For Massano, growth didn’t come with a single track or a viral breakthrough.
It came with time, discipline, and a steady commitment to carving out his own lane—and Natural is the reward for that patience. Having dropped just over six weeks ago, April 25th, via his own label, Simulate, the debut album collects collaborations with CamelPhat, ANYMA, Stephan Bodzin, Rhodes, and Braev while anchoring the bigger message: staying true to yourself matters more than any trend.
In this exclusive feature, we caught up with Massano to talk about artistic voice, musical restraint, and what success really looks like once you’re in the thick of it.
When did you start to feel like you actually had your own voice—and how did that change the way you worked?
I kind of only started to feel I had my own voice when people started to tell me how much they thought I’d done something a bit different in the melodic techno scene.
But then it’s tricky because I felt I was a little bit of a trend setter at first, but then the thing with trends is that people follow them, so I have felt in the last couple years I’ve had to try and experiment more and more to stay ahead of the trends. It sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but I always just stay true to myself and make the music I enjoy making, with just a rough idea of what I want in mind when starting a track.
What’s something you used to force in your music that you’ve since let go of?
I used to try and force a million ideas into every track thinking that just because they were all good ideas, they all needed to be in the tracks.
I’ve now learned to refine this, so although I still make 100 ideas for things like leads in tracks, when I come to arranging them I just keep the strongest 1, 2 or 3 ideas and ditch the rest or save them for the next production.
How do you track your growth when there’s no obvious before-and-after?
We live in a world where it’s very easy to track the before and after.
We are surrounded by numbers which are unavoidable whether you like it or not. Every day you can see how many tickets you are selling compared to last year, how many streams, sales, likes, views or followers you get compared to last year. So whilst these aren’t the most fun ways of tracking growth, the numbers rarely lie.
A more heartwarming way of tracking growth is by measuring how deep the impact you have on people is—how much your songs mean to people, how many people feel driven to reach out and show you their love.
Do you think your music reflects who you are more now than it used to—and if so, what shifted?
I don’t really feel like music reflects who you are as a person, just how you’re feeling in that moment. So my music reflects emotions rather than characteristics.
I have the chaotic 130+bpm tracks that reflect my emotions on the road. The emotional tracks come from more reflective moments, and for the more aggressive, high-energy ones, I’m not actually sure where they come from—I’m not a particularly aggressive or high-energy person…
What helps you stay connected to your own point of view, especially when the outside noise picks up?
I just try to stay connected to the things that were always there from the beginning. My family, my friends, playing football, living in the countryside and most of all my love for producing.
The memories and money made from touring is great, but the lifestyle takes its toll on you mentally and physically for sure. I feel I’m at my best when I’m able to take some time at home for producing. So this is probably the main way I stay true to myself.
No matter how much money I lose from not touring 1 or 2 months, the producing is what got me started and is the thing I love most about being an artist. So I always just try to spend as much time as I can doing the things I love.
The post Forget the Hype—Massano’s Success Comes from Showing Up appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.