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Even if you’ve never heard Mind Enterprises’ music, there’s a good chance you will have seen them. A clip of the neo-Italo disco duo standing behind a pair of decks on a balcony in a Mediterranean city, casually pouring themselves big glasses of Campari and blowing luscious smoke rings, has become a widely shared meme on social media over the last 12 months. Its message feels like an inversion of the “This is fine” cartoon dog: the world might be on fire, but in Europe we still have la dolce vita and, actually, that is fine.
Yet, when Mind Enterprises embarked on an 18-date North American tour at the start of this year, they had to fight to take their hedonistic hallmarks with them. “It’s been our daily diplomatic battle: every concert we’ve done, we always had to argue and discuss with the local production crew because they didn’t want to let us smoke. In some cases, they don’t even want to let us drink, and bottles are not allowed on stage,” Andrea Tirone tells me over a video call from his Barcelona apartment, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with his creative partner, Roberto Conigliaro.
Their US tour culminated at Coachella, an unprecedented booking for a band that had never toured the country before. On arriving backstage at the Sonora tent, they were met by a big sign reading: “No drinks and no smoking onstage.” But US puritanism turned out to be a paper tiger: “We brought our bottle, we smoked, and nothing happened. Also, at the end of a concert, we usually offer drinks to the public and they just let us do it.”
Former post-punk musicians, the duo met in Sicily in 2011. Tirone had a background in classical guitar, while Conigliaro had trained as a drummer. They both eventually moved to London to further their educations as sound technicians, and after going through phases that included electronic bedroom pop and a “three-to-four-year fixation with Fela Kuti” on Tirone’s part, they landed on a sound that combined 70s funk, 80s Italo disco, and 90s Eurodance, fuelled by a newfound appreciation of the music of their childhood and early adolescence (both were born in 1985).
“Despite being electronically produced, Italo disco retains a strong musical component,” says Tirone. “We’re both classically trained musicians and, with the way Italo disco is set up, it’s basically like having the same instrumentation as an orchestra but transposed into synths.”
Their new album Negroni Love, their third release after 2016’s Idealist and 2019’s Panorama, reflects this eclecticism. While tracks such as Da Sola, Tacchini and the title track will surely appease those looking to channel Eurosummer nostalgia, others provide some welcome variety. Another World has hints of trance, Aria sulla 4a Corda is an electro rework of the Bach original, and Burn It! similarly toys with baroque harmonies.
Tuttosport and Discough are, respectively, parodies of the football score reports of yore and of news segments detailing seasonal colds. Releasing an Italo-disco-inflected full-length album might go against the genre itself, which was conspicuously singles-focused and producer-heavy. “Our background is in post-punk music,” says Conigliaro. “And in that scene, you’d listen to an album from the beginning to end.”
Mind Enterprises are representative of a periodic Italo disco renaissance, first witnessed in the late 00s to mid-2010s, but then still filtered through the lens of hipster irony. In his Bullshitter’s Guide to Italo Disco for Vice magazine in 2015, Angus Harrison framed it as if “someone had made a B-movie of the entire disco genre”.
Now, with concepts such as “Europemaxxing” and “Eurosummer” having become part of the lifestyle vernacular in the anglosphere, Italy and the Mediterranean represent a safe form of escapism for harmless fashion influencers, Greek-statue avatars and Monocle readers alike – and Italo is its soundtrack.
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“Italo disco has always been more appreciated abroad than in Italy: all of us Italian millennial musicians, we discovered it abroad,” says Tirone. “It never died, but it was always a little bit underground. Music-wise, we need this type of music to balance out the darker, more serious Berlin-coded techno. We need something lighter, funnier, with a melody. Historically speaking, we live in a context where we need more levity and a carefree attitude, and we need to take a break from our problems and relax.”
Mind Enterprises’ identity is markedly analogue. Tirone has a collection of synthesisers that he buys secondhand and then “works to the bone”. His latest acquisition is a 1983 Jupiter 6, which he bought from “a guy in Cagliari who needed the cash because he owed back-taxes”.
This collector mindset extends to their apparel. “Many years ago, the London charity shops were a goldmine for vintage sportswear, and you could get really good deals,” says Conigliaro. That’s not the case any more, and he now goes on continent-wide road trips to scour thrift stores for clothes. Specifically, Conigliaro endorses sportswear brand Sergio Tacchini – and the smaller the inseam of their shorts, the better. Tirone gets his vintage 1980s Cerruti suits altered by a trusted seamstress. “That’s crucial, otherwise you’ll wear that suit and look like a bank teller.”
The fact that the perception of Italo disco and eurodance music has been reduced to a vignette does not seem to faze the duo. “In times like these, it pays to be Italian. Sure, there are negative stereotypes, but there are a lot of positive ones, too – and we bask in them,” says Tirone. “We do culturally pay more attention to things that make life more enjoyable. You don’t make much of it when you’re an Italian in Italy, but when you’re abroad it’s glaring.”
Details, though, remain important, especially when it comes to their live shows. Their drink of choice on stage is neither a spritz, nor an americano, nor a negroni. It’s either Campari soda or Campari on the rocks. “A negroni will hobble you if you drink it while performing,” says Tirone.
