A QUICK CHAT WITH MIKE SIMONETTI

Glass Candy are in town this Thursday and playing the Star & Garter. They're good, aren't they? Anyway, we thought we'd ask a bloke who releases their records a few questions - him being Mike Simonetti.

Only he is pretty interesting in his own right: a stalwart of New York's club scene and a quality DJ plus he was previously found behind the Troubleman label before he began wooing record buyers with his so-so-fucking-cool Italians Do It Better logo. Y'know: the one responsible for Glass Candy; the one that regularly fuses vintage discotheque synths and new wave touches and all that. So, aside from saying hello and explaining who we are and what we were trying to do and then saying cheers and hanging up, this is pretty much what was said.

The Italians Do It Better name is inspired by both that vintage club sound from Italy and a t-shirt Madonna wore in one of her videos, isn’t it?

The Madonna shirt didn’t influence the name - I found a picture of that afterwards. The name is something I always heard growing up in New Jersey. And I think IDIB spans all genres of dance music - not just Italy’s cosmic sound. I do like that stuff, but I also like other genres too. I think we just want to release good dance music.

Oh, okay. The design for the releases look pretty similar to old disco records. Was it important to have that kind of authenticity?

The design is all Johnny from Glass Candy – who’s also my label partner. He puts almost as much time into the art as the music and it is very important. I don’t know if these records are themselves ‘classics’, but it definitely would be cool if they were ever considered so.

If you could sign any one artist to the label, who would it be?

Bruce Springsteen because he is just the best. Or maybe Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac.

A lot of people might see your peers as the DFA label, Lindstrom & Prins Thomas, The Emperor Machine and other leftfield disco types, I suppose. Would you agree? Do you like them?

I like all those artists you mentioned. I particularly love the Norwegians. And we are going to be working with them in the future.

When you DJ, do people ever say the music is too slow?

Well, I tend to go all over the place when I DJ. I don’t play “slow” music exclusively: it depends how I feel that night. There are times when I play all techno or house or disco or weird Balearic rock but my main job as a DJ is to get people dancing and having fun. I’m not DJing to show off my record collection. I have had the “play harder” complaints. However I don’t play the banging electro stuff so those people expecting that usually get angry and leave.

Fair enough. Thanks for that, Mike.