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Julie Marghilano interview
House | Friday 31st August 2012 | Annalisa
Being a classically trained musician playing the violin and a hot DJ and producer this lady has skills and continues to break boundaries Joe Le Groove caught up with Julie Marghilano.
Hi Julie, how you doing?
Yea I’m alright!
Yea sorry this is a bit late, super late actually!
(laughs) that’s ok!
Ok cool, so how’ve you been?
Yea I’m ok!
I haven’t seen you for about 4 years, actually last time I saw you was at Retox.
Yea, yea back when, it’s been a really long time! I’ve been gone from London a while now.
Yeah I’d forgotten your accent sounds about as weird as mine too! Kind of American Italian?
My accent is all fucked up! I lived in Italy for a hundred years and travelling and now yea its all fucked up!
Yea that makes two of us. Right lets get this out of the way so I can let you get back to whatever it is you’re doing! So the first question is remember when I met you a long time ago you told me that you started playing violin at a very young age can you tell our readers a bit more about the beginning of your musical journey?
Ok well my father’s a musician, my mom was a singer, showgirl, so I was kinda born into a musical family, yea and so basically growing up in America you get to a certain point where you can take a musical instrument in normal schooling, like in everyday school. At that time I wanted to play the drums (laughs)
I’m laughing because that’s what I wanted to do but I wasn’t allowed so I had to play the violin when I was 5 until I was 8, I liked the Violin but I wanted to play another instrument but you obviously wanted to play the drums,what happened?
Yea I sucked at it basically (laughs), I was terrible and then actually the violin teacher, she knew my father quite well and she came to me and sat me down and said “listen it’s a really hard instrument but why don’t you try and play the violin” and so I said alright and it was kind of one of those things that I was able to play right away, it was kind of weird.
So you just picked it up just like that.
Yea I picked it up quite easily so then I started playing violin in school and in the orchestra and yea that’s basically how I started to play violin.
Ok how old were you then? Like 8?
I was 10!
Wow, so what kind of music were you listening to in your early years? What were you listening to around the time you started playing at 10?
Umm well I was obviously into American rock and pop kinda stuff, the sort of stuff you listen to on the radio, I remember my first sort of dance music was George Clinton and all that kind of stuff. That was big in America in that time, Kraftwork and I was really into The Cure and Bauhaus, my little dark punk era. I’m trying to remember, I was listening to a lot of different stuff. Also because I was growing up with my family that were all really into music so I would listen to a lot of old classic rock’n’roll when I was young, getting turned onto Pink Floyd and the Doors. A lot of variety always. I can’t remember that far back very well.
I can remember that far back, you don’t want to remember really, you don’t want to embarrass yourself! (laughs)I was listening to Def Leppard when I was a kid and ZZ Top and stuff like that and Hip Hop but it’s not really something I would run round and tell everyone!
Yea definitely, I remember my Def Leppard days, yea somewhere around 10 was definitely into that situation, hard to remember with all the lovely cheesy groups that we had in those days.
And the power ballads and all that stuff! Which is now gone!
I remember as far as Rap was, I was listening to Digital Underground, I used to love them, De La Soul and EPMD, and all of that stuff!
Wow and what about your parents, your dad was a musician and your mum a showgirl, so literally from age zero you grew up with music in your house everyday.
Yea definitely, I remember my dad having all kind of rehearsals in our house when I was young and me basically running around and dancing with them playing jazz.
That’s probably why you picked up the instrument so quick.
Probably I definitely think it has something to do with genetics, I do believe that I have to thank my father, as he’s a very gifted musician, so I’m very thankful to him for part of my talent let’s say and me playing violin.
Cool, so which artist, you’ve said like Kraftwork, were the artists that made you want to make electronic music or was it your first kind of taste of that sort of music?
That was more my first sort of taste for electronic music, back in the day. We also used to have in Vegas young peoples dance clubs and all of that so you could actually go dancing in my first club situation, I think that was when I was about 13 or 14. I remember that was kind of more breakdancing. I remember listening to Soft Cell, Kraftwork and all those sort of groups and really loving them!
So what made you decide that you wanted to make electronic music?
Well, let’s see, I guess curiosity just to see. Well I was playing violin for a while before I started DJing. I was playing violin in Italy with some DJ’s and I met up with a guy named Ivan Iacobucci, who's a DJ from Italy and we decided to make a track together, which was my first try of making any kind of music. And I would actually bring him all kinds of music to hear, so I think it was just a natural process of wanting to make something because I was playing on top of other people’s things and I was just wanting to create something of my own which I think is just a natural process at a certain point when you’re playing music I suppose, well for me it was anyway.
Yea that’s definitely a natural progression if you’re jammin’ along with people eventually you want to have your own music and you jam along to it. You perfectly gel that kind of music with a classical instrument, the sound and the visual aspect captivates people, are you working with any other artists on this basis, have you got some sort of secret project in the loop where it might be you playing with some other artist playing different instruments with an electronic kind of feel to it? Or is that something you’ve thought about?
