Since exploding into the public consciousness with the majestic Piece of Your Heart, deep house outfit Meduza have established themselves as the genre’s prodigious figureheads. With a glut of incredible singles emphasising the trio’s gift for euphoric hooks, big room beats and deft vocal processing, the Milan-hailing three now bring us an eclectic debut LP. We spoke to members Luca de Gregorio and Mattia Vitale to find out more on how the trio have shaped their fortunes to become Italy’s biggest streaming artists
Making a masterstroke moment of the spontaneous first take of its central vocal hook, Meduza’s breakthrough single Piece of Your Heart was a jubilant, throbbing deep house/pop best-seller that rightfully received global awe.
Astonishingly, the team that crafted this modern dance behemoth had only begun working together around three years prior. Luca de Gregorio, Mattia Vitale and Simone Giani had all shared an obsession with how music works – and how it can be arranged to get the maximum reaction from listeners. For Luca, the journey started at the age of 6: “I started studying piano because my father used to do it. With my first computer at home I started to understand how DAWs work – I think it was Cubase at the very beginning – step by step. The first record I made with it was so bad. At the age of 16 I sent a demo to a guy that worked in radio, he said ‘Oh that’s cool, do you want to come to the studio and start working together?’ So a few years later, at the age of 19, I started to work in the studio. I just loved it. It was a passion from the beginning so it was pretty easy. I then met Simone and after that, Simone met Mattia.”
While Luca immersed himself in technology and music production in the studio, Mattia’s skills were honed behind the decks, “I was a resident DJ and used to warm up for other main acts coming to the club, and in the meantime I started private piano lessons and used Logic in my home studio. I’d watch tutorials and try to make things and recreate techniques. I started like that. Then I met Simone and we started working together. He was an organ teacher at that point so he was more the musician of the group and I was the one thinking more as a DJ. We met Luca probably around 2016. Then we started sharing ideas and working in the studio. From that moment, when we were in the studio together there was no specific role for any one of us. Luca is better at working more in a nerdier way on machines and stuff like that, but we all share ideas working on the tracks – testing out all the songs and maybe adjusting as we go.It’s a pretty random process.”
Finding paradise
Three years on, and the three young Italians were riding an unexpected tidal wave with that aforementioned debut single, its viral success led to a number two placing in the UK Singles Chart and, over in the US, it sailed to
