Nicola Daniele from Nice7 chats to Dubzy about BPM Festival, playing Space Ibiza and their plans for the new year
In the hilly region of Abruzzo, Italy, two friends in their early teens fell in love with the art of sampling, mixing and producing beats. Eventually Cesare Marocco headed to Milan to become an studio arranger and engineer, while Nicola Daniele paid his dues in clubs throughout the country.
In 2005, they reunited and paired up for the first time as NiCe7 without any premonition that they’d become one of the most sought-after forces in tech-house, winning the genre’s Best Track at the 2011 Beatport Music Awards with their original “Point”.
Deep house is another realm that they have succeeded in, with their successful EP “back to basics” in 2012 and then scoring a chart-topping hit with their remix of Jon Cutler’s “It’s Yours” in 2013.
That year they formed D-Floor, an imprint dedicated to
“credible and forward-thinking output.”
In the past year, NiCe7 appeared at Cocorico’ Riccione, Cielo NYC, Watergate Berlin and
Ministry of Sound London adding to their already-impressive history of festivals and clubsc appearances all over Europe, USA,South America and Australia, including WMC Miami, Berlin Music Days and BPM Festival in Mexico.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself for anyone that knows the name Nice7, but doesn’t know much about you?
We are two Italian guys, we’re 38 and 37 years old, we’ve been friends forever and we’re both from the same small city, in the centre of Italy, on the east coast. Until 2005, we were working on music separately and after many experiences all over Italy, we decided to join forces and to start our Nice7 project together.
How would you describe your style?
We definitely mix house and techno together. So, definitely Tech/House music.
Was there a turning point where you realised that you could do this full time as a career?
Yeah, we started together in 1995 and we had different experiences. We performed from 1996, more or less, so we are old school DJ’s.
So where would you say the best place you’ve performed is?
Erm yeah, so many, so many. I could mention maybe Watergate, in Berlin, Space Ibiza, Ministry of Sound, in London and also in Australia, SASH in Sydney and Revolver in Melbourne. They are maybe the best clubs in the world for us.
For younger artists coming through, who want to play at the clubs you’ve just mentioned, could you give them so advice to bear in mind when getting started?
The advice, just to try to be yourself and try to sound like yourself. Because all the young guys right now, try to sound like somebody and at the end it doesn’t pay off. This is what we can say about this.
Let’s talk about this year now, you started off by playing BPM, how was it?
BPM is a massive experience, we‘ve played two times already and the first time was with Noir Music Showcase and last time was our own label showcase and this is one of the best experiences of festivals, right now all over the world, in our opinion.
What would you say your highlight of the festival was?
There’s so many. The highlight was our party, of course, but to hangout and to speak with many DJ’s and the whole experience is massive. To me personally and also to Cesare, because we went there together, it was very good to hear Dixon play to be honest, it was one of the highlights for us.
What would you say makes BPM stand out from other festivals?
The great thing is that, it’s like you’re at a 24 hour festival, in different places, for 10 days. So it’s very different, because you don’t have one stage. You can work, go to the beach and have a party and you go maybe somewhere and get a beer and listen to somebody playing. It’s like if you have a small party, every part of the day, so you can go many places and have different experiences. I think it’s very different; this is what makes it stand out.
More recently, how has your summer been?
Yeah, it was good, we had gigs around Italy. Honestly now, we are working at lot in Italy now, it was not like this in the past years, but right now we are doing well in our own country, which is great for us. We played in South Africa also, in a big festival and it was our first gig. It was cool because right now we’ve played in all the five continents; we’ve missed Africa for years and now we’ve did all the five continents. So it was cool.
You mentioned you played in Ibiza, one of the gigs was space, how was it playing there for the final year?
Yeah it was good because, as I told you, we are old school DJ’s. So when we were 20, we always went to Ibiza to listen to DJ’s play, so Carl Cox and all the old school guys. So it was very good to play there, because it was the last year and it was one of our first times playing there. So we are very happy to have been there and to say we’ve played Space Ibiza, because it’s like an amazing place to play, you know.
What places would you recommend for people planning their summer next year, if people are maybe getting bored of Ibiza?
We played Croatia, for three years. We could say that maybe Croatia could be the next Ibiza, maybe.
What about Italy, if anyone wanted to check Italy out, what do you think would be the best clubs to visit?
In Italy right now, for clubbing, there is Cilento, which is an amazing place. So we can recommend Cilento.
What are your plans for the winter and New Year?
We start the winter with the BPM festival, so it’s not official right now, but we have a deal for the BPM. So we’re going to play La Santanera again, with our label showcase and D- Floor’s showcase together with Pirupa’s labels showcase. So we are going to play there on 11th of January, we’ll start the winter with this amazing news. We have a lot of things for the label and projects.
What’s going on with you release wise, anything you can let us know about?
We just had the release on Snatch Records and in December we are going out with an EP, on Crosstown Rebels, together with our friends. And also we have a big release on our own label D-Floor, also in December, the 16th of December. There is our own remix on that release, so we have big expectations from this release and especially from the Crosstown Rebels release.
