Despite only a few releases to their name, Vibraphone Records made quite the impact on the 90’s dance scene and helped to shape the way we view deep house music now. The label was created in 1992 and lasted just seven releases over a two-year period, before vanishing without trace. Inspired by a new found cult following, 2015 saw the label resurrect itself for a series of reissues, starting with the Bermuda Triangle Compilation. Minimal Vision is another project by The True Underground Sound of Rome and looks to explore the concepts of minimalism applied to deep house music. September 2016 marks the reissue of the second of the two Minimal Vision records, and YoungOnes were lucky enough to hear from Stefano Curti himself, who told us all about it.
Firstly, thank you very much for taking your time to talk to YoungOnesUK. Minimal Vision II originally came out in 1993, could you tell us a bit about the history of the record?
This record was partially produced in my home studio in Crouch End, North London (I used to leave there back then), and partially in Rome in Mauro Tannino’s (another member of TTUSOR) home studio.
How popular was the record at its time of release?
There was a track from this record that was quite popular back then called ‘Vertigo’. This was because Mr. C picked it up for a compilation called ‘X-Mix: The Electronic Storm’ and also made a video. But the record, respect and popularity grew retroactively, as often happened with our releases.
There are three previously unreleased tracks on the new record. Could you tell us a bit about them and why you chose them specifically?
‘Once Upon a Time in Labaro’ is a new track that I wrote in 2015 and we decided to add it as a bonus track. Labaro is the name of the district where we had our home studio in Rome back in the days. ‘Satellite’ is a very rare, previously unreleased track from 1995. ‘Ghost Submarine’ is a track we did in 1996 for my dear friend Tony Thorpe for his label Language Records, featuring on a compilation called ‘Miscellaneous The 2nd’, but was never released on Vibraphone.
How come Vibraphone has waited so long to reissue their back catalogue?
Well…life you know…we all went our different ways, doing different things to pay the bills as Vibraphone was not making that much money…and honestly I was not aware of the huge respect and cult status the label had reached until a couple of years ago when my friend Stefano Di Carlo informed me and so we felt it was the right time to do it and also felt a new revitalized energy and desire to also write some new material.
Is it to possibly coincide with a recent increase in interest in early Italian house records? I know that recently, labels like Flash Forward have sprung and have been reissuing some of the great UMM and Mystic Records releases?
To be honest we were not aware of this new trend and it was more of a coincidence. I spoke with a friend of mine in Sweden and he told me to contact Juno Records because he thought they would be interested in re-launching the label.
Lastly, I read last year when the Bermuda Triangle reissue came out that a collector's item box set was in the pipeline? Is this true and if so can we expect to see it any time soon?
Yes, we are thinking about making a CD box set that will include all of our 90’s catalogue, but I don’t know exactly when...possibly in 2018. At the moment we are working on some more re-issues of our 90’s catalogue and also working on a new double album of all new material. This project will explore new ambient/drone orientated territories. We are also producing some new artists.
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Words by Tom G