The news of the white smoke from the Vatican comes after five minutes from the beginning of this conversation. We are in the beautiful and colorful loft-studio where Mace lives and produces his sound art. When Prisca, Simone's girlfriend (who is also an excellent DJ), shaking on his cell phone announces the election of the new Pope, who today we know to be Leo XIV, the topic of the chat deflects a little from his main path: the residency of five consecutive evenings, with 10 guest artists, from 14 to 18 May at the District 272 Club in Milan.
A crazy, as the DJ and musician himself is also convenient, but one of the crazy ones that only with the paw of the C2C Festival behind can they come well. Voodoo People, after all, is the name that the visionary genius of Sergio Ricciardone had suggested for the instrumental and psychedelic side project that Mace had been looking for ad hoc for the 2024 edition of the Turin Festival. Sergio, then, in March 2025 he combined one of his own leaving a beautiful responsibility, that of bringing the name of C2C higher and higher. And therefore Simone, together with our dear Guido Savini, who has now taken the full reins of the artistic direction, launched this week crazy about tribal dances, with his feet planted on the ground but his head in the clouds and the stars. For ATTERA in Astra In fact, it is also the theme of C2C Festival 2025, a clear tribute to the comforting light that Sergio has led to the European culture of the new century.
No forum of Assago for Mace, this time. Only an ex strip club at the bottom of via Padova, for five consecutive evenings (“The last evening I will probably be to collect with a teaspoon” jokes lying on his ride in the living room) and with many friends on stage and below. It was an ambitious choice, taken with the C2C Festival to involve ten Italian artists, two for each evening, engaged in special back-to-back (below there is the poster with all the names). Someone has already nicknamed him Milan Mace Week, but rethinking us has nothing institutional: here Voodoo magic applies here.
In short, is she just a crazy or not?
It is a half crazy, yes. And then C2C Festival proposed it: who better than them can do these crazy? In fact, we were questioning with them if it is the first time that such a stuff is made here in Italy. Let's say that he has coincided enough with my desire not to make yet another big venue, even if I thank the sky every time.
And the choice of artistic, I mean the guests who will be with you in the DJ set, did you do it or is there also the hand of C2C?
We did it together with C2C. And then in reality mine will not be DJ sets in the pure sense of the term. They will be more hybrid, because I also have the modular synthesizer, a little pedal and effects to further enrich the tracks. Then I will play a lot, practically three hours every evening.
(Prisca intervenes: “Oh regà! White smoke from the Vatican!”)
Ahia, in my opinion, will be a conservative.
I think no. Precisely because it pulls that air everywhere, the church should really go to the opposite side.
If nothing else, I appreciated the last legacy of Pope Francis, the pensabile converted into an ambulance and sent to Gaza.
That was a good thing. Also because you know for sure that it is antiprotex and beautiful armored.
For the rest, yes, it should definitely behed out for a long time. I mean the Church.
Didn't they also do the DJ priest who opened or closed the Pope's speeches? However, I will tell you a story: Gospel, when he was born in the 1930s, was considered a sacrilege by many people. Because it was the union between the Rhythm and Blues music and the sacred one. A guy invented it [Thomas Dorsey, nda]which at the time began to propose it as scores because at the time there were still few discs, then figured in the church. He was hunted in a bad way at the beginning but then the first churches began reluctant to believe in progress and basically it was a hit. In doing so, the masses have also started to fill themselves with young faithful. This is how it has spread. It was a success, like discos.
Yes, but the Zarrate who played the Don Dj are not comparable to the gospel.
It is clear that that EDM Zarra sucks to us. But the mass, which associates going to dance at the Festival, listen to that type of music. Because by now, alas, the idea is the festival and no longer the club. The clubs are dying and this is another of the reasons why we make Voodoo People. We want to send a message to remember where we come from: I made the DJ in clubs for more than 20 years. C2C Festival first was Club to Club, because it was literally organized in various clubs in Turin. Then, obviously it is a show built with a production, so it is a more structured Pelino of a classic club evening.
Provided that your favorite club has not closed. By now there is an epidemic of aggregation spaces.
They struggle. And do you know something that no longer exists? The parties in the Warehouse, in the sheds. At the time I did reset! With my members there was Bugged Out, Neon Disco, Privat. That decade, from 2005 to 2015, was an era of festivals Warehouse crazy, where 3 or 4 thousand people also went. Always on the verge of legality. And then there were also many people who did not come from the discos or clubs. Many people discover The Club Culture to these events.
And now with all the various security decrees it is practically impossible.
It is almost a dictatorship. It's not a good time, but in general for the whole western world, in my opinion.
And if you think that the last time we met, you and Prisca is when we went by car to Turin for Sergio's funeral [Ricciardone, fondatore di C2C Festival]I really say that he left shit as a year 2025.
Among other things, it was he who chose the name Voodoo People. It is now my alter ego where it sounds only instrumental tracks, and in the case of these five days there will be many unpublished. About twenty unpublished tracks. I remember that I had no ideas for the name, when Sergio and Guido proposed me the show at C2C Festival 2024. Sergio then said to me: “Famemici thinking, I'll be back from you shortly”. And then he called me the day after pronouncing the words: “Voodoo People”. And there I thought it was him, it was perfect. That man was a genius.
But then the prodigy. I don't think I miss they liked it.
I don't know, but the name is very right. But the name is also a tribute to a documentary, Maya Deren, The Living Gods of Haitiwhich talks about the voodoo and its ritual and ecstatic part. Often it is confused with the bullshit such as zombie and dolls to make macrias to people, instead it is an ecstatic religion such as Santeria, Candomblé and Umbanda. It is based on the incorporation of the entity and these entities are archetypes. It is a syncretic and ecstatic religion, to which this beautiful documentary is still dedicated in black and white. It is surprising because in reality it is very beautiful and delicate despite being made by a western. Deals with the theme in a faithful and serious way, in an era instead where the so -called Movies world.
Of course, like this precisely Dog worldwhere cultural differences with other peoples were distorted and spectacularized, even ridiculous.
Exactly, here instead the question is addressed in an anthropological, scientific way. So it is a beautiful documentary that I recommend to everyone. And precisely to Sergio I had expressed my will for the C2C show to create something that was the intersection between techno, psychedelia and polyritmistic percussion of African inspiration. Now we were undecided whether to make my classic big venue or a small place on several days. Obviously we chose the craziest option. Then, you too who know the guys from C2C Festival well you will have understood how much they keep us to carry on this Legacy, this vision left by Sergio. I admire them because I believe it is the best reaction that can be had to a similar tragedy.
Are you doing new music instead regarding the Mace project?
Between January and this period I dedicated myself to writing these twenty unpublished traces for Voodoo People. I still don't know if they will come out somewhere. They are Club Track a little Weird. After that, as soon as this marathon ends, I take back the new album. I started it again three weeks ago when I went back to the same studio in Tuscany where I wrote and recorded Maya.
Ah, the crazy one with the swimming pool and everything!
That's right, only that this time I have gathered more than 40 people. We are more and more every time. The table tables stretch. Fortunately, the owner is very kind and understanding. We took all the rooms available. Now I'll come back I think. I found myself so well. I am surrounded by the meadows, with the skyline of medieval towers of San Gimignano: it is a place that puts me calm.
