It seems like every house and techno DJ in the world is trying to reinvent themselves as a minimal spinner at the moment. Few, however, feel and interpret this music with the same passion as Luciano Nicolet.
The DJ/producer brings colourful, musical brush strokes, unusual time signatures and loose, irregular rhythms to a sound that often gives the impression of being obsessed with rigid, monochrome qualities.
From his warm, Detroit-influenced Blind Behaviour album as LucienN’Luciano in 2004, to his abstract collaborations with Pier Bucci, Luciano leads rather than follows in his chosen field.
Like so many of his peers, he was born in Chile. He grew up in Switzerland, but still feels strongly about the US tendency to interfere in South American politics and society.
“The US influence is very dominant in South America, but people are waking up to it,” he believes. “If Americans come to our country, it’s usually to look for resources. Our land is very, very rich and for a couple of coins Chileans would agree to cut down a thousand year-old forest. I don’t agree with American politics, but I still tour there, unlike Ricardo [Villalobos], who refuses to go.”
Although prone to playing day-long sets, he has finally distilled his DJ style into a 70-minute mix CD, Sci Fi Hi Fi. He takes the listener through the textured dub of Serafin’s ‘Starship Discotheque’, austere techno from 2000 And One and the crashing snare and acid builds of Donnacha Costello’s ‘OK, That’s Great’.
No matter what way he turns, the grooves swing in a hypnotic fashion, embracing fluidity rather than inertia.
Unsurprisingly, Luciano’s dual nationality informs his music-making and DJing: on one hand there’s the attention to detail and precision that’s a product of his Swiss upbringing, on the other his love of Chilean folk music and its undulating rhythms.
He claims that he never consciously set out to create or concoct a distinct musical identity, but his work always veers away from linear, kick-drum led techno.
“I try to avoid what I call ‘square music’, where everything is logical and obvious because it’s music without feeling,” he explains.
While Luciano’s work negates any criticism that minimal music is soulless, one of the other complaints about this style is that its popularity is due to the fact that it sounds great when you’re in an altered state.
However, he insists that drugs are only of secondary importance.
“Drugs have always had a close relationship with music,” he points out. “If you look at Hendrix or the jazz guys, every scene has had a drug association. Music is a spiritual thing and people feel that by combining drugs with music they can get even higher. I don’t condone it, but there’s no doubt that it’s a powerful cocktail.
“More importantly, people needed hope and inspiration, and they are beginning to realise that there is something else, not just commercial dance music,” Luciano believes. “All over the world, in places where there has been a club scene for years, people say to me, 'Hey, what is this music’? In the past few years, people have that sense of discovery and excitement again and this music shows that the magic is still there.”