Interviewed by Sam



Chaishop: Who are you, where do you live, (real name, age)?

Loopus: Matteo stroppa, from milano, italy, 30

Chaishop: what are you doing when you're not playing music,
(jobs, other things)?

Loopus: at the moment i am fully concentrated in the music and the new label which takes me a lot of time...

Chaishop: how did you come to music, did you play other
instruments/music before you
came to psytrance (roots)?

Loopus: me and jacopo we were playing some kind of electrojazz stuff i was playing saxophone and him keyboards...around 1995 i discovered the trance scene and later i started djing, in 98 due to our musical background and my full dj knowledge of this new music we started to produce and to have our own project loopus in fabula..but since the beginning our roots where quite evident in the music we have done...

Chaishop: what is your style, how and when did you come to
trancemusic, to producing,
to your first gigs?

Loopus: well as i was saying our style is quite unique what we really like is to put a little bit of funky vibe into trance, we don't like so much the hard full-on because it's too aggressive and violent for our mood but on the other progressive is too static and "cold" for us too..so we are a bit out of the lines...which is positive in some way but also problematic in other hands..

Chaishop: what is going on in your local scene?

Loopus: well the scene in italy is sooo small!!
when we first come to the music back in 95 there was a small but very underground and powerful scene in milano, the djs had always the very latest fresh music on dat recorded in goa directly from the artist, there were groups like etnica, lotus omega , crop circle..(although since then etnica were not very present in the local scene...)
then as a squat group we started organizing illegal raves with many floors but the biggest was the psytrance because this was the music we liked most...the thing growth a lot and in our latest parties there were 2000-3000 people in a illegal situation and with an entry of 2-3 EU !! in 98 we stopped to organize because it was too much stressing and we wanted to dedicate more time to produce music..problem is that since then the scene in milano has not kept on...after us there were not any more groups keeping it alive..just few things here and there...
now the scene in italy is re-borning still on a very small scale but it's not an evolution of the old scene is just something new which is moving his first steps..

Chaishop: what does trancemusic mean for you, how important is
trance for you, what
do you use it for?

Loopus: i like to dance and that special feeling when the dancefloor is "working well" and you feel very comfortable and spontaneous.. it's a kind of social reality without all the hyperstructures and hypocrisy of our society: you see the faces of the people and feel their true energy which normally is compressed and hidden...but it needs lots of conditions for the dancefloor to really work well...

Chaishop: what do you think about our scene and where do you
think are we going to
(development, future trend)?

Loopus: personally i think we are bit stucked by now! ;-) on the music side if you look at the historical curve of his evolution you would notice that in the first years there were new ideas and new directions every 3 months at least, but now... in the last 2 years i haven't see too much...technology has progressed a lot and the "audio" revolution has made possible to reach a great quality and deepness of the sound ...but even that is now more stabilized i guess: there are new vstis and plugins out every month but the biggest step has already been made so since now it will be more and more difficult to improve quality and dimension of the sound...anyway because of this audio revolution the
quantity of music produced is increased a lot..this is good and bad at the same time..it's good for "democratic" reason because it gives everybody the chance to show his talent, it's bad because most of the people are doing the same stuff and in the great chaos of available music sometimes you risk to loose what is really worthing..also in commercial terms is a problem because many similar products means only less sales for everybody...so actually quantity itself is never a problem but more the "standardization"
so finally in my opinion the future trend which can save the scene is to diversify the offer, to keep the interest always alive, always stimulating the intelligence of the people which is much higher then what the industry (every industry) is expecting...

Chaishop: what are your releases/events until now,
(discographie)?

Loopus: we have our second album ("astrofunk") out now with our brand new label "fabularecords"..the first album was released last year by the australian label demon tea.. we have also released a dozen of singles in compilation with various labels (for example flow, zma, surreal audio, exogenic, resonoise, candyflip, devic craft, digital psionics...)

Chaishop: what are your futurities, upcoming releases, upcoming
parties?

Loopus: as a label we are planning to do a compilation soon..about parties there are many! there will be a launch party in italy (13th september, milano) another in germany (20th september, munich) and in portugal (1st november, lisboa) many other things in program anyway small and big...

Chaishop: what was the best, funniest or strangest experience in
your carreer?

Loopus: well so many!! the first i recall now is when i played in mexico together with the crazy finnish guys:texasfaggot...in the morning timo had to dj but he was in such a "modified state of conscience" that it was hard for him "to distinguish between the cd and the cdplayer" so i just came on stage and told him to "relax i will be your hands, just tell me what you would like to play"..of course it was really a great set and totally rocked the dancefloor..

Chaishop: ok, that's it for the first
if there is anything else you want to tell please feel
free to write it down

Loopus: well i would like to note that i don't care so much about labelling styles in music and i really believe in crossover experiments ... with our new label fabularecords i would like to push a sound which has the funkyness and warm of house, the groove and deep sweetness of progressive and the psychedelia and power of psytrance..also historically trance music has always been a very serious style, sometimes epic, mystical, but after that i believe that some irony and joke is not bad because to because to be always serious is a bit fanatical (but also always joking is superficial..) so finally i feel i am definitely more projected in the future side of music..