DJ Tennis

Event Details

DJ Tennis is Manfredi Romano. Born in the 70's and raised between New Jersey, Sicily, and Parma in a family where music was such a small thing. He had no relatives that played musical instruments, nothing to play on at home, and no one giving music any considerable amount of love. Despite this, his creative and artistic attitude have always centered on music - singing, playing and collecting weird and noisy musical instruments at every turn. In 1988, before starting computer science studies at Pisa University (to please his grandfather) he was already playing and singing in college bands and had an indie rock radio show on a local radio station in Palermo. Recording bands, organizing parties, and DJ'ing at the tennis club where he used to play as a semi-pro player (the Tennis moniker comes from his passion for that sport) all became his way to support the costs of his studies. But when he graduated he never imagined he would turn that hobby into his career. Still he became a DJ, while focusing first on promoting new underground music in his country. Manfredi is responsible for founding and developing some of the most important Italian underground musical events such as the Elita Festival in Milan, the Dissonanze Festival in Rome, and creating new marketing concepts around Italian clubbing. During the last 2 decades Manfredi started producing music for theatre, movie soundtracks, and TV commercials. His production skills are eternally inspired from the psychedelic, dark, and melancholic sounds of the 60s, straight through to early 2000s IDM. A few of Manfredis influences include: Beach Boys, The Who, Talk Talk, Ultravox, XTC, Fugazi, June of 44, Suicide, Radiohead, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Plastikman. In 2010, tired of the output of the current musical scene he collected all of his musical works and, with Thugfuckers Greg Oreck, started a new techno and pop label called Life and Death. The name of the label has a specific meaning, inspired by the Socratic maieutic process to give subtle and dead elements a new life as well as referring to the benefit and hypnotic power of music used in the mesmeric processes for brain therapy. Tennis is based in Berlin where he also shares label experience and a studio with the innovative deep electronic duo Tale of Us. He has worked hard to create a crew of young and inspired musicians like Clockwork and Esperanza, among others.