Umm as of now I’m not working with any other artists that are musicians, I’m definitely not against doing something like that but I just haven’t found the right people to do it with or the time, as you probably know making music takes a lot of time. It’s something that I dedicate a lot of time to and actually in the last few years I’ve been really dedicating my time to sound design, so what I’m getting into is pushing my performance and productions to a new level. With sound design I’m making a lot of crazy sounds maybe with the bass of the violin but transforming the sounds into different things.
So a lot of your bass lines on your tracks and the sounds are coming from your violin and you’ve just manipulated them.
Yea as you probably wouldn’t notice it as I’m really transforming the sounds so that’s kind of what I’ve been doing recently, a lot of sound design and a lot of stuff like that. I have a couple of people I’m working with, I just did a collaboration with Miss Jools and we have a track coming out on digital, actually I think it came out today on vinyl with various artists from Digital staffe. And I have another Various Artists coming out in September on vinyl with a new label called Addicted Records. But I’m definitely up for doing collaborations, I have a couple that I started with different people but I don’t wanna say anything because you never know what’s going to happen.
What’s your usual set up when you perform in a club?
Well actually I use ableton and I use Traktor also. I use both programmes. I use ableton with the audio 10 card, I run my violin through the mic entrance and I re-wire so that I use the loop machine of the Traktor from my violin. So basically I’m running my violin through ableton to have different kinds of effects that I can use. Then I use the CD player of iMix, I don’t use the sync button (laughs). Then I’m using all of the loop possibilities from the Traktor so basically I’m using 4 channels almost the whole time.
Have you found any drawbacks with today’s technology, which obviously allows you to take things to a whole new level but there are instances where things crash etc.
I’m quite lucky, I’ve never had anything crash but it’s always a lot more stressful and more work to attach, especially my set-up with 4 different channels was a bit more tricky, especially when you have to set up after someone in a DJ booth. Whereas, before, I was using vinyl and you could say ‘hey I wana play’, now it’s like oooh do I really wanna set all that up. (laughs) you know what I mean, there are some drawbacks. Obviously I think that also I’m really happy that a lot of people are coming back to spin vinyl, I mean I have a lot of records, even though I’m not spinning them now that’s what I started on and what I think every DJ needs to know to do before they go and do anything else. That’s what our profession was started out to do which is why people should know how to do it. But in my case, what I’m doing, I can’t do with vinyl. For me, when I was playing vinyl and violin I’d have to bring a rack with me and all kinds of stuff and records so someone always had to travel with me in order for me to go play, so for me when everything became digital it was a big liberation and I could finally do everything by myself. Also doing what I do, which I think is a little bit different so I’m kind of creating music as I go, so as far as what I’m doing it’s a little bit different.
And are you still doing the Soul Asylum Party?
Of course, that’s my party!
So how often do you do that? Fortnightly, quarterly?
Well we had a little break this summer, because of stuff that went on, but now it’s going to be every six weeks. I like to keep it a bit special and not do it too often because Berlin is already very saturated with amazing DJ’s so I pick quite interested DJ’s that aren’t playing all the time here and quite refined and just really good underground DJ’s that I think need to be playing here, that I don’t hear all the time. So it’s kind of better to do it less so you can pick the right situation to do.
Cool, I think I’m going to be in Berlin September October time, will there be a party then?
We’re doing our next Soul Asylum on the 12th October. I can tell you Miss Jules is playing then.
So what would you say is so special about Berlin? I mean obviously it’s a little bit more than just music isn’t it?
Oh yea there’s a lot more than music, music is a big part of it. Berlin for me is kind of like the last real democracy on the planet. It’s the last completely free place where the people actually decide what’s going to go on here. When the people don’t want something they get out on the street and they protest, it’s a city that’s liveable in Europe. There aren’t many cities left in Europe that are economical and it just seems like when I go to any other city now I get shocked about the prices that are out of control and it just seems like Berlin is the only place that’s kind of kept its brand. It’s realistic living where everything works. There are so many different cultures, art, music, theatre, everything that you could possibly want.
Ok so a good mutual friend of ours Lorenzo Panico, has booked you for Big Vinyl Circus Party, what can people expect from you?
Oh my God, I don’t know, we’ll have to see. To be honest I haven’t really thought about it yet. I like to surprise people, I think I’m going to be playing a lot of my own stuff and a lot of things I’ve been working on lately. I don’t want to say too much about it, I guess people can just come down and check it out!
And finally, if you were banished to a desert island and you had to take 3 famous people, who would they be and why would you take them? They can be dead or alive.
Hmm, let’s see, might be better to take my best friends but if we have to take famous people yea? I guess it would be cool to have Quentin Tarantino, he’s the man, I guess Bach because for me he’s a genius as far as classical stuff goes I love him and the third one I don’t know. I’m trying to think of someone comical because that would probably be a good idea. You got your film producer he can produce stuff, you got your musician he can play music so maybe someone funny. Let’s say Miss Jools, she’s famous enough!
Big Vinyl Circus takes over Cable on Saturday mornings from 5am with residents Lorenzo Panico & Gianluca Sved plus international guests.
8th September - Arnaud Le Texier
29th September - Rob Mello
For more information check out www.myspace.com/juliemarghilano
Joe Le Groove
