Toy Tonics mainstay FIMIANI talks about his origins, the roots of Italian House music and DJing in this extensive Q&A with the artist and DJ.
*Fimiani plays Toy Tonics x Hubbas Klubb x Frædag
Italians do it better! If we’re going to talk about Disco, it’s gotta be Italian and if you’re talking about a dance floor nothing can quite bring it together like an Italo Disco track. DJs and producers from the region have been lighting up dance floors and record bags since the 1970s and joining that pantheon in recent years has been Fimiani.
Starting out as B-Plan, releasing edits of forgotten gems from the region, Giuseppe Fimiani has been releasing original material under his own name since 2024. Interned in the Toy Tonics stable, his tracks, remixes and collaborations have been a staple at the German outfit ever since.
Often working behind the scenes on other artists’ work, his music is known for its organic nature where live musicians can often be found working in the rhythm sections, threading their way through modern dance floor arrangements.
Growing up just on the outskirts of Napoli, he’s a natural descendent of the history of Disco and electronic music in the region, lying close to the heart of the scene. Between his productions and Djing he bears the torch for future generations while updating the sound for a modern audience.
He comes to Jaeger for the first time as part of the Toy Tonics circus and ahead of his next visit we sent out some questions to find out more about his history, his connection to Italo Disco and more
Where are you at the moment and what are you listening to?
I’ve just returned to Milan after the summer. Right now, I’m listening to a rap track by Sottotono, one of the Italian groups that really marked my teenage years.
When I’m not in the studio or travelling to play, I like listening to music without any particular goal. No looking for references, no “I need to find something for my next set.” Just listening and letting myself be surprised.
Tell me about your musical awakening. What was your earliest musical experience and what influenced you on your path towards a career in music?
My musical education started very early, mainly through the radio and the records I listened to at home. I grew up between Ischia and Naples, in an environment where music played a very important role, also socially.
I think the real turning point was discovering dance music and realizing that there was an entire world behind a record: the DJ, the club, the crowd, the selection of records and, above all, the ability of music to create a collective energy. From that moment, I wanted to understand not only how to listen to music, but how it actually worked. I wanted to learn how to select records, put them together, understand how to use a turntable and a mixer and, most importantly, how to build an atmosphere that could carry a dancefloor.
Later on, I got into production and started studying what was really happening inside a track: why a certain bassline worked with a particular drum pattern, why a breakdown could make a dancefloor explode, how instruments could interact with each other and how all these elements could live together inside a groove.
And, of course, how I could take all of that and turn it into something of my own.
DJing came first, right?
Absolutely. DJing came long before production. It was my way of learning music. Mixing taught me how to understand groove, structure and the dynamics of a dancefloor, and above all, how to build a dancefloor.
The years I spent doing the groundwork as a resident DJ in different situations were fundamental. During the summer season, from May to September, I was playing in clubs almost four nights a week, and I was resident at two venues. I was always doing the warm-up. I would start with an empty club and slowly build the dancefloor, creating the right mood for the DJ coming on after me.
For me, that experience was gold. I really recommend that every DJ starting out goes through that kind of apprenticeship. That’s where you learn. You build experience, develop your instincts and acquire a sensitivity that will stay with you in every situation later on.
Being in front of a crowd every week teaches you things that no manual ever could. You learn how to read people, when to push, when to leave space and when it’s time to completely change direction.
Unfortunately, these days I see a lot of young DJs who don’t want to go through that process and already see themselves as “peak-time DJs.” Or they get booked for a warm-up and don’t respect the moment: they play nothing but bangers, and then we’re left having to reset the room and rebuild the right mood in a very short time.
Guys, fewer bangers and stories, more quality! ;)
What were some of the first records you were buying and playing, and where were you playing at the beginning?
At first, I used the records I found at home, especially from my mother’s collection, or records I found in the DJ booth.
Yes, because in the early 2000s, clubs would actually buy vinyl themselves. They had their own music selection available for their resident DJs, and I also learned by listening to and playing the records I found there. Then I started listening to recorded DJ sets on cassette from DJs who were coming to Naples for the first time with Angels of Love: Kenny Dope, Vega, Roger Sanchez, Deep Dish, Erick Morillo, Frankie Knuckles, Hector Romero, Claudio Coccoluto and many others.
At that point, my whole perspective on music changed.
