1 – Talk about your style and your sound evolution.
Good question! I’ve been asking myself the same thing foryears…fortunately my my fans seem to know better what my style is ! What I hate is homologation, that’s why I tend to ride on a side-trackomewhat from mainstream and market expectation, with obvious ly negative economic consequences for me. I like making the kind of music that I have in my mind with the equipment I have at hand because that’s the only way I know not to miss the original idea. For some time I’ve worked in expensive studios to get a more professional sound but results were poor.

2 – Italy dance-electronic culture scene: now and past!
As to the past, for most of the 80s I couldn’t really put up with Italian Disco . Except for a few cases, like Mike Francis, whose music I really admired although it was so distant from what I was doing, all the rest sounded like underdeveloped stuff to me. Maybe because the best of it , the more alternative stuff would hardly be heard on the national market and therefore wouldn’t always reach my ears. The Dutch and the British seem to be much better documented about Italo-Disco which became a real myth for them. Since the coming of House music many things have changed and all along the 90s I’ve heard wondedrful stuff, sometimes quite ironical stuff as well a lot of crap coming from Italy. At present, world techno is so standardised that it’s hard to express an opinion about it. Everything seems to sound alike and little innovative. I liked Omino Stanco a lot, I hope he’s still around and kicking.

3 – Tell us your last “Live set” experience.
As soon as I could afford a sufficiently powerful lap-top I set off to realise an old dream of mine.
A DJ-set where I remix all the tracks I’m playing. This is something you can’t do with vynil (which, I’m sorry to say I never quite liked, I prefer tapes). I always liked remixing famous tracks but I’d never found any use for that. (I don’t do bootlegs). Now as a DJ I can do whatever I like with the music I play as long as I give the credits and require not to be recorded during live performance to avoid any use as bootleg. So I’m having a lot of fun. I now have a 4 hour DJ set of 80s and contemporary tracks, all of them personally remixed plus my own tracks that I sing live and some basis I play on. Wherever I did it , it’s been greatly succesful!

4 – Talk about DJs
That’s a thorny topic as I am myself a DJ now. Let’s say that I didn’t considered them much for a while. Now that I am a DJ myself, I understand it’s no easy job. Anyway, I rarely danced in a club till the end of the night without getting bored after a while …I mean good DJs are not many. Years ago I appreciated Farfa who, at a rave, took me to dance a kind of music I wouldn’t normally care for. Then there’s the whole issue of DJs as the new Bosses of the Music system. This is unfortunately the consequence of the devastation of the record market operated by digital technologies and the no-copyright movement. Musicians will most probably go back to being considered like servants. Their new masters will be the multinationals. Music will survive only as ads jingle. DJs will run this new (ancient) system.

5 – How many bootleg/re-edit about “problèmes d’amour” around the world?
I know about 6 of them but there must be many more..

6 – and version, remix?
There are no real remix. Most people just cut the refrain out (which is, by the way, the only bit of the track I’m really proud of) and add a few sounds on the drums and bass-line. Carl Craig’s remix is ridiculous, somewhat insulting in the title (problemz) and illegal too as he ‘s never paid a cent for it. The various “remix” that are around were made by me in the 80s.

7 – Analog or Bit-Laptop?
Both. I work on the computer but I sometimes import analogic stuff recorded on tape.

8 – France and your life (lots of your music-trax french titles…)
It’s a love affair that dates back to my childhood, when I was crazy for French singers , from Edith Piaf to Gilbert Becaud but also including Francoise Ardit and Antoine. Furthermore I’m really hopeless with English and Italian doesn’t really inspire me. French culture was fantastic in the 60s and 70s, then it collapsed but right now it seems to be shyly emerging again.

9 – What do you think about the evolution of sound? Where do we go?
We shouldn’t forget that human senses are not perfect and have limited perceptive capacities. For instance, above a given acoustic pressure (exceeded by practically all clubs and concerts), the human ear can no longer exactly detect the pitch of notes. So that music is perceived as a sort of noise that is quite an advantage to bands wih poor singers and DJs who can’t mix on the same tonality. It’s a night when all cows are black. A very boring night. For instance I feel very frustrated as a DJ when I hear that often times some amazing effects I got by superimposing tracks on nearby tonalities are totally lost in clubs beacuse of too much loudness. As to the future, we need to bear in mind that all effects based on psycho-acoustics have been already lavishly used by today’s music. Real breakthrough in sound is little likely to come. So we can only go back to deal with music, a rather exciting prospect for musicians. But, please, turn the volume down by a few dbs if you really want to enjoy it (the good music!).

10 – Your Motto is …
The more you go for something , the further away you get from it

OH NO … ROBOTNICK! Hot Elephant Music distribution by AUDIOGLOBE

THNX: Maurizio Dami (Alexander Robotnick) www.alexander-robotnick.it interview by Dax DJ (year 2002)
My interview with Alexander Robotnick 2004 issue 3# Keep On Magazine