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Numa Crew

Numa Crew Interview

Most of us think of the hard and aggressive sounds of Benny Benassi, Marco Carola and Mauro Picotto when we hear about music from Italy. With releases on Moonshine and Erba, Numa Crew looks to give ‘The Boot’ a taste of their reggae influenced sounds. We spoke with the Crew about their latest album release on Liondub International.

Your upcoming album release on Liondub International appears to be your biggest release to date. How does it feel to get such a large project accomplished and released on such a prestigious label?
Over the years we’ve released a lot of singles and remixes but never a proper album. We decided for our first LP we would try to create a collective work by putting together the influences and skills of all the crew members in an organic structure.

We’ve been in contact with DJ Liondub for a long time and when we proposed the release he was excited to get it out. For us it’s a great honour because we think that his label is the best to put out a project like this one.

This release on Liondub International is following another big one for you guys off of Moonshine’s ‘Steppin Forward’ LP. How did it feel to release on such a well known label?
We feel blessed about this, since our track received a good feedback and big support by artists such as Radikal Guru and DJ Madd. That’s a great pleasure to be part of the Moonshine family! “Steppin Forward” is a serious release made of big tunes and great vibes that corresponds to our taste perfectly.

Numa Crew is a large collective of producers and MCs, who is part of the crew?
Numa Crew is a big family: we’re six producers and an MC and everyone has a different musical education. We would share a lot of various musical projects together from acoustic to electronic music. This process led to the foundation of the crew and continues to be the powerful peculiarity of what our sound is about.

Every person in the family adds a different influence and attitude to the project. The funny thing is to hear people asking: “how can you make decisions in so many minds?”

When I hear about electronic music coming from Italy I think of hard techno. How are the jungle and dubstep scenes there?
Italy used to have a powerful rave scene till the middle of the 2000s. Now times have changed due to political issues that have smothered a bit of the nightlife here. We still have a lot of good producers, DJs and promoters who are keeping the things alive like LNRipley, D­Operation Drop, Clap Clap, Arp XP, Dabs, Maztek, DJ Foster, Mother Inc, Bonnot, Slesh and Ckrono. They are always pushing things forward when we’re talking about jungle, dubstep and bass music in general.

You definitely have a strong reggae influence in your music, whether it’s dubstep or ragga jungle. Where does this musical background stem from?
Well, we all have different backgrounds and musical inspirations, but, yet we all have a passion for Jamaican music which creates the common ground of our style. We love reggae music from the foundation to the nowadays style.

What’s next for the Numa Crew after this release? Do you have any other big projects coming up or tours later this year?
We have a lot of things going on! We’re excited to be back for the fifth year at Outlook Festival. We’re also looking forward to playing for the first time in Prague at Cross Club this month. In the next few months we’ll be touring in Italy and abroad to promote the new album. We’re also ready to drop a brand new video of the second single from the album, that will be out very soon!

Also, we’re set to release some new stuff like a remix for Taiwan MC coming out in September for French label Chinese Man Records. We’ve just finished a deep remix for Epi with Coppa and MC Kwality coming out on Nomad Records. We’re working on many different projects, from garage vibes, dancehall and jungle flavoured tunes to a fresh dubby EP on Moonshine Records. So we’re on track to keep things moving forward!