Destination: Planet Earth

You may only recognise them as the box-headed DJs that soundtrack your weekends, but DJs From Mars are now one of the biggest names in the mash-up scene and their goal is nothing less than to conquer the world.

With New Year’s Eve around the corner, Brisbane better get ready for some alien domination as the duo prepare to bring in 2012 with Western Australia’s Bombs Away. “We are damn excited, of course. We have been working hard every week in between gigs to be sure we have the freshest sound so expect some brand new bombs! Last year when we played there for the first time we didn’t know what to expect, but now we are prepared so you better be ready for a party hard night! Bring your own boxes!” the excited Turin duo said via an email interview.

The coming weeks will see DJs From Mars performing in France, their home country of Italy, and Austria before reaching Australia, their final destination for 2011, where the music is not all they’re excited about. “Not just because we are talking to you, but we honestly can’t wait to come to Australia again. Last year’s Aussie gigs were amazing. We met and worked with amazing people, the food was great, everything was perfect and last but not least, all of our friends will be freezing while we’ll be hanging around in t-shirts and short pants!”

DJs From Mars officially formed back in 2004 and have made quite a name for themselves since. With music playing such a big role in their lives, it’s hard to imagine what life would be like if they weren’t DJing. “We would be preparing fries for a fat guy waiting and screaming at us behind a fast food cashier! No seriously, we’ve been DJs long before the DJSFM project, and we were involved in several other projects at the label we worked for so our job has always been music and we feel so lucky about that, especially today as it’s getting pretty hard to make it as a kid.”

Part of what makes DJs From Mars stand out from other globetrotting DJs is their unique image combined with a sound that is, as their name suggests, a bit out of this world. “It was all made very randomly. We chose the ‘DJs From Mars’ name because we wanted to express a ‘different’ feeling and we both love sci-fi movies. The boxhead image came when shooting one of our first videos for a track called ‘Who Gives a F**k About Deejays’. Our label’s manager came up with this idea for the video, and we tried to keep it going during the gigs. It was a lucky choice because it became our trademark.”
Constantly performing with a box over their heads has meant their identities are always concealed from the public, with this disguise now an important part of who DJs From Mars are.

“We try not to reveal our real identities. We love the fact that people don’t know who we really are. After the show the best part is to hang at the bar sipping on a drink with all the guys around saying ‘Hey those DJs were great’ without knowing we are there. The bad part is when they say ‘so glad those mother f***ers finished their set it was soooo boring!’. Fortunately, most of the time they like it.”

They’ve more than created a stir with numerous international tours, YouTube videos with hits in the tens of millions, support from leading DJs like David Guetta and Bob Sinclar, remixing tracks for Ciara, Cascada and Fragma, and a burgeoning loyal following. It’s understandable why picking the best thing about being a DJ would be so difficult.

“Free drinks! Ok, no, the best thing is going to sleep after a great show in a foreign place miles away from home and thinking that someone called you to rock the party. It’s definitely great! On a larger scale, every day you wake up and realise you are paying for your food with money that you earned doing something you love. That’s absolutely perfect.”

When you have the enthralling ability to captivate an entire dancefloor for hours without ever showing your face, memorable moments are bound to be plentiful and 2011 has provided the biggest so far. “We opened for Tiesto in Atlantic City in March this year and it was amazing of course. Under our boxes we were thinking ‘Is this really happening or did someone put some pills in our drinks?’ Then we came back to Italy and we saw the videos only to realise it was really happening! That was one of the best gigs of our lives so far, and we hope to have a lot of other magic moments like that.”

There is one dream, however, that is yet to be fulfilled. “Our dream will be always a dream. We would love to work on a track with Jimi Hendrix and see him making music with computers. We still cannot believe what he did to contemporary music with the help of barely anything.”

Considering the ever-changing face of popular dance music, keeping up with the kids can be hard. Dubstep may be taking over at the moment, but DJs From Mars are determined to resist conformity while still keeping it fresh and embracing new sounds. “We love dubstep and we tried to insert some of that in some of our tracks but we’ll never go dubstep just because it’s the trend of the moment. Otherwise next year when it goes out, we’ll have to change again.

“We think that everyone has to keep their own style. Look at Daft Punk and how great they are without following any trends. We try to build our own style, every day incorporating everything we love, including dubstep, heavy metal, hip hop, soundtracks, classical music and so on. We feed ourselves with music not with trends!”

Last year techno was all the rage, pumping throughout nightclubs around the globe, last week it was electro, today it’s dubstep and tomorrow who knows. So what happens when dance music dies? “Music will change radically, but dance music will never die. For us, house music is just the third millennium version of disco music, which is the twentieth century version of African tribal dance. It’s just a kind of music you can dance to, and if you talk to a 14-year-old kid today about house music he’ll probably think of Deadmau5, not David Morales. Styles are changing, but people will always dance.

“Working in this business for such a long time has taught us that music always has its ups and downs. The ones who make it are the ones who can manage the downs.”

In 2012 DJs From Mars will continue their plan to take over the world, time permitting that is.
“We have 100,000 ideas and such a short time to work on all of them. If only we had 48 hours in a day.”

DJS FROM MARS PLAY ELECTRIC PLAYGROUND SATURDAY DEC 31 and east fri dec 30.