Roberto Fa, an Introduction

Music came naturally to me at a young age. It all began in the late 90s, in the summer of Sicily. Here’s where I discovered house and techno through cassette tapes sold at the local market, usually by some Moroccan or Tunisian guy carrying tons of bootlegs (mostly copies), and sometimes originals of the latest dance circulating Europe. I’d collect them, every Monday morning, checking the marketplace meticulously and my collection would grow. Here I am, at probably age 11 or 12 with a stereo at home and a fat collection of electronic music cassettes. Although my stereo had one more feature: it had two slots for cassettes. This blew my mind as a kid. This is where I began experimenting with mixes and also recording mixtapes (copying tracks from cassettes and recording from the radio).

As time moved on, I’d find myself an early adopter of Napster. This is where we were all first introduced to a “peer to peer network” where people had their music collections shareable publicly from their local PCs. Naturally, I’d be poking around different people’s accounts and messaging them for having good taste and making friends. And through here, I began wondering, where did all of this music come from? How did it arrive here? This is where it led to me discover IRC networks, through friends on Napster’s network. On IRC I would find communities, or “channels” (chat rooms) on networks you’d connect through mIRC or some other custom IRC client. Here is where I found music communities like the channel “#gamemp3s”. I started my own channel, #gamemusic. It was essentially a chat hub for people to rip and share original game audio and video game music soundtracks through file servers. We were on the forefront of mp3 file compression and eventually adopted BitTorrent the day it started. We would release music through private FTP servers where it would travel across the Internet and eventually back onto peer to peer networks from our private scene release group.

Meanwhile, during all of this, I collected synthesizers and records. I had experimented with hardware synths on and off, namely Roland and KORG synths, and of course I’d practice on a pair of cd players with a mixer. I’d record things from time to time, but it was mostly all raw energy and just having a good time. I ended up going to art school for college—the Corcoran college of Art + Design in DC. I met a ton of really talented kids in this school, it was a real intimate community with a worldly art vibe. Here’s where I really took mixing seriously—at the peak era of burning discs to play on Pioneer CDJs. Each CD held about 20 or so tracks. There was a lot of music inspired from the early to late ’90s and early ’00s, especially electro and disco house and techno.

I gravitated heavily towards the bloghouse era, an internet community in which was heavily inspired by French house tunes. We’re approaching 2007-8 now, and I’d DJ college parties with the latest electro house coming from NYC, LA, France, and Australia, directly onto the campuses across Virginia, including UVA, Virginia Tech, JMU, and others. I’m talking ragers with hundreds of kids going out of their mind over Daft Punk, Justice, Boys Noize and really anything associated with Ed Banger, DFA, and Turbo Records.

Later on I transferred out of the Corcoran and decided to finish my degree in NYC at the Pratt Institute. Here my music saga continued, I helped throw regular parties with friends in lower Manhattan at a venue named Dominion, and at Cameo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The parties always had a carefully selected lineup of both local and domestic artists. I also contributed as a graphic designer to promote the parties.

It wasn’t til about late 2019 where I started making producing a regular 9-5 structure. To be fair, it’s really a 24 hour continual process of listening, experimenting, and tinkering with my setup. I’d make at least one beat a day and since then I’m now sitting on around 300 or so original tracks I’ve produced (and am somewhat happy with). Lots of material to go through but it’s good to have a stock of instrumentals handy. In sorting out the music I decided to begin releasing through various aliases. I’m keeping them secret but making my main name, Roberto Fa, public.

Immerse yourself into the world of Roberto Fa. You can now listen to a selection of my music on my Soundcloud. I’m slowly putting together my Bandcamp, it’s a work in progress.

Thanks for the interest!