Ready to strike: Marco Faraone's slow 'n' steady journey to success

It’s unlikely you’ll ever see Marco Faraone flustered; he’s far too laid back to process stress in any visible way.

Yet, right now there’s a look on his face that says the guy who was knowingly throwing cheesy heart hand-signs at Mixmag a second ago now has some work to do. Faraone’s due to take over his headline set in 10 minutes, but the warm-up DJ is playing too hard and too fast and the local crowd in this Modena club are, moment to moment, escalating into a state of frenzy. “How do I follow this?” Faraone barks in mock panic, before turning to his DJ bags to calmly work it out. His hands move briskly, but on his face is a look of serene concentration usually reserved for coders or surgeons as his brain processes the external clues, pulling out the record sleeves to match. His name is announced, the hype-man dragging out the four syllables of his last name – four more notches on the frenzy scale. Then he’s up, his opener a no-nonsense, heads-down techno stomper. Faraone smiles; the track is taken from his forthcoming EP for Drumcode. The name? ‘Boost’.

This is Faraone all over. Watching, waiting, ready to strike, but only when the timing’s good. Beneath a calm, genial exterior – and plenty of black layering – is an unflinching focus. “I grew up with the idea that you get results by working a lot, doing things at the right time, slowly, waiting your turn,” he says back at the hotel, sprawled easily on the sofa. His low-key chill is an intrinsic aspect of his character, as much a part of his identity as his undercut and vertiginous quiff. Not for nothing has he spent the last decade slowly building a reputation in that most old-fashioned of ways: by playing gigs and playing them with a level of technical proficiency that, well, takes a decade to perfect. Beginning in small clubs in backwater towns in Tuscany near where he grew up, he gradually levelled up through word of mouth. “One hundred people, two hundred, three hundred...” he draws out the numbers deliberately: club capacities as Buddhist mantra.

Growing up in the tiny city of Lucca in Tuscany, Faraone learned the value of patience early. “People say ‘How did you learn to wait?’ I always say I learned it from fishing.” He’s joking, but only a bit. “When I was young there was a lake next to my parents’ home. Maybe I learnt to control my karma,” he laughs heartily. Nowadays his life is far from solitary as he plays his own distinctive version of house and techno to crowds in their thousands. Indeed, when we meet, he still bears the traces of jetlag from playing BPM in Mexico, while his backbreaking European schedule will evolve into a US for a tour in February. In the mean time, however, there’s the small matter of finalising the showcase of his new label Uncage at Miami Music Week (“It’s ninety-nine per cent going ahead” he says, coolly; no biggie). From this angle, it seems that the waiting is over. Even if he wanted to slow down now, he couldn’t: this thing has a momentum all of its own. Fishing? We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

But as 2016 squares up to be his biggest year yet, he remains unflappable. “I don’t think you ever need to force something; everything has to come step by step.” Faraone is fiercely critical of artists who fast-track success with manicured PR strategies – a sentiment that rings strangely anti-careerist in an age of compressed buzz cycles and calculated campaigns. “If you force something, it’s not going to be something you can keep forever,” he says, every inch the philosopher – albeit one given to dispensing emojis on WhatsApp.

He particularly hates social media, especially when used as a PR tool. “It used to be about the music, but now with social media it’s mostly about
the ‘noise’ surrounding it,” he laments. “Before, the DJ really took care with the music; you were a famous artist because you played good music.” It was precisely this quality that caught the attention of Ida Engberg when they shared a bill in Madrid in 2011. One of the first big-
name artists to believe in him, she pointed him in the direction of hubbie Adam Beyer, who duly signed him up for releases on Truesoul and Drumcode. Faraone still remembers the phone call: “It was the day of my birthday. I was in Rome about to play when I got a call on Skype. He said, ‘Happy birthday – send me the masters!’ I’ll never forget that.”