From the Italian Riviera, I would also get cassettes from many of the Italian DJs who were part of the scene at the time: DJ Ralf, Claudio di Rocco, Marco Trani, Lele Sacchi, Massimino Lippoli, Federica Babydoll and more. I became obsessed with tracking down the records I heard in those mixes. I wanted to know the titles, the samples, the artists and, most importantly, where I could buy them.
And believe me, it wasn’t easy: there was no Shazam. Our Shazam was our trusted record dealer! :D You had to build a relationship with them and get them to put one of the few copies aside for you when the record finally came in.
As I said before, I started out playing local parties and then moved into the smaller clubs on my island, doing a lot of groundwork as a resident. Those experiences really taught me how a dancefloor and a club work, and how important the direct relationship between a DJ and the crowd is.
It’s obviously not difficult to draw an association with Italo Disco, especially since you grew up near Naples. How much did it influence your musical development?
Italo Disco is definitely an important part of my musical background, but it was never my only or main source of inspiration.
Growing up between Ischia and Naples meant being surrounded by a very particular musical culture, where Italian subcultures, funk, disco, African funk, tribal sounds, soul vibes and Italo Disco eventually merged with house music, creating a really unique sound. The presence of the NATO base in Naples also played an important role. American import records would arrive there much earlier than they were easily available elsewhere.
For a curious kid like me, it was basically a playground.
All of this also pushed me towards production. I started wondering what was actually happening inside those records: how they were built, how the drums and bass worked, how instruments were being used, how a melody could become a hook and, above all, how all these elements could coexist within a groove.
I think that’s where my real curiosity about production began.
Are there still some unearthed gems in that genre, or has it been exhausted at this point?
Absolutely. There are still gems out there. I think it’s practically an inexhaustible genre, especially once you move beyond the most well-known titles. I’m still discovering records and productions I’ve never heard before. But from my point of view, the most interesting part today isn’t just finding the “rare record.” It’s understanding what we can take from that musical culture, those sounds and that sensibility, and transform into something new.
How has your DJing evolved since then?
It has changed enormously, mainly because the way we access music has changed.
When I started, research was a huge part of the job. Buying a record meant finding it, hunting it down, investing your savings in it and sometimes waiting weeks before you could finally get your hands on it. Vinyl wasn’t accessible to everyone, and building a good collection required time, passion and a lot of research.
Today, we basically have the whole history of recorded music at our fingertips, and that’s incredible. Technology has made DJing much faster, more accessible and more flexible. I’m definitely someone who embraces technology and tries to integrate it into the way I work. But I think you have to be careful not to let technology consume you.
So yes, DJing has definitely changed. Whether it has changed for better or worse depends on your point of view. In some ways it has become worse, in others it has definitely improved. What I can say is that there’s much less romanticism. And maybe less respect and passion for the music too. More and more, I feel that the music itself is taking a back seat to the show. At the same time, though, there are possibilities today that were simply unimaginable when I started.
As BPlan, you started out making edits of classics. Was that your introduction to production, and what was the idea behind those edits?
Yes. With BPlan, my first approach to production was very sample-based. I would start with disco and soul samples, often at much lower BPMs, and build a completely different track around them.
I’ve always loved the idea of giving a sound or a song a new life, taking it somewhere completely different. Later, I also started making simpler edits, what I would call “DJ edits”: I’d take a track I loved and add a more modern groove so I could play it in my DJ sets, while always trying to respect the original.
I was never the kind of guy who would just throw a random drum beat over a record. The groove has to work and it has to make musical sense. I later made many of these edits available as free downloads. At the beginning, I wasn’t really thinking about a career as a producer. Production was mainly a tool for my DJing. Then, little by little, I realized that the same approach could become a language of my own.
Going from BPlan to Fimiani, what was the key motivation behind developing your own sound as an artist?
The move to Fimiani came from the need to build a real artistic identity.
With BPlan, I was still very connected to the idea of editing and reinterpreting existing material. With Fimiani, I wanted to start from the same musical culture, but without needing an existing track as a starting point. I wanted to create everything from scratch: melodies, grooves, basslines and arrangements. And I wanted to do it by involving musicians and singers, so that every element could have its own identity.
Basically, I wanted to take everything I had learned as a DJ and producer and turn it into a universe that people could recognize as FIMIANI.
As Fimiani, you’re carrying forward a certain Italo tradition while updating it for the contemporary dancefloor. What’s the core of your sound?
