Soler

D: Our father was an Italian sculptor and also taught at an art academy in Pisa. In 1936, a company hired him to do quality control for some marble constructions in Shanghai, and a couple of years later he moved to Hong Kong. On a trip to Macau, he fell in love with the place, so he settled down and started his own company there. During the 60s, he met our mother, who’s from Myanmar.

J: Childhood in Macau was wonderful, very idyllic—everyone is happy there. We were always hanging out on the beach or playing football, having a blast.

D: We went to a Catholic school together. I’d say we were good boys, but not necessarily model students. Our focus back then was mainly sports. And when we turned 13 or 14, that focus shifted to music. It’s something we became very passionate about, but we didn’t think about doing it as a profession.

J: Our earliest musical influence is probably Italian music. We used to live with our older half-brother, and every year he’d receive a lot of music albums from Italy as birthday gifts. He was the only one in the house who had a stereo, so we’d go into his room and put on his music.

J: We left Macau in 1989, when we were 17. We spent a year in Italy at a youth center.

D: After that we went separate ways but stayed in Tuscany. I chose to continue [in] the academic direction and studied literature. And Julio studied graphic design and worked as a designer after college.

D: As I saw it, as a humanities student in Italy, the future was rather bleak for me. So half way through college, when Julio asked me if I wanted to take music seriously, I jumped right in—on one condition: that we had to make music together. I had performed with some Italian bands before and could’ve kept it that way, but I declined the offers.

J: We first got signed to EMI Italy in 1995. After two years nothing came from it... It took us years to get another record deal.