Where does the name Riva Star comes from? Well it is quite a story. I was with friends and we had a few drinks, let’s put it like that. Watching Youtube videos we stumbled upon some of Gigi Riva, the Italian football player. So Riva comes from that. Starr come from the Gang Starr, the hip hop crew from New York. It is quite random I would say, but it seems to work so far. At what point did dance music come into your life? When I was at high school I listened to mix shows on the weekend from one of the big clubs in Naples, then me and some friends decided to start doing parties. We used to do 18 year-old birthday parties: a big cake at midnight, sing ‘Happy Birthday’ then play Gipsy Kings Megamixes and all that bullshit! To get started I made enough money to buy turntables, a mixer and a few records but for a while I was playing five hour sets with about twenty or thirty records, playing the A-side, the B-side, the instrumental, the Capella, trying to make brand new records from them.. What DJs did you see at the time that inspired you to get behind the decks? Because I started very young I couldn’t go to the club straight away, so I was listening to some mix sets from a big club in Naples called Kiss. Now Kiss Kiss was a radio station as well, so I learnt from listening to their live sets on the Friday/Saturday night. On Radio Ibiza they were doing more technical stuff like using the first AKAI sampler or whatever, so it was unbelievable for me to actually go there and meet the DJs who showed me how the sampler worked and the first sequencers so I just started once I went there and learned a bit from there. Though it took me a while to learn how to actually produce music. What is your ideal day at the studio like? Describe how your music find its erratic soul? Is it self-reflective of yourself as an artist? There is never a rule about producing in the studio. Sometimes you have an idea and sometimes you start from a sample, sometimes you mess around with the keyboard or a bit a bass line or maybe you just spend the weekend in the clubs and come back with some ideas and there’s no rules and thank God cause I can keep my work fresh and diverse all the time. Based on your lifetime of experience in the music industry, how has your choice of technology changed over time? You came from the era of vinyl and now we are almost in the 22nd century and we got people playing on iPads! I don’t mind. For me, the most important thing is the way the music is picked, and the way you play the music to the people. Not in terms of the technical way, but how do you select the track and how do you involve the people. So, you can do it with an iPad, with vinyl, with Traxsourse. You can do it with MiniDisc and you can do it with cassettes. I don’t mind. As long as you manage to get the vibe going, to understand and read the crowd, with good quality music. For me, that’s the essential thing. So, the actual equipment you use, for me, it doesn’t matter. But at least, the minimum has to be that you do the best selection you can, and you try your best to read the crowd and involve them in a very good experience. Do you see yourself as kind of a mentor to the younger generation of DJs? Well I try to do what Norman and Green Velvet did with me, because they gave me a lot of suggestions. So I’m not saying that I'm the truth but I certainly give them my advice based on my experience. https://soundcloud.com/rivastarr/david-morales-presents-the-face-needin-u-riva-starr-remix"Everyone is taking care of their own brand and not leaving space for other people. I really think we should be collaborating more together in order to grow the scene. It's good to have an ego and it’s very important to push things forward, but when it becomes selfishness I don't think its a good thing."
A Sit Down With DJ Riva Starr
Few artists are Synonymous with random spontaneity and an erratic good time as much as the East London based Dj and producer Riva Starr. Having various accomplishments both as a producer and a DJ, Riva Starr is fondly and definitively know as a musical mastermind often renowned for his ways of creative cross-pollination that equates to mind boggling, soul moving results.