I’d say groove, melody and warmth. I’m very interested in the relationship between organic instruments and electronic production. I want my records to have club energy, but at the same time something human, physical and maybe even a little imperfect — because that’s often what makes a record unique.
There’s definitely a strong Italian and Mediterranean component, but also a lot of influences from the Global South: African grooves, South American rhythms, house music, disco and funk.
It’s a kind of melting pot. A bella mezcla! :D
I don’t think too much in terms of “this is Italo,” “this is house,” “this is Afro.” I take what I love and try to make it coexist within the same ecosystem.
There’s an organic quality to your music and, from what I understand, you always try to incorporate some kind of live element. Tell us about your creative process in the studio.
I almost always start with the groove. I build a rhythm section, a bassline and a very simple structure, and then I start adding elements. That’s where I like to bring musicians into the process: a guitarist, bassist, percussionist, pianist, singer or anyone else who can bring something real into the track.
For me, it can’t simply be “a musician playing over an electronic production.” What they play has to become part of the track, its groove, its organic quality and, ultimately, the FIMIANI ecosystem. They have to feel like they’re part of the project too. Fortunately, after years of working this way, I’ve built a great team of collaborators. When we get into the studio, everything feels very natural — and most importantly, we have fun making music together.
What’s the biggest challenge in combining these live elements with sequenced electronic components, and how do you make them sound so natural?
The biggest challenge is keeping everything under control without losing the natural feel. A musician plays differently from a machine: there are micro-variations, timing, dynamics and little imperfections. For me, those imperfections are often the most interesting part. The trick is not trying to correct everything or warp everything to perfection.
You have to understand which imperfections give the record life and which ones simply make it sound out of focus. Once you find that balance, the electronic and live elements stop feeling like two different worlds and simply become part of the same groove.
Another fundamental part is the mix. Over time, I’ve also developed the right sound and my own way of mixing, so that all the live and electronic elements can coexist naturally
Toy Tonics has been the exclusive home for your releases as Fimiani. How did you first get involved with the label?
Toy Tonics came into my life at a very important moment in my journey, around 2017. I had started developing the sound that I now recognize as Fimiani, and I felt I needed a home that could really understand its identity.
The relationship initially started through my BPlan edits, and then we began building the FIMIANI project together. With Mathis, aka Kapote, everything happened very naturally. We met in Ischia in 2017, when I invited him to play an open-air party, and from there we started building this journey together.
What’s it like working with Toy Tonics, and what keeps you coming back to them?
Everything with them feels very spontaneous because I don’t feel a real distance between the artist’s vision and the label’s vision. There’s a strong musical connection, an ongoing dialogue and a real attention to the music, while at the same time they give me the space I need to develop my own identity. And above all, we share a certain idea of dance music: it can be fun and accessible, but still have personality, depth, research and culture.
Is this your first time at Jaeger, and your first time playing in Oslo? How will that affect what you pack in your record bag?
Yes, this will be my first time at Jaeger and also my first time playing in Oslo. Unfortunately, the previous times, because of different events and some unexpected circumstances, I never managed to make it.
So this time I’m really curious to discover the crowd and the club for the first time, and to see where we can take the dancefloor together.
Anything new or unheard you’re looking forward to playing here?
Yes. I’m working on several original tracks and a few remixes, and they’ll definitely be coming with me. I’ll be testing them in my set…
Shhh, I can’t say too much! :D
See you on the dancefloor.
Lastly, please play us out with a song…
I’ll leave you with one of the tracks that represents my Neapolitan roots:
Wilkes
13 years is still a long time for a club night, especially at that time, when everybody was going from one thing to the next quite quickly. How did you maintain that excitement around it for so long?
How has it informed your work beyond the DJ booth and in the studio?
What do you remember of the nights at Space @ Bar Rumba?
How did you and Honey start working together?
You mentioned, Garage was big when you were teenagers. Is that around the same time you started to make music?
James doesn’t feel queer is a “sexual statement,” but rather an ideology. “I know cis straight woman who identify as queer,” he says as an example. For James, queer is about a “rejection of patriarchy” and a the celebration of “alternative lifestyles” on dance floors. “As long as they bring love and joy to the dance, then everybody is welcome,” insists James. Even though the party they “do in New York is a different crowd to the one in London and the one in Berlin is different to both of those,” that queer element remains at its core and James “love
Tell me about WINDOWS. Is it an album and/or a live show?
