Kisk interview on BizaarBazaar
1) Who are you?
Giuseppe D’Alessandro aka Kisk, owner of Apparel Music.
2) What do you do?
I am the owner of a label, a producer, sound curator, teacher, education manager, dj, an events manager – I simply make a living with music and everything else around it.
3) Where do you often create/produce?
I live in Milan, but I work on my productions in studios all over the world (Frankfurt, Moscow, Paris). According to the sound I want to produce, I either work with a sound technician or with professional musicians.
4) When?
I am lucky to have a family, I have a daughter, I teach at a DJ and Producer school and work on many projects simultaneously. I therefore have to organize my own and the time of the others very well, in order to have everything I need and to record in the best mood with the right people. But it does happen that I begin a piece while on an airplane or at the seaside, on my computer obviously.
5) Why do you play music?
I am what I play.
– 1) Which track defines you the most?
There’s no track I consider better than the others. Each piece of music represents a soul, a different moment or emotion, but thinking about a great track, at the moment “Montana Jr. & Orchestra – One More Time” comes to my mind.
2) Any track of the moment?
Currently I often listen to the next LP Sarp Yilmaz is producing with my label… l thinks it’s full of stimulations and considerations regarding what I’m always looking for under the concept “Jazzy”.
3) What influences your work?
My family and all my friends influence my day and therefore my work, which is also affected by the choices I take every single day. Working in music one is influenced by many things, because there are millions of artists all over the world and they all have something important to say, and nowadays the instruments in the widest sense of the word, are within everybody’s reach. I am quite “old school”: Jazz, Soul, Blues, Funk, Electronic, but there’s also Disco Music, House, Jungle, Techno… you know – BPM is surrounded by a multitude of facts. Maybe BPM is what influences me most.
4) Do you consider yourself as an Artist? If so, why?
An artist? If “artist” is to be understood as a product, then yes, as Kisk I am an artist-product, but Giuseppe is a person like many other sound lovers. There used to be times when I felt like an artist, but that was when I played a club gig or at other incredible events, where everyone made me feel like one. Now I mainly help others to become one.
5)What’s your academic background? Are you an autodidact?
I started to study music when I was 10 years old. As musician I started with private lessons on a folksy instrument, the accordion, followed by the Melodica, then the piano, the first Roland keyboard and then just everything which produced a sound. By and by, I started with the art of DJing and, beginning with Jungle, West-London and Trip Hop, arrived at 4/4 with Deep House and then Jazzy. I started producing in 2006 and after the first software-produced tracks, with whole days of gleaning information from sound technicians, or helping band and producers working in friends’ studios, came the first releases. It took me a couple of years to understand why no label was able to give me what I was looking for. The Oneboy project convinced me to experiment with live jazz on a dj set: an interaction of classic instruments with contemporary rhythms and electronic beats which we often built up ad hoc for the performance.
6) Favorite designer?
Luca Belochi, obviously he designed Apparel Music’s label and many covers.
7)Favorite Classic movie?
Car Wash.
8)Favorite book?
Discocaine.
9)Favorite word (that you most overuse)?
Nina.
10) Favorite music label?
11) Your dream collaboration?
Sonny Rollins.
12) What’s your life motto (quote)?
The Jazzy is coming!
13) Any “mot de la fin”?
SYS!