DJs of the Year: Tale of Us

Carmine is mellow and intensely focused on the classically musical, but he's the more prolific clubber of the two. He threw himself into Berlin when they arrived, going to Panoramabar for six or seven hours on a Sunday to soak up the music and listen to what works. Tresor, Watergate and Club DerVisionaere too, though "Berlin is not just about the clubs," he says. "It's about the opportunity you have to go to the club or to do something else. If you want to finish a track at 5am, you know? It's freedom. I would understand and learn in these places – I needed to. The frequency, the breaks, how each sound reflects in a club. If something sounds right there, you know it's right. It was a different experience to university."

Matteo is intense in a different way. Chatty and firmly focused on the vision for the duo and the label, he's prone to overrule his partner in conversation. He used to co-run loft parties called Just This back in Milan when he was 19, booking "more melodic techno" artists like Seth Troxler. He's the one who's heavily into creating techno, but he is less interested in being a punter in clubs. "I once went to Berghain and it was amazing, but I felt I didn't want to party," he says. "I wanted to sort my shit out instead. I was so into some sound in my head that I didn't need to be influenced by clubs. After success came – if you want to put it that way – I got more interested in the actual clubs. But I like things more private and chilled, like loft parties."

It was connections made at those parties which made Tale Of Us happen. At the same time as the pair's moody and intensely groove-laden remix of Thugfucker's 'Disco Gnome' was taking off in 2010, Matteo was meeting Troxler in Florence club Tenax, where it was proposed they record what became 2011's debut EP 'Dark Song' for his Visionquest label. With their own thing going on – 'Disco Gnome' came out on Life And Death, which they run with Greg Oreck of Thugfucker and Manfredo Romani, aka DJ Tennis – alongside interest from an established player, the pair moved to Berlin full-time.

"Life And Death is a great team at the moment which we are happy to be part of," Federico Fognini of Mind Against tells us. "We've actually produced several tracks with Tale Of Us over the years but none of them convinced us to release it, including an unreleased 'City At Night' song we made years ago, which somehow ended up going viral on YouTube. We always said that if we release music together it had to be special." That sums up the Tale Of Us approach in general.