Ida and Naomi both grew up in what they consider a “small town” called Sandefjord. Both had taken an early interest in music albeit from different points of view. While Ida was “drawn into singing very early,” Naomi was an avid listener, consuming all she can from Beyonce to Dimmu Borgir. At around the age of 11 Naomi’s dad built her a dance studio in the basement with “some cheap speakers and different kinds of disco lights” encouraging the impressionable youth towards electronic dance music. She would be “dancing like a crazy person to Benny Benassi” in her basement enclave she remembers fondly today. 
You’re talking about the early nineties?
You got pigeonholed as a DJ, somewhat unfairly, in that Deep House trend after “Your Everything.” What effect did it have on what you would do next and how did you eventually sidestep it as a DJ?
Lars grew up in the
At 13 he had heard his first DJ playing Disco records consecutively, and by 15 he went to his first club and bought “Ten Percent“ on Salsoul. The speaker hanging out the window soon developed into a party in his apartment, and requests to play at other people’s house parties followed as he became a local mobile Disco music of some repute. “I just loved the music, it was just everything for me,” he remembers. At 18 he had made something of a career out of it, playing mostly commercial music, before somebody dropped “a stack of what they called Loft records” at his feet. “I was like ‘Whoa, what is this sound?’” It was a selection of expensive, limited press- and imported records, the kind of which they had been playing not only at the Loft, but also Paradise Garage. Although Morales had not yet been to either club, since they were strictly private clubs, he started making inroads as a dancer frequenting venues like Paradise Garage and the Loft through acquaintances with memberships, and eventually befriending people like Mancusso and DJ Kenny Carpenter. It was through Carpenter that he was inducted into a record pool, the first organisations that supplied DJs with new, unreleased music for the club, and it was through this pool that he would have his first major break as DJ.
The first release on the label came via KiNK, with the aptly titled “Home,” and in that record we find similarities to KiNK’s music from “Under Destruction” as tracks play on similar rhythmic and melodic themes, distilled down from traditional music, with titles like The Clock and The Grid redefining the concepts contained in their titles for western ears. Accompanying the release and future releases from a small, but dedicated community of artists, are a series of photos – most of which taken on phone – from Bulgarian DJ legend DJ Valentine. Alongside the music it consolidates a label that for the first time will distill some of that Bulgarian traditions into a contemporary platform.
They had known they “had something by the first record” , the rather wordy “some, but not all Cheese comes from the moon.” That record, released on Planet Noise in 2004 had put Ost & Kjex on the map in Norway, but it was when they “sent the first tracks to Crosstown Rebels and they called back” they had something special according to Petter. “When Crosstown Rebels called up, we knew the outside world was listening” reiterates Tore and by the time of Cajun Lunch their sound was truly established. 
Do you remember a specific moment or track that inspired you to first mix two songs together?
Tell me about going to the Loft.
Did he just play on Blå’s soundsystem?
Did you ever talk to him about the peak era of the Loft?
She gives my a side glance before answering; “Obviously there is a correlation… do I need to follow that…. A bit if I want to, but not really.” It’s understandable why she won’t acquiesce to the archetypes that dominate DJ culture today. As she insists, she 
That was my introduction to Jaeger’s “Diskon sound” as I came to know it and throughout my tenure here, the sound system kept growing, shrinking and moving in a constant evolution that owner and resident Ola Smith-Simonsen (Olanskii) still refers to as a ”work in progress.” It’s been in a constant state of flux that has taken a life of its own as the venue, the DJs and the audience kept changing around it and as it kept retreating further into the structural makeup of the room and the dance floor it’s allure is indistinguishable between these elements. And as Ola starts talking about the next phase of the system and the recently-installed bass traps settle into the walls, it’s an evolution in sound that refuses to come to any natural conclusion. 
“It’s like money,” collates Rosner in a RBMA lecture; ”you can never have too much because you know you can give some of it away. Loudspeakers can never be too big, because you can always turn the volume down.” In one of Rosner and Mancuso’s crowning achievements at the Loft their combined efforts resulted in creating a tweeter-array system that helped spread those higher sonic frequencies more evenly and further across the room, so that even the person sitting in the back could hear every element in the music rather than just the bass frequencies, which naturally has the longest reach. Even though Rosner didn’t initially agree with Mancuso’s tweeter array idea, he soon came around when he discerned ”the more you have up there the better.” It’s a sonic philosophy that’s still noticeably adopted today when you see towers of horns jutting out high above the DJ somewhere like stalagmites on a cave wall, but while it’s certainly helpful having all that sound on tap, it’s pretty pointless if it’s not pointed in the right direction.
