DYVA Story
RELEASES > DYVA Records > DYVA PAGE INTRO
By the beginning of the 80s we knew that we wouldn’t be able to break through with our “The Stage” band anymore. A new era of music was coming and it required a new approach. We’ve been listening to this music for some time already until we first heard the “italo disco” term assigned to this genre. It was storming the radios and whole world music scene. The electronic dance sound was strongly promoted on Italian market, as Italians had their huge input in its evolution. In the first half of the 80s the names of Jock Hattle, Den Harrow, Gary Low, Joe Yellow or Savage were on everybody’s mouth. Their success convinced us to join this scene.
The problem was we didn’t have a place for creating music like this. Finally we found a small room in our friend’s aunt’s basement. The size didn’t matter, we finally were free to experiment and record. Our set up was: 4 track reel to reel Teac recorder, Roland electronic drums, Roland and Yamaha keyboard, Shure mic and a cassette recorder for the demos.
It was a hard work due to our equipment. We had to do everything with the greatest precision to make it harmonize, synchronize and sound well all together. The demos of “Leftover Love”, “Clap Again”, “Day After Day” and “Oh Mama Tonight” recorded at the time were released on Flashback vinyls. We still keep a few secret demos from that period on old cassette tapes.
Soon we were tired with the basement place and its owner, we needed a new quality. We found an old building and we overhauled it. This was our new place - huge enough to contain the proper amount of professional gear able to record the music with proper quality. So we had a place, we were writing new songs, but we didn’t have a name. One day while writing a song about mysterious woman Black Star, someone came spontaneously up with DYVA written with Y to underline the mystery… Everybody liked the idea and from that moment we decided to give this name to our project. It was 1984. We still have the demo song on an old tape. One day we will release it.
There was a restaurant where we often had a dinner and performed our songs at. One day we meet there Albertone Carpani, Paolo Pelandi, Manuel Zandri, Aldo Martinelli and Domenico Ricchini. We discussed about new gear like synthesizers, drum machines etc., later on to continue the discussion about music market. They told us about Boot-Legs label and invited us to do a project together. That’s how “Oh Mama Tonight” was started.
We had a number of studios visited and we had know-how. We precisely followed all the innovations and new technologies in the music production. At the time “Regson” studio made the biggest impression on us. Their gear, the technicians who worked there, the hits that came out from there, the list of huge names recording there… it all meant a lot for us. They had this “Fairlight” gear over there that gave the track unique sound and we wanted very much to use it while producing our next demo as well. Paolo Bocchi was our good friend for years and he was supposed to do it with us. Paolo Bocchi has produced the remix of “Cannery the Canary”. Unfortunately “Regson” was overloaded so our second choice was “Mulinetti Studio”. That’s how “I know” was produced.
So we have the master and are heading for Milan. We are supposed to meet Lombardoni- the boss of Disco Magic. We met him before a couple of times together with other Italo artists, but this time we were there to sign the contract. Via Mecenate was a street of music stars at the time, for us a chance for music career and a world hit. Disco Magic office was full of beautiful young women and men, running around, picking up the phones, packing hundreds of wonderful 12” and 7” in the boxes which were supposed to be delivered worldwide.
Suddenly Severo comes back and after seeing us in the corner he asks: “Who are you?” “We were supposed to meet today” – we reply. He finally remembers or he is pretending he does, but we are invited to his office. Lombardoni office is one big chaos… We sit and he asks again who we are. So we give him our tape and he’s about to play it in a small portable player. He pushes the play button and… the sound is horrible, noisy, harsh and distorted. It chilled our blood. Suddenly Lombardoni gets a phone call and starts the conversation while our demo is being played. He hangs it up in the same time when the demo song ends. After a while of silence he says: “Good, we print it on Technology. Do you have a sleeve or shall I order it?”. So we go to the studio with our master tape and then to the graphic studio to speak about the sleeve. After an hour Lombardoni enters the place, he looks at us and asks: “Who are you?”... Laughter. Guess what happened when we came there a few months later with “Cannery The Canary” master…
People keep on asking us about our inspirations while creating songs for DYVA project.
There is no concrete answer to this.
Sometimes it’s just a single word, sometimes a single sound we hear circumstantially, sometimes a song heard on the radio, sometimes something comes up from a deep silence…
Forever.
Roby & Max.