#RvC Ask: Pure NRG

Duo PureNRG is widely known with their unique style of music that will guarantee take you to another level of experience. We were so excited to talk with Giuseppe Ottaviani and Rich Solarstone about their music and how they work creating magic in every track. 

How do you combine ideas to make a track between two of you?
Giuseppe Ottaviani (GO): How do we do it?
Rich Solarstone (RS): Well we always work together in a studio.
GO: Which is a good point, because nowadays it’s hard to get to sit together. We both have our different career, families, and stuffs. The reason why PureNRG so special to us because we really want to work in pair in studio. That’s why you can actually merge together both sounds.
RS: So we always make sure we get few days in studio, gather at my place in Wales or his (GO) place at Rome. The way we work is one of us has an idea at some point. Then we just flash it out. Sometimes one of us prepare something in advance, or we just start playing in the keyboard.
GO: Or we just listen to some music we like and then we think about it for about two sessions. Sometimes we leave it there like save ideas then when we get together in studio, we just jump on the most interesting one. Then we start from scratch.
RS: Then we’re taking turns to do things.
GO: Like really working in pair.
RS: We come from the same kind of approach. If we both want to be melodic, then we do something melodic. If we decided to do something a bit hard, we agreed to do that. It turns really natural. Quite easy to produce as PureNRG. It’s fun and we got trust from each other. We did stream one of our studio session recently. People could see that we just let it flow. We generally do studio session for three days at a time. We generally do 2 tracks at that time. So we have enough time to do some work and then relax a bit.
GO: We have to travel anyway. I go to his place or he go to my place, that’s why we need to relax a bit. We do have time for barbeque or red wine. The next day we start to work. We do have studio session before every single gig. The thing with Pure NRG is we make music for our own shows and we play just our music or mashup. Whatever comes to our mind, which is fun to play with something different, we will do it with PureNRG. With the studio session before gig, we can do something new every time.
RS: That’s why every show pretty much different. The way we play track also different every single time.
 
What do you think the strength of each other that makes PureNRG one?
GO: I really love his concept about pure Trance. So it’s come with oldest, pure, beautiful melodies. For this project, I try to bring back my more energetic vibes from my old project called NuNRG. That is also we combine the two things together. That was just the beginning. After a while we’re making this together, we just tune both of our mind to the same thing. We just finding our direction as PureNRG. It’s not just me being Giuseppe and Rich being Rich. It’s something different.
RS: When I produce my own track, it’s always multi-layered and quite complicated. Giuseppe keeps everything very simple and says, “That’s enough!” (laughs). We had a good idea and he’s extremely fast. I’m also fast, but because my production is so complicated, it also crashed a lot (laughs). When we produce as PureNRG, Giuseppe does everything really quickly.
GO: It’s because the music we play, it’s kind of raw material. It’s not very finished, polished material and mastered track. It’s something for a live show so it has to be more simple approach.
RS: A bit rough on the edges. When we’re working on a solo project, we have this idea and we spend it 3-4 more days to polish it and try different things. We don’t do that with PureNRG. We keep it simple.
 
It makes us wonders, what kind of music you listen every day?
RS: To be honest I listen to talk radio.
 
Really?
RS: Yeah because I don’t really have time to listen to radio. I listen to talk radio a lot. Free my mind from the music. I listen to promos and new music every time I do the radio show. Sometime I stumble across stuff through Apple Music and Spotify. I don’t go out searching for stuff. I tend to let it come to me.
GO: I listen to the music when I’m driving my car, like back and forth from the airport. Sometimes I have some suggestion from friends, like from Rich or my manager Paula, about new band, something I didn’t know before. I discovered this band from Germany called Moderat. I just fell in love with them. It was something I was listening to because Paula said I should listen to it.
RS: She does actually recommend a lot of music. When I’m doing stuffs from radio show, she’ll send me over some music. When she stumbles new music from YouTube, she also told us. We discovered a lot of new music because of her. She gets recommendation from people.
GO: Something like Royksopp. I heard it from the first time driving to the airport after a gig in Netherland. In the car they played new album of Royksopp. I thought it was amazing.
RS: People think when you’re in the music industry, you kind of seem knowledgeable about everything. Actually it’s a narrow field. It’s hard to get expose in new music. We’re both know a lot about Trance and Trance-related music but…
GO: What about the outside of the world?
RS: It is hard, isn’t it?
GO: So it’s good to have someone that can suggest you.
RS: PureNRG is not only about me and Giuseppe on stage, but Paula is really heavily involved behind the scene. She’s like the fifth or sixth member of Monty Python and nobody knew who it was, but came a lot with the jokes and didn’t appear on stage.
 
Do you have any suggestion for young producer out there?
RS: Just make music that you love and you believe in. If it’s any good, you’ll get some word.
GO: Try to avoid sample pack, please.
RS: Try to create your own sound, try to do something new. Don’t try to fit in with current trend. If you do that, you’ll never be inventive. You will be regarded as a follower. We struggled for years before we became successful. It still a struggle sometimes. The reason why Giuseppe Ottaviani has a following it’s because when you hear Giuseppe Ottaviani’s track, it sounds like him. When you hear Solarstone track, hopefully it sounds like Solarstone.
GO: You can feel it. Even when you hear something different, you feel like you know who made it.
RS: You had to learn your craft. You can’t expect the instant gratification and instant success. You need to be patient.
GO: It’s not gonna happen in one night.
RS: It’s a lot harder than you think, though. If you want to be a DJ and flying around the world, producing some music, you had to be prepare to sacrifice a lot of things.
GO: It’s not just fun side. It’s a hard work. It doesn’t look like that, but it is. I mean, in a professional level, it’s not going out playing, getting drunk and fly back. It doesn’t work like that. Try to educate yourself to be professional since the start.

Believe us when we say, their chemistry is strong. During interview, they respon to each other quite naturally. We do hope to see them perform again in Jakarta. All the best for PureNRG!