Mathame

about the artist
From the solitude of volcanic Mount Etna to stages around the world, melodic techno duo Mathame writes songs that inspire a generation of producers, and transports fans to heights that are out of this universe.
Brothers Matteo and Amedeo Giovanelli conjure magic with emotive and cinematic soundscapes, crafting sci-fi worlds and ethereal energies that linger in the air like candles in a great cathedral. Never has their vision for soulful songs and technical precision been more focused than on debut LP, Meme.
This 13-track triumph is the culmination of seven years for Mathame, but the group's story spans a lifetime.
…MoreFrom the solitude of volcanic Mount Etna to stages around the world, melodic techno duo Mathame writes songs that inspire a generation of producers, and transports fans to heights that are out of this universe.
Brothers Matteo and Amedeo Giovanelli conjure magic with emotive and cinematic soundscapes, crafting sci-fi worlds and ethereal energies that linger in the air like candles in a great cathedral. Never has their vision for soulful songs and technical precision been more focused than on debut LP, Meme.
This 13-track triumph is the culmination of seven years for Mathame, but the group's story spans a lifetime.
Despite a 12 year difference, Matteo and Amedeo have always been close. Raised in a home filled with records and cassette tapes, their parents ran a successful pirate radio station in Italy. Matteo, being the eldest, had a cultural head start, cutting his teeth as a local hip-hop DJ in the late '90s and early 2000s. He followed that with a deep-dive into the world of film, studying at university and graduating to become a professor, all the while writing and directing a series of artful movies.
Young Amedeo, meanwhile, looked up to his brother but cut a clear path of individuality. He helped his brother on film sets, dutifully studying hours of Matteo's favorite intellectual films, but it was Amedeo who first dedicated himself to producing electronic music. Always musically minded, he'd studied violin for years before giving in to DAWs and synthesizes, but the influence of classical pieces and theatrical soundtracks hangs heavy over Mathame's modern catalog.
It wasn't until their parents moved to the enchanting slopes of Sicily's Mount Etna — an active volcano — that the Mathame project was born.
"It's a magical place," Matteo says. "We have this big view on the termina. You get to see the forest. You feel the volcano all the time, rumbling. We stayed there for five years."
The brothers took a step back from city life to help their parents run a quaint bed and breakfast. It was hard work in the summer, cooking meals and entertaining guests from around the world, but in the winter, the whole Italian island fell quiet.
"We were completely alone," Amedeo says. "Winter on the slopes in the clouds is really heavy, because it's freezing. You listen to the rumbling of the Etna volcano. It's magical, but also there is nothing around."
In that isolation, Matteo and Amedeo propped each other up with music and brotherhood. That's where the first chords of future Mathame hits were produced, and it's that strange air of sadness and beauty that fans admire in breakout singles "Skywalking" and "Nothing Around Us."
When the winter ice melted and life resumed, Mathame emerged onto the club scene with these melodies in hand, finding quick support from emerging superstars Tale of Us and the Afterlife records family.
The dark yet romantic pulse of the group's releases caught like wildfire, pounding from the sets of every DJ from Ibiza to Miami in 2018 and 2019. A new wave of copycat releases launched as producer's clamored to recreate that "Mathame sound." Meanwhile, the brothers hit the tour circuit hard, playing 90 to 100 gigs a year on the success of a few EPs and a standout signature sound.
"We're not the kind of act that releases every two or three months, because we want to have goose bumps for every track, and every remix we do," Matteo says. "After 'Skywalking' and 'Never Give Up,' we started to think about an album, because we always feel that we are not just the DJs. We write and perform our own music."
In January of 2020, the first sessions that would become Meme began — then global disaster struck. As Mathame's home country was ravaged by COVID, the pair escaped the chaos and found space to create in the natural beauty of Mykonos.
The brothers who first came together in silence on a mountain went away again to write an album when the world stopped, but rather than write from a place of fear, they wrote a story of hope; an interstellar journey that took them to world's outside our universe and deep within themselves, exploring new frontiers of sound within the sonic home they've already built.
"We are looking for what we like, and that isn't on the market at the moment, so we are trying to produce it," Amedeo says. "That's the point of our movement, why we do music like this, because there isn't this kind of cinematic music that's also heavy, with a kick."
In the studio, Mathame follows a strict set of rules. Tempos must land in the 120 to 130 range; sounds have to come from the same palette of two or three synth styles; and each song may not exceed eight single layers or instrumental tracks.
"It's easy now to add things, but it's difficult to extract the real essence, and that's why we work a lot to implement it," Matteo says. "When we have an idea, we can not compromise. It's easy to add cream and toppings, but finding the real sauce of emotion is another thing; the sauce of taste. It's like cooking. When you have very good tuna, why do you need to put everything on top?"
"We have a real Japanese point of view," Amedeo says "We look for simplicity, and that is super difficult."
This chef's table approach pays off on "Come For You," an evocative track that opens with heavenly arpeggios and filtered vocals, building at a constant boil until it erupts with a juxtaposition of hard club energy and soft orchestral touches. The brothers aren't ashamed to admit that it brings them to tears on stage, and it serves as the first official single from the album.
From there, Meme unfolds to explore everything from spirituality to true love, the grandeur of human life, the isolation of man in the vast universe, the enduring strength of hope and the power of dreams, and of course, the bond that connects two brothers.
This interstellar feeling comes to life in the album's promotional art, each image of which was designed by an artificial intelligence programmed to create a visual based on Mathame lyrics.
Those themes will continue in the group's forthcoming live show production, while the album release was preempted with "Believe," a Camelphat collaboration that serves as the first in a series of collaborative club tracks dubbed the Singles Series. Inspired by Chemical Brothers' Electronic Battle Weapons, these Singles are Mathame's way of unleashing its arsenal of DJ set edits and IDs while celebrating its wide network of creative friends.
This new chapter, spearheaded by Meme, all adds up to the next step in Mathame's evolution as the duo stakes its claim as one of the great conceptual electronic projects of its time.
"It's an outer space journey on our spaceship," Matteo says.
"Our illegal spaceship," Amedeo interjects.
"Our not authorized spaceship," Matteo laughs, "as we look out from the window and write in our diary at night. It's the Mathame chronicles."