Crookers Interview

An Italian DJ and producer, Francesco Barbaglia is the founding and last-standing member of Crookers, who has achieved chart success, club notoriety and the ability to push genres beyond anything we can perceive. Not only is he one of the most respected producers in Europe, he’s also hilarious, as we discovered when we chatted to him about holidays, his new album, and talking bullshit…

A rare occasion for Crookers, he is actually on holiday when we speak with him, somewhere “between Africa, Portugal and Spain.” (We discover later on that he has trouble keeping up with where he’s been and where he’s going, when he describes a set he just came back from, but doesn’t remember the location.)

As well as chatting to us, Crookers is spending his holiday “doing all of nothing. Reading books, swimming, eating amazing food and a lot of sexy time!” We can already tell that this is going to be a lot of fun.

“I don’t have time for myself during the year; when I’m not travelling for the tour, I’m straight back in the studio doing production for Crookers or other people, I’m always busy, busy, busy. I love it a lot, and when I stop it gets really mad for me. I’m not used to being quiet! I never have a lot of free time – even today, you see!”

Crookers has just released his new album ‘Sixteen Chapel’, which features his huge single with Dilligas, ‘Picture This’. A producer most synonymous with combining electronic music with hip hop (he is the man that brought us the chart smash remix of Kid Cudi’s ‘Day ‘n’ Nite’), Crookers is time-travelling for this new record.

“The sound that I’m doing for this album is mostly from my old hard drive. One night I was listening to it, pretty drunk, and I was like, “Oh, wow!” So I was trying to remake what I was doing more than 10 years ago, improving the technology and modernising it so it sounds way better. I’ve always been a hip hop guy, and in the same way that you take old samples, I took ideas from my old music because write now the music industry is everywhere, there’s not a genre anymore, everyone is making everything, and a producer can make any type of music. So I thought about concentrating on what I used to do, that original Crookers sound, without trying to jump between one hundred genres. My album sounds a little house and a little bit bonkers – super Crookers!

He compares it to his debut ‘Tons of Friends’, which featured the likes of will.i.am, Pitbull and Kelis.

“‘Sixteen Chapel’ is much earlier stuff, even earlier than ‘Tons of Friends’. It’s much more dense and groovy!”

With the big names that he works with and the people in the industry that he can call friends, we’re intrigued as to who he has collaborated with. He speaks highly of R ‘n’ B singer, Jeremih, as well as producer Zombie Nation, who he describes as “one of the least bullshit guys and the best human being in this fucking world”. He also has Mr MFN eXquire on the track, ‘Belly Button Tickler’, who inspired the name of the album.

“It is the most common error that Americans do when they come to Rome: they say Sixteen Chapel for Sistine Chapel, which is not right, but is really funny. And he actually did the same error in the track we did together and he noticed, wanted to do it again, and I said “No, no, let’s keep it” and that’s why it’s called ‘Sixteen Chapel’. It’s fun.

The album has dropped on OneLove in Australia, whom he expresses several times that he “loves” and then starts to giggle. When Crookers isn’t making records, he’s playing them live at big and intimate clubs, but he will be making his way to Australia to play at the country’s biggest touring festival.

“I can’t wait to be at Stereosonic this year.”

And what can you all expect from his set?

“I’m not going to be playing naked, for sure, I’ll try to dress myself, other than that, I have no idea; I will play records and try to get people mad. I used to play a lot of different music, but now I’m tempted to just play my stuff. I just did a set – I can’t remember where – it was five hours and I just played my music from 1998 to now. It’s been really, really, really fun. I played a lot of Italian hip hop because I used to do a lot of that shit, and it was going bananas, it was going mortadella! You say it was going bananas, we say it was going mortadella – like the sausage. And now I want to eat some Mortadella! It is unbelievable how effecting food is in my life…”

He continues…

“Food is the biggest inspiration of my music, the most. I cannot wait to do an album sampling just foodstuff. If you can find the right way to sample music, like sample a pizza, how can you sample a pizza? If it’s a spicy pizza, you can sample the hurt in the toilet the next day, the “aarrrrgggghhhh!”. I’m sorry, I take it too far.”

So can we expect his next release to sample Italian cuisine?

“From my album you can expect all the bullshit I’m saying right now, plus more.”

We look forward to it, Crookers.

You can catch Crookers at Stereosonic, where he will be playing five cities from 29th November – 7th December.

Check out the awesome video to Crookers featuring Dilligas ‘Picture This’

By Charlotte Mellor