≈ Belize ≈ is just another place in the mind, but it sounds super fresh.
≈ Belize ≈ can be filed under “pop and rhythms”, a music machine with ever expanding grooves, as a few friends told before us. Keyboards, choruses, guitars, drums, sense of humor, sampling and various metaphors, with an obsession for details that comes from sound engineering. We’ve known each other since like forever, but every time we hear something new coming from them, we feel like we don’t fully know them yet. Since we know that they know how to rock, and they rock, it was impossible not to invite them to shed some Wood’d Vibes, you know? Good listening and good reading, enjoy!
Ciao Belize! In a few words, who are you and what do you do?
We are four friends having fun. We love playing with music and with everything else linked to it.
How did you start with music?
Let’s say we have different backgrounds 🙂 Some of us bought “Squèrez” while vacating on the seaside in ’99, probably in Marcelli di Numana. Some of us build themselves a paper drum machine after seeing “School of Rock“. As Belize instead we’ve started out in 2013, thanks to a common dedication to DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing“. Mattia, our guitarist, after an incident couldn’t play guitar anymore, so he started playing with sampler. We think this was the biggest luck we ever had.
What are the main influences on your sound?
Dj Shadow, Massive Attack, Tv on the Radio, everything was touched by Damon Albarn (as a musician or producer). But in some way also Lucio Dalla and Piero Ciampi.
What are you currently listening to?
We’ve been listening a lot of Lorenzo Senni, the latest Arca’s album and Disasterpeace, a soundtrack producer who got famous thanks to “It Follows”. Or at least these are the main ones. We also have a super-secret playlist on Spotify that we always update with the latest listenings. You can find everything in there, from Deltron 3030 to Sferaebbasta. But it better stays secret.
Where you draw your main inspirations for this mix?
When we think about wood and craftmanship we instantly picture the base and foundation of music: rhythm. So we started browsing our super-secret playlist and selected a few african and afro-beat tunes, where rythm is what prevails. Al these grooves are really important to Belize, since Yed (bass guitar and synth) lived in Etiopia for seven years.
What have you prepared for Wood’d?
This is really a various mix, cronologically and geographically speaking. From United Kingdom to Nigeria, from the Nineties to artists that still don’t have an entire album published. Enjoy!