But if Beyer offered a leg up, Faraone was eager not to rush things. Instead, he’s been careful to follow his instinct when it comes to his productions; rather than meticulously building his brand through one recognisable (read formulaic) sound, he has built up a diverse body of work across a surprising range of labels, side-stepping from Moon Harbour to Get Physical, Truesoul to Desolat. The next couple of months will see him drop a record on Ovum, as well as the massive Drumcode release he trails at the club. His excitement about that one is palpable: after the interview he receives a series of texts from Beyer, finalising the record. He sends a selfie back, mortifyingly including Mixmag in it. Of course, this wide stylistic bandwidth has allowed him to express all facets of his musical character, from flamboyant tech-house to slate-grey warehouse techno via the John Coltrane and hip hop samples of his debut album ‘I Will Wait’ (naturally). It has meant his reputation percolated slowly, his music landing in the record bags of taste-makers like Beyer, but resistant to the kind of audience who want more of the same. However, he remains resolute, his eye on the long game. “Maybe it’s easier to reach to top if you produce the same music all the time. People will recognise you as, say, a techno artist. Me, I find it very boring to release the same music.”

Faraone’s free ranging tastes can be traced back to his adolescence when he would scour markets for used vinyl, zoning in on hip hop, drum ’n’ bass and later, house and techno. His first exposure to music, however, was through his dad, a hobbyist DJ who dished out the hits of the 80s for local radio. Young Marco was quick to seize on his dad’s collection of commercial pop as practice fodder, learning the magic of Jean Michel Jarre while feeling his way around the turntable. Like many kids growing up in the sticks, music became an escape route. At 15, his mum gave him a seemingly quintessentially Italian choice: ”She asked me, what did I want, turntables or a scooter?” He opted for the former, knowing in his heart that they would be the most effective – if not the most direct – route to freedom. But as his life increasingly shrunk to the size of his parent’s garage where he kept his decks, he began to feel alienated.

“It was a sacrifice; my friends were going on holiday but I was saving up for records,” he recalls. “I felt that I wanted to escape from there. My friends were saying ‘Come and play PlayStation’ and I was like, ‘No, I’ve got to stay in the studio.’ I didn’t even have one friend who I could talk about music with”. Instead, he became a recognisable figure in Tuscany’s clubs during the 2000s, when venues like Frau Marleen and Tenax set the agenda for house and techno in Italy. He was so glued to his spot next to the DJ booth that the owners would try and shoo him away. “They were like, ‘Come on, go and dance’. It’s not nice to see a guy standing right next to the DJ. But I didn’t want to dance like a crazy guy, I just wanted to be there.” When his friends set off for university he began taking residencies at local clubs and even helping out the club owners at Frau Marleen, who made use of his English skills to communicate with their international bookings. “I was like, ‘Oh god, I have my chance!’” He appointed himself unofficial driver just so he could ask them questions: “I was so happy; coming from my town I’d never had the chance to talk about music,” he says. With typically Italian bravura, he would use the time to play some of his demos in the car, watching, waiting for their reactions. “Some would say, ‘Yeah, it’s good,,” he says. “But the expression tells everything.”

Nowadays, of course, he frequently shares the bill with the international stars he used to drive around. “I played with Len Faki last week. I asked him,
do you remember me?” He laughs his infectious laugh again – of course Len did. What’s more, Marco’s now a resident at Tenax, the famous Florentine club that helped shape him a decade ago. Of all the achievements, it’s this that he’s most proud of. “When I started DJing I wasn’t thinking of playing outside my home town, because these clubs were so far away and I felt so small,” he recalls. “I still remember the first record I played there; my hand was shaking.” He mimes putting a needle on the record, reliving it. “This club was my first dream, my first love. It was like: this is really happening. The owner was next to me because he knew me from when I was a kid, standing by the DJ booth.”

Now it’s the turn of others to watch Faraone. At the club in Modena, a group of young guys – teenagers really – wave their iPhones, iTunes open, displaying the artwork to the first release from ‘Uncage’. It’s a cute gesture, but nothing compared to some of the gifts he’s received from fans. “In one club in Naples they brought me a kilo of mozzarella,” he says. He’s joking, right? “I swear! It’s an Italian thing – the crowds are so warm.” He repays this warmth with hugs and selfies before bringing down the house with a blisteringly tough techno set. By the end, the sheer amount of bodies on stage are causing the needle to jump, still, it’s clear from his dancing that he’s having the time of his life. The next day, somewhat unsurprisingly, he messages to say he missed his train. “It’s OK, I slept a bit more,” he says, never one to fuss. Why rush when you’re making such great progress, anyway?

Marco’s new track ‘Climax’ is out now via Drumcode. He plays Extrema Outdoor Festival, Belgium, in May