GIANLUCA PIGHI

Being brought up listening to his father's vast soul and jazz-funk record collection must have had some kind of influence on Gianluca Pighi; since then, his destiny has been cast - a life of music, music and more music...
At the age of 15 he sneaked into his older cousin's pirate radio station armed with some of his favourite vinyl and began to learn the art of broadcasting, playing funk classics, hip-hop and 80's soul. Soon, he would play at street parties around his area. The first "paid" gigs followed suit and the game changed. This enabled him to feed his "record collecting addiction" that would take him to Milan at least once or twice a month; "Getting hold of records back then wasn't easy, sometimes it would even end up in fist-fights", he says laughing. At that point his DJ career took off and Gianluca played at various residencies including clubs such as Avila and Masero which gave him huge exposure. He also tried his hand at promoting and managing club nights where he worked alongside the likes of Pasta Boys, Claudio Coccoluto, Ricky Montanari, Ivan Iacobucci and Luca Trevisi. Pighi's sets began to earn him a very strong reputation which saw him spin at legendary club Mazoom, opening up for luminaries such as David Morales, Frankie Knuckles, Tony Humphries, Derrick Carter, Louie Vega, Harvey and Joe Claussell - since then he has never turned back and still to this day he keeps on shaking up the floors with a high-quality mixture of sounds.
With his profound love of music it was inevitable that Gianluca Pighi would also carve out a very strong career in the recording studio. Over the years there have been many productions released on some global leading labels getting props from Francois K, Kenny Dope, Anthony Nicholson and many others. Through the years Gianluca has worked with icons like Robert Owens and Frankie Knuckles as well.
Today he can be seen mastering and engineering some of the biggest and the best productions coming out of Italy.
Flash forward to 2016: his own label Mint Condition Records is causing quite a stir with some brilliant new releases and cool tunes aplenty in the pipeline.
Gianluca Pighi is a firm believer in quality and this is something that he shows majestically whether working as a DJ (his 5-year tenancy at QI, where he threw parties with the likes of Nic Fanciulli, Kenny Carpenter, DJ Sneak and Phil Weeks is still the talk of the town), producing his own material, or working in the studio with other artists - if it's not good, then it's not for him.
His productions for Makin' Moves with his sidekick Massimo Paramour have all gained the top 10 spot in the soulful house chart. "Babalawo", as well as his collaborations with Kenny Bobien and Polina Griffiths, are other remarkable achievements.
His main focus is Mint Condition Records now. It's a long-term project Gianluca is putting all he's got into it. The main aim is producing and distributing Mint sounding and Mint quality records. The road is long, but the guy is on fire!