connects all the artists we hosted. Actually we had many, many highlights during our four years of activity: Diamond Version Live (Rome Premiere), Kangding Ray Live (Rome Premiere), Ulwhednar Live (Italian Premiere) + Acronym Live, Tin Man Live (Rome Premiere), Voices from the Lake Live (Rome Premiere), Eric Cloutier & Nuel DJ set + Plants Army Revolver Live premiere during season two on the same night, Deadbeat, DJ Nobu (Italian premiere) + Neel hybrid set, Alan Backdrop DJ set, Juju & Jordash Live (Rome Premiere). We also made a great closing set as natural/electronic.system. last June at Ex Dogana club, very nice memories! In recent times we had a very nice live act from Dorisburg (Italian premiere) and a mesmerizing Steve Bicknell DJ set last October. We are going to throw the last party of the season soon, then let’s see what happens in the future.

With Antonio based in Berlin and Valerio in Rome, how do you guys balance living in different cities? Are there any particular challenges – or maybe advantages – that come with this setup?

Nowadays we have less time to listen to music together, so when we meet somewhere for a gig and we do a back-to-back it is much more challenging than many years ago.

On the other side, living in different cities and being part of different scenes extends our perception of things. We interact somehow with different worlds and we get in touch with different sounds, and this is reflected in our music of course. Right now, production-wise, we work mostly exchanging projects, sounds and ideas using the internet and then we meet several times during the year to finalize stuff together. Our strong friendship of course is also a plus to make everything work well.

You were one of the artists at our very first party in 2016 so it’s only fitting to have you back for the 1 Year celebration. What can we expect from your set on May 21?

Thanks for inviting us back! You were one of the first crews that invited us in Berlin so we are happy you enjoyed the last party. The location and the context where we perform are always important for us. It’s a kind of guide for our mood, for our selection and for the kind of journey we try to describe with the music. We know that for this Patterns of Perception birthday party we will perform an afternoon set in a beautiful garden, we are going to share the decks with Svreca… so it will be fun for sure!

natural/electronic.system at Dommune, 2012.

What’s up next for natural/electronic.system? And for each of you as individual artists?

We are keeping working on our music and try to perform more. We want to try to define always more our own style: something that our listeners can recognize as the n/e.s sound. This is the main focus for our future.

Lastly, what tracks do you have on constant rotation lately and why?