From Disco to Techno to House Fabio Vanore’s sets cannot be pinpointed to one genre as the artist is too versatile himself as to narrow his musical range down to one genre – contrary to his productions, which pursue a more strict approach.
But let’s go back a bit in time, Fabio Vanore once was the resident of Tante Rike, Bonn’s former flagship club in terms of electronic music before it closed its doors in 2017. Deeply influenced by the club’s spirit, the Italian rooted DJ and producer kept walking the musical path that he’d dedicated himself to and released his tracks alongside his musical family on the 2015 founded label Incroyable Music as well as with Canadian imprint microCastle.
His creative output is depicted on his ‚Voodoo Ray EP‘, which is followed by the ‚Theory of Light EP’ on Connaisseur Recordings. Fabio saved the best for the new year, releasing his debut album on Incroyable Music featuring artists such as Jeppe Kjellberg from Copenhagen band WhoMadeWho or Mexican duo Zombies In Miami.
Fabio, great to have the time to chat today, how have you found 2021?
For me, personally, 2021 was a year of big changes. After 8 years of hard work and sacrifice as a self-employed, I finally dared to leave the business I had been building up over the last years. I started a new job for a Swiss based startup, which aim is to digitalize clubs, festivals and events, in terms of merch management and logistics. This new job suits perfectly to my passion for music, and so do the people I’m working with – which is great. My working times are more flexible than they used to be before, so that I’ve got more space to schedule my creative studio work. Due to the pandemic situation we took a little break releasing music on our labels, but we now got back on track with my debut album, and we do have lots of amazing things coming up over the next couple of months.
You’re set to release album ’Spectrum’ on your home of Incroyable music. Can you tell us a bit about the idea behind Spectrum, what it represents?
The idea to create an album started, when I got hooked more and more for electronic music which wasn’t necessarily only made for the dance floor. My label bosses Bellville and Fennec & Wolf liked the first tunes I created at that time, and they gave me the opportunity to work into all directions in terms of genres. During the working process, it was great to have all these creative people around me at our Incroyable Music studios. My idea behind “Spectrum” was to create a long player without any sort of boundaries and without defining a clear genre.
It certainly is a collaborative affair, how did you go about selecting who you work with on the project?
Over the last years we kept Incroyable Music quite familial. We mostly released our own music on the label and on a few compilations we‘ve included artists we are friends with, or feel connected to. So it was clear to me to bring my music family together, in the form of a collaboration on my album. We had Berlin singer Paul Brenning’s voice on our label in the past, so it was a pleasure asking him to join us again. Since day one I’m a huge fan of the Danish boys WhoMadeWho, so I asked Jeppe to lend me his voice and he was directly open to team up with me. The Zombies in Miami feature was a bit more of a coincidence. After a long night at one of our events, we had a private session at our studios. They were interested in listening to my album stuff, and we started jamming spontaneously. In one session we recorded the whole track, and I’m super happy and grateful for having them on board as well.
Incroyable Music is a huge part of what you do. How would you say the found an ethos of the family has changed over the years?
Incroyable Music has always been a super familial project to me over the last years. Three years ago we started our sublabel “no one’s lost” to expand our possibilities in terms of releasing music and in order to create more space for musicians and creative people. For the future we are considering to open Incroyable Music as a platform more and more also for artists outside the inner circle. Personally, I would be interested in giving young people who are just beginning their musical journey the opportunity to publish their own music and accompany them in their first steps.
Do you plan to take the album on the road? How do you see it from a live point of view?
At the beginning of working on “Spectrum” I had the idea to perform the album live during my gigs. When the pandemic hit, I realized that this plan is going to be tricky. At a certain point we needed to stop running our own events and at the same time I stopped playing gigs, in order to protect me, my family and all people surrounding me. I have a three year old boy and my parents are over sixty so that I really had to be careful. But, as mentioned before, Spectrum wasn’t only made for the dance floor – the sounds, grooves, and arrangements also offer a „listening“ character.
Can we expect to see any remixes of the original works in the future?
In order to bring “Spectrum” onto the “flashing post pandemic dance floors“ I decided to ask a couple of friends of mine and people around me, to create dance versions of my originals. The results are several interpretations by Redshape, Lake People, Kiwi, Alejandro Mosso, Davis, Clarian and Ede and last but not least remixes of my label crew family by Bellville, Vallant and Fennec & Wolf.
Jumping into your studio, how was the set up for the album? Was there one piece of equipment that was dominant to the sound throughout?
While I was working on “Spectrum” we had a project in which we collaborated with Native Instruments. Given the fact that they supported us with equipment (thank you again guys!!) I worked a lot with their hardware, like the Maschine and Komplete Kontrol. I also used their plugins, especially the Reaktor and Absynth. Among other hardware, I worked quite a lot with the Moog Sub37 and the Roland 303.
DHA Mix Fabio Vanore tracklist
1. Kasper Bjørke – TNR feat. Jaakko Eino Kalevi (Superpitcher Chapter A Remix)
2. Massimiliano Pagliara – Misplaced (Original Mix)
3. Fabio Vanore – Hope (Original Mix)
4. Fabio Vanore – Vista (Original Mix)
5. Guy Gerber – Polaris (Original Mix)
6. Frankey & Sandrino – Optical (Original Mix)
7. Fabio Vanore feat. Jeppe Kjellberg – Caravan (Redshape The Pace Remix)
8. Mind Against – Reveries (Original Mix)
9. Bellville, Fabio Vanore – L’oumo (Fort Romeau Remix)
10. Theo Kottis – Nothing to lose (Original Mix)
11. Chasing Kurt – Family Guys (Original Mix)
12. Kris Davis – Petroleum (Fabio Vanore Remix)
13. Fennec & Wolf , Vallant – Radiate (Andre Lodemann Remix)
14. Fabio Vanore – Unreleased