From the Florentine countryside to the biggest clubs and festivals in the world, Silvie Loto’s journey has seen her musical curiosity flourish into a full-blown love affair with house. She tells Niamh O’Connor about her step by step rise, playing for the crowd, and the beauty she sees in the scene.
Silvie Loto is from the “MTV generation”. It’s the one that grew up in the ’90s and ’00s, hooked on the sounds of electronic music broadcast on the non-stop American cable television channel. It introduced a curious 12-year-old based in the Florentine countryside to all the greats, from The Chemical Brothers to Daft Punk to Depeche Mode. At the time, Silvie had “no idea” what this music was — until she began to experience it in real life a few years later at clubs in the city of Florence.
“I was so fascinated by the DJ and the control he had on the crowd and the music he was selecting,” she recalls on a video call from her home in Milan. There were very few female DJs soundtracking the spaces in Florence back then, which wasn’t exactly encouraging, but it didn’t stop Silvie from delving into the craft of mixing, teaching herself how to blend the long way: on vinyl.
“That’s something I’m really proud of,” she says, describing how she would practise for “many hours a day” on a pair of turntables at home during her teenage years. Before she left the countryside and moved to the city for university, she began playing minimal house records in “small places, small clubs” in the locale. “So I was starting from there, and I feel like my career has been step by step,” she continues, “I didn’t have a moment when something changed.”
Step by step, Silvie landed more gigs, and in 2010, while studying PR & Communications in Florence (her “Plan B” if DJing didn’t work out), local club Tenax offered her a DJ residency. Shortly after, Rome’s legendary Goa Club gave her a residency too. “That was a really nice moment for me,” she says. “I could play a little bit more techno at Goa and a little bit more house in Tenax, and that was cool.” Dj Mag.
