Dr. Shiver opens up about his origins, his label and upcoming music in exclusive interview

For an artist who is growing leaps and bounds in his own sphere as a producer and performer aside from being the owner of a successfully established Recording label, Dr. Shiver has undoubtedly earned some valuable experience in a comparatively short span of time – an instance that new and upcoming producers aim if not envy till date. The Italian producer and DJ has been making waves across the spectrum of present day Dance Music scene ever since his remix for Candi Staton’s monumental 1986 track ‘You Got The Love‘ was featured as part of the TomorrowWorld 2016 After-movie and his talent recognized.

After doing remixes for two heavyweight artist team-ups – one for Swedish House Mafia & Laidback Luke’s ‘Leave The World Behind’ featuring the iconic Deborah Cox and another for Axwell & Sebastian Ingrosso’s collaboration on ‘Together’ featuring Michael Feiner – and dishing out a flurry of singles of his own on his Art & Music Recordings label, Dr. Shiver is back to treat us to some new music straight from his production desk. As he releases a re-mode for the 2015 remix he did for Candi Staton’s anthemic original for all to enjoy, we took this opportunity to celebrate his on-going glorious career by taking the discussion away from the music and to topics such as his origins, his influences, his nation and what it felt like to run a recording label of one’s own. Read below the extremely informative interview that Dr. Shiver was so kind to do exclusively do with us.

Tell us about the origin of your music. How did you discover your sound?

Everything began when I was 5 years old. At that time I started playing the piano. Initially I was playing classical music and later moved to blues & jazz. I collected some remarkable achievements with my piano, getting as far as playing with blues legends such as BB King. However, I have sadly found out that living with that kind of music in my country was a hard mission.

In everything I do (playing the piano, producing, engineering, deejaying) I am a self made man: I was already writing music for my band at that time and I thought “it would be nice trying to learn how to produce”. So I started doing pop and after a few years I got the big chance to go to New York and work with Marvin Floyd, musical director for Ashanty and Christina Milian: he taught me how to work on Hip Hop and R&B.
Back to Italy, at first I was doing the same genre I was doing with Marvin with Italian artists but, as you know, “once you try the Ferrari, you don’t wanna go back to the Fiat”. So I shifted my productions toward dance pop, which allowed me to work in a Market, that is bigger in Europe.

Today I am producing lot of different genres of music, from dance, to pop, from house to electro and progressive. But what I love to do is connecting all of these styles with elements that can relate them to me. For this reason, in all of my tracks you can always find real instruments: pianos, guitars, Hammond organs, drums.

You’ve just released ‘Miami 2017 Compilation’ under your own imprint Art&Music Recording. Could you tell us about the tracks featured there? There were several ID’s featured and we’d love to know more about them!

Well, I am really proud about that compilation: all of the tracks I’ve played there are entirely recorded, produced, mixed and mastered in our great Art&Music Studios. 6 tracks are classic hits from our record label, 10 are exclusive premiers never heard before and 3 are IDs. The remix of Supermode, Tell me Why, by STEVE Z has been released on Art&Music Recording on Monday, April 3^rd, and already got supports from the likes of Nicky Romero, W&W, Promiseland. The 2 new tracks by Solberjum (Dirty Shot and Right Back) have been licensed to Sirup group and will be released very soon. The track by David Allen (Kubera) together with the track by Marc Typ (Down To River) and the collab track between David and Marc (Echoes) will be released very soon on Art&Music Recording. Thinking About You, the epic remix Solberjum made for Axwell /\ Ingrosso, will be relased on Art&Music Recording on Monday, April 17^th. Unfortunately, I can’t say much regarding my collab track with Jegers (Don’t Worry), my next single “Brave Love” and the 3 ids. I can only say that is better for you to keep an eye on Art&Music Recording socials, since big things are going to happen with these records.

Looking at your productions throughout the last year or so – Your remix for the iconic “Leave The World Behind” and your most recent one; The remode version of “You Got The Love” – along with your original “Love For Life” tell us that they are quite different productions individually. Is there a change in direction coming from you or are we hearing you try out different styles?

Today the market is saturated by music. Every day there are tons of tracks released. For this reason, I believe that if you want to make the difference you can not lock yourself up in just one genre. I am not saying I will do a rock track (but you can never know): I am just saying that I truly believe that if you have skills to develop different kinds of music you should definitely go for it. As mentioned in my first answer, there is always a connection among all of my tracks and this is what I define “sound identity”. But I really encourage people to understand that “sound identity” does not mean creating cloned tracks that sounds all the same with similar leads and melody progressions.  Sound identity means having a few elements that link your productions to yourself, having a shared production, arrangement and melody taste that can relate your music to your profile. This is what I am doing every day: just having fun while doing music, producing what I really feel creating a connection between all these tracks without keep on repeating the same thing. At the end, everybody gets bored with monotony pretty soon and, if you notice, all big shots in the music industry create different music and are never repetitive.

