A shroud of fog rolls slowly off the stage, engulfing the crowd. The light catches it at odd angles, refracting it around the room in disorienting patterns. Then, a fist appears out of the mist, followed by another. They pump in time as the bass begins to thump out a four on the floor rhythm. The air clears, revealing two masked figures clothed entirely in black. One turns knobs deftly as the other taps out a frenetic rhythm on a midi controller. The build reaches its pinnacle, then drops as the two figures lead the crowd in epic undulations.
This was the scene during the Cyberpunkers set at a warehouse rave in Washington, D.C. over the weekend. The Italian duo – comprised of Massi Arena and Fabio Liuizzi – have been creating music together since 2006, when they met at a nightclub in Milan and bonded over a shared love of music. Their high-energy sets and unique hard electro sound has already garnered them widespread support in Europe, and now they’ve got their sights set on the US.
I had a chance to catch up with Liuizzi the morning after the group played “Get Laid 2: Sloppy Seconds” in D.C., and we spoke candidly about music, Cyberpunk culture, and much more.
Cyberpunkers Interview
You met in 2006 and began what eventually became the Cyberpunkers – a group you’ve said is not only about electronic music, but about fashion and performance as well. When did you decide the group would be about more than just making music?
There’s photography and fashion and performance, but first is always the music. Our idea was to combine the Cyberpunk culture and the music, but it all came out of the music. Massi and I began the music with tech house…we started out not with pure electro but with tech house, our first production was a tech house production. We decided to change in 2007 because we felt the waves of the electro music coming in Europe – from outside of Italy – and we decided to become more pure electro. Our first production was a remix for an Australian group, Earthboy, and the first real electro stuff was a remix for Toxic Avenger. It’s not EDM, our music, it’s electro, because our music is different. Especially with the Cyberpunk culture, it’s a mix of machine and human.
And that’s why you have the masks, right?
Yeah, that’s why the masks. The paintball masks are a very good way to explain our culture, the Cyberpunkers culture. It is similar to a robot mask, but different in that there’s no lights, there’s less focus placed on the mask and more on the music.
You say your sound is “pure electro” and it’s also been described as “cyberelectro”, but I know you don’t like the box created by genres. Your recent Illegalmix II, for instance; there’s so much variance on there. How do you bring all these different sounds and influences together?
We listen to music from all around the world. Right now glitch hop music is close to our idea of electro music. DJs like Skrillex and Flux Pavilion and Noisia and Nero, we love all that kinda stuff. We prefer to play that at shows because it’s close to our idea of electro music. Making mixes, though…we love making mixes. And it’s different because it’s like a gift – to our friends, to our fans – and we love to mix many different kinds of music in that hour or however long we have. It’s cool, it’s proper to play different kinds of music in mixes, but we stick mainly with electro and glitch hop. Yesterday we play a set in DC and we play some of that…and the fans fucking love it. This is a bit surprising for us – usually people like the banger music, not so much the lower bpm – but they really enjoyed it.
So if you had to compare some of your earlier shows, your European shows, with the show you played last night (their first show in Washington, D.C.), what would be some similarities and differences?
The shows in Europe, they’re very different. The show last night was a warehouse party, it wasn’t a real club party (like most in Europe are). The soundsystem was cool, there were plenty of drinks onstage…I guess I don’t like to compare parties because every party is different…but we love the glow of the lights and the rave style of United States parties.
Let’s talk about your shows for a second; they’re super high energy. How do you bring that energy to the stage? What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened at one of your shows?
The craziest thing? A lot of drugs…(laughs) No no, I am kidding you. Listen though, I’m not too much young; I’m 35 years old, but I have a lot of energy inside of me. I want to share it with all the people coming to our parties – I wanna jump a lot, I wanna scream things like “Are you ready motherfuckers?” – and the people give us back that energy. And I can see that energy, when I play in front of a thousand people like last night or tens of thousands of people at festivals around the world. I just love to share that energy with people, and love even more to get it back.
Got any songs right now that are absolutely essential in your sets?
We love to play some of the newer stuff from Skrillex, as well as a lot of our stuff. We played our new remix for Designer Drugs last night, that’s a big one…Theo and Michael are our good friends, we did that remix for them and it should be coming out on Ultra records in March. We like to collaborate with artists here in America because we would like to build up our hype and spread our intentions, the Cyberpunkers culture. There’s a big market here – every day there is a party – and we want to come back here always. Hopefully in the next month!
So do you have a dream collaboration? Someone you’d love to work with right now?
Well, we don’t make collaborations that often…maybe we’d do something with Chuckie…we love the Dutch sound of Chuckie. Maybe we can mix our sound with his, I think it would be cool. We don’t usually make collaborations because our idols (the ones we’d love to work with most) are, you know, Daft Punk, Justice…it’d be very difficult to do a collaboration together. (Laughs) But hey, nothing is impossible right?
**Special thanks to Justin Murray for reaching out and providing us this opportunity. Also, thanks to Cyberpunkers and management for taking the time to make this happen.
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