Most artists can pinpoint the exact moment they fell in love with music—a concert that changed everything, a record that rewired their brain, a teacher who unlocked something dormant inside them. Iuliano can’t. For him, music was simply already there, embedded in his being from the beginning. As a child, his grandfather would find him at the piano, not practicing scales or repeating exercises, but exploring sound itself with an intuition that seemed to bypass the need for formal instruction.

That innate certainty has carried the Neapolitan producer from the chaotic, magnetic streets of Napoli to Berklee College of Music, from Malaysia to Thailand, and finally to his latest album The Place—a deeply personal meditation on what remains after everything essential has been broken. When COVID-19 collapsed the structures of Western individualism from philosophical abstraction into everyday reality, Iuliano was living through his own fracture: a separation, isolation, the inability to return home for months. The album that emerged isn’t about those events—it’s about the state of a man afterward, moving through sweetness, surrender, waiting, and time!

Hey Iuliano! Great to have you here at Soundville. Thanks for taking the time for this interview! Before we dive into the main questions, our readers would love to know a bit more about how you came to music. Where did it all start, and was there a particular moment when you realized – this is it, this is what I need?

I can’t point to a moment when I fell in love with music, because that never happened. It was already there. When I was five or six, I was constantly at the piano. My grandfather, who was a piano player, would find me there, not studying, not repeating anything—just touching sounds. One day he asked me, “Mauro, do you want to learn how to play the piano?” I remember being genuinely surprised by the question, almost confused. As if to say: why? Isn’t this already happening? I said yes, but not because that moment changed anything. I never developed a relationship with music—I started from a certainty. For me, sound was never just sound. It always carried a wider meaning, and that understanding was simply embedded in me from the beginning.

You’re from the chaotic and magnetic city of Napoli, you studied at Berklee College of Music, and your journey has taken you through Italy, Malaysia, and Thailand. How have these places and adventures shaped you and your sound?

Napoli is noisy. It teaches you to stay open to people. It teaches you that what happens to you, good or bad, is not something to hide, but something worth telling. Life there is always shared, exposed, sometimes exaggerated.

Then Berklee came. It gave me tools, discipline, a way to understand what I was doing. At the time, I thought I had understood a lot. Only later did I realize that the real work was learning how and when to dismiss part of what I had learned, and to keep only what was truly mine.

Being away in Asia changed things in a less precise way. It wasn’t a lesson you can summarize. It was distance, time, silence, confusion, clarity, all mixed together. You lose some references, you gain others, and you don’t really know when it’s happening.

In the end, these places don’t stay separate. They mix, overlap, and whatever comes out as music is simply what remains after living through all of that.

How would you describe your music? How do you envision your sound, and what are the main ideas you want to convey to the world through it?

I don’t really start from a clear idea of what the music should become. Especially when I arrange, it works more like a loop. There’s an intention, a thought, and that thought has to be translated into sound. That translation is never precise. Something always shifts. I put it into the recorder, into the computer, and what comes back is never exactly what I had in mind. I listen to that transliteration, to what actually happened, and that takes me somewhere else. From there I adjust, I try again, and the circle keeps turning. I don’t stop when it’s perfect, but when I feel it has said what it could say.

Your single “Who Knows” attracted international attention, and you also won the Independent Music Award in 2019. Tell us about your impressions of these events and what followed?

It was overwhelming for me. I took part in the Independent Music Awards knowing that the jury was chaired by Tom Waits, an artist I had always loved. I won as Best Producer, and that meant a lot to me, because it touched the core of how I listen and make decisions around music. It didn’t change what I wanted to do, but it gave me strength. It made me understand that what I was doing could be meaningful also at a very high level.

Who Knows was the genesis of everything. At the time I was producing in Malaysia. I came up with a very simple melody, singing in a way I had never really used before. I recorded it almost out of curiosity and asked myself, as a producer: would you produce someone with this voice? The answer was yes. And that’s where it all started.

Your new album “The Place,” is your first project after a period spent creating music for others in Asia, personal upheavals, including the end of a long-term relationship and COVID isolation. Tell us more about “The Place”. What does it mean to you?

Philosophically and personally, it was the same shock for me. In a very short time, ideas that shaped the Western individual — responsibility, freedom, the sense of being accountable for one’s own life, from John Locke to Alexis de Tocqueville — suddenly collapsed into everyday reality. That fracture didn’t stay abstract. It entered my life directly: separation, absence, being unable to return home for months, instability becoming normal.

The Place comes from what remained after passing through that. It isn’t a record about events, but about the state of a man afterward. It moves through sweetness, surrender, waiting, attraction, and time — different inner positions seen from someone who knows that something essential has been broken, and still tries to live inside what’s left.

Where do you find inspiration to keep moving forward?

I find it in life itself. My tension is life. When nothing happens in life, nothing really happens in music. Songs, for me, are pictures. I usually write from reality. And if I make something up, it’s only because it’s functional to something I’ve lived, or I’m living. Life already brings so many unexpected stories that you don’t really need fiction. Even when things become surreal, they still come from reality. Sometimes the surreal is actually more realistic than what pretends to be realistic.

Your music features an experimental blend of genres. Why did you choose this approach instead of following the well-trodden path of popular music?

I don’t experience it as a choice. What I’ve lived, the places I’ve been, and the music I’ve absorbed all become part of you. They shape the way you think and, inevitably, the way you make music. It’s like language for me. I speak Italian, and then an English word comes out, and without realizing it I’m speaking English. I keep going. Only later I notice it, and maybe I move back, or maybe I stay there. That’s how it works. It’s not a decision, it’s a consequence of life happening.

What are your plans for the future?

Of course. A wife, two kids, surely a dog, a garden. Maybe a Grammy, a gold record — whatever people are supposed to want. But life isn’t something you can plan from far away. So if I had to choose what really matters to me in this very moment, I’d choose that girl who’s driving me crazy. And I can tell you for sure, she’ll make me paint sounds — and give me plenty of material to write about.

The bio mentions Jeff Buckley and Sufjan Stevens as possible reference points for your sound. Which artists have influenced you the most and why?

That description came from outside, not from me. Still, I do love both. I feel very close to Sufjan Stevens, especially in the way intimacy is handled. But my personal mythology is much wider and a bit chaotic. Stevie Wonder was fundamental, then all the rock of the seventies, and on another side Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans… and many others. If I start listing them all, the magazine wouldn’t be enough to contain them.

Is there a place on Earth where you feel a special connection and musical inspiration most strongly? If so, what is that place and why do you think that is?

Yes, it’s The Place, and hence, it’s me. That’s where I feel most connected to music, inside myself. It’s not geography, it’s material. It’s what I’m made of.

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