Speaking about your remode version of “You Got The Love” – We really like what you’ve done there, Could you tell us how the rework came to life? What was the idea to flip the original remix?

The first time I got the request to officially remix this track I was very excited. I gave my best to create a fresh version of a track I have always loved. Working with Candi’s original vocal was fantastic.

As you might know, my record label, Art&Music Recording, recently became a free download record label. So I thought that it would be a nice idea to give our fans my remix for free. But the track needed an update to be fresh enough for the contemporary market. So I have just put my hands on it again to improve it in order to give to our fans an even better version. I’m actually really satisfied wih the results: people loved it and I got a lot of huge supports from big names like David Guetta, Chuckie, Quintino, Tom Swoon, Dannic, W&W and many more.

Every country has its own distinguishing features and you hail from Italy. What’s the difference between Italy and the rest of the world?

A very hard question I would say. But I’ll be as honest as possible.

I believe that in Italy we have a lot of super talented producers but, none of them really became big. We don’t have an Italian David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Axwell, and so on. The real question is “why so many talents and still nobody is making the cut?”
My personal opinion is that there is a very wrong mentality in my country. I am lucky enough to travel the world and to work with a lot of talented artists from everywhere. The reason why I am working whit these guys is because we have the same vision: “sharing is caring”. I am always supportive of everybody, always trying to help when I can. If there is a trick I can share or an introduction I can make, I always try to do it for all the deserving people around me. I am not saying “all”, but the most of my compatriots have a different way of thinking: they are simply not supportive of each other. They waste a lot of time in slandering others instead of thinking about their own career. They are absolutely individualist while today, if you want to win, you should learn that the only way to do it is called “teamwork”. If you look at all the names I have listed, they all share my vision: they support each other and they know that without a team you cannot go anywhere.

But I am not giving up with my Italians buddies: I always try to help whoever shows me to be talented and humble. This is also the same goal that we have in Art&Music Recording: giving to all deserving guys a concrete chance to get heard out in the crowd.

As the head-honcho of Art&Music Recording, we’ve seen that you’ve been making some huge moves for expanding the brand, such as label showcases, live sessions from the studio and other concepts. Could you tell us about some of the ideas behind the concepts and some of Art&Music Recording’s future projects?

Art&Music Recording, together with Art&Music Studios, are my babies. We are really working hard to make the difference in the music scene. We have always worked to achieve the best results with arrangement, sound design, sound identify, mix and master. But we feel there was much more to do so we thought that becoming a free download label was the right move to achieve an even larger audience. We’ve discussed this project with Soundcloud and…Boom, they really liked the idea at the point that now we are the first Italian record label to have a direct partnership with them. At the same time, 1001 Track-list really liked what we are doing and gladly started working with us as well.

For the future we have several very important plans. Some of them will be posted on our social media very soon, some others will arrive in a few months. For sure I can tell you that we are going to be again in Ibiza for IMS where we will present some new tracks. There is also a lot of new music that will be released very soon. Monday April, 17^th for example you should get ready for an atomic remix of Thinking About You (Axwell Λ Ingrosso) made by Solberjum.

Given the huge success of our Miami Compilation, we will soon launch Art&Music Essential, our brand new radio show, where all producers can send us their demos and get the double chance to get signed by Art&Music and/or get their music played during the show.

Events wise, I can just say that we are planning something very big: a huge live streaming event with one of the biggest deejays from Holland and another label night that is going to be sick. I cannot say much more than that, but you should check our socials and you will discover some news very soon.

What’s next for Dr. Shiver? Any hints or clues that we could get about future productions and collaborations? Special performances or tour dates?

There is a lot coming for me. I have several nice collaborations: one with Jegers (an Italian trio of talented producers), another with my brother, the great and extremely gifted John Christian and two others with a very big artist (but for this one you will have to wait a bit more).

Also, I will soon release Brave Love, my next single with the marvelous vocal of Jmi Sissoko. You can have a taste of it in my Miami 2017 compilation.

In May I will be playing live again at Radio Sonica Ibiza and I am glad to say that there is something very big coming up for me this year. So stay tuned and you will hear more very very soon!

His latest track is available for a quick download here. Follow Dr. Shiver for more new music.