It was Alex Rosner that introduced Long to this world, as a kind of fixer for his sound systems and it would be Rosner that would also inadvertently put him into business. In “Last night a DJ saved my life,” Francis Grasso described an incident where Rosner sent Long out on a job, and Long usurped his boss by outbidding him on the same job as an independent contractor. Rosner remembers it differently in the RBMA documentary. According to Rosner, John Addison (Studio 54) had phoned Rosner up in the middle of the night to ask about doing some work for him. Rosner swiftly hung up on Addison, noting the lateness of the call in what I assume was short conversation littered with expletives. Addison in all his ‘70s cocaine-fuelled cock-sured fury was not a person you would hang the receiver up on likely and put his next call in to Rosner’s budding apprentice effectively putting Richard Long and associates into business.
“Drugs, nothing more,” says Tornike, but “when they raided the club, no-one was arrested for dealing drugs and they couldn’t find any drug dealers inside the club, only finding 2 or 3 grams” on individuals. The club owners were arrested too, without a warrant on some overblown claims of obstruction, which never resulted in any charges brought forward, but what happened directly after the raid, was a force of solidarity in a clubbing community that we haven’t seen since the time of the criminal justice and public order act. People like Tornike, who had started gathering outside Bassiani as the police were carting off their friends and colleagues, were protesting the arrests. “We were trying to figure out what was happening,” explains Tornike who “didn’t even know which Police station they took them to” at the time.
In the month of October, DJ Lekkerman hands over the reigns of his weekly residency to a couple of stalwarts on Den Gyldne Sprekk roster, and two DJs and music enthusiasts that know the concept inside out. Beastie Joyce and Jørgen Egeland host another month of Den Gyldne Sprekk at Jaeger with a series of concepts that go from another KIZZ pøb to the blood-curdling sounds of Memphis Rap for Halloween as the pair resurrect their Funk Boys alias to invite a host of kindred spirits to the lineup for October. 
KIZZ PØB returns! What is it about the band in your opinion that continues to draw old and new fans to their music?
How did you feel your set at Jaeger went?
Do you consider yourself a veteran of the scene in that respect?
The music you guys make on Rebound to me sounds like its all built on a foundation of House, but there’s also that frosty Norwegian sonic element in there. What conscious steps do you take in creating that sound?
I spoke to Carl Craig recently and he told me that DJing was the day job to afford the passion of making music. But I have a sneaking suspicion that’s the other way around for you, that DJing is the true passion?
I think it would’ve been that way. I know DJs who just don’t have the attention span to make music. Some guys from Detroit I would really like to see out here, more. They are excellent DJs, but just don’t get the opportunity because they don’t have the patience to sit around and programme music. 
Jann Dahle started making music in 1992 in Tromsø when he moved there to study law. It was a fortuitous time to be making music in Tromsø as the critical point for a burgeoning Disco and House scene that would eventually spread around the globe. “I met Rune (Linbæk), Bjørn (Torske) and Kolbjørn (Lyslo aka Doc L Junior) and I started professionally DJing back then,” remembers Dahle. “There was a lot of buzz about Norwegian Disco at that moment, because of Bjørn,” but Tromsø being a small city, Dahle “got to know everybody” involved in music and landed a job at Brygge Radio alongside Bjørn, Rune, and Geir Jenssen (aka Biosphere).
When and how did Techno exactly come into your life and what drew you to the genre?
What do you look for in a Techno track to make it into your sets?
Channeling that experience of touring and playing live into this record, Dave Harrington Group favour an uninhibited approach on “Pure Imagination, No Country” as they capture that raw intensity and power of a live band in the studio. Nick Murphy emphasises this energy through post production, which on their previous LP, favoured a slicker, more refined approach. Dave Harrington’s guitar takes more of a central role on the LP, where it appears mostly unprocessed in its natural state taking the stage front and centre in the production across the album.
Working with TB Arthur and people like BMG, do you think It’s changed the way you make music?
Like every DJ out there today you have an agent that takes care of your bookings, but do you have the final say where you’ll play?
Why these particular remix artists?
I’ve read that your philosophy is about exporting the Black Motion, and in extension the South African sound to the wider world.
