Exclusive: Interview with DIMATIK
If you're into electronic music, you've probably come across the artist Dimatik- but who is Dimatik? We wanted to know so we called him to find out! Dimatik, Domenico Pergoleto, was born and raised in south Adelaide Australia, and is continuing his DOMination (see what we did there) as he makes his way to becoming an EDM household name. We were first introduced to Dimatik when he released his track "Punjabi" with Timmy Trumpet on KSHMR's label Dharma Worldwide. We wanted to know who was making this fusion banger!
Dimatik's first memory of wanting to become a music artist started around the age of 17. He would go to events and notice that DJs weren't really working the crowds.
"I would go to these events and the DJs would be playing the totally wrong thing and they weren't vibing at all. I thought to myself how hard is it to play tracks that people like, that people can sing to and want to dance to and from there I just started"
Before he even finished school he was playing clubs and was underage. Balancing his DJ life and going to school was definitely not the life of your typical student. From there he continued to play shows and at 21 he deiced he really wanted to pursue music full time.
"I didn't want to do private functions anymore. I wanted to produce and people around me were like nah, don't bother man it's too hard there's too many producers out there and its too hard to make it. I was like- well why can't I be one of those dudes that makes it? I can set my goals and started."
Dom talked about how starting off was a struggle because he didn't have a solid musical background, but that didn't stop him. He grew his craft and drew inspiration from artist like Afrojack.
"You're pretty limited if your just a DJ and making a few mash up and mix tapes here and there I didn't have a musical background, but I had these strong melodies in my head. It was a struggle. I listened to an interview from Afojack who was a huge inspiration of mine - he just explained how he sings a melody in his head, writes the song in his head and then writes the whole track out in a couple of hours. I was like that's impossible, how can you do that? Back then it would take me months to structure an original song, but now I can do just that."
We asked Dom what he felt was the moment that changed his career.
"The big moment for me was playing HQ, it was a goal of mine to play there and after that I got signed to agencies and had a few more gigs around Australia. The actual promoter from HQ asked me to remix one of his originals. He had this track from Monik & Carroch and we ended up working on it. I took a month or so to work on the track and the first month or so it did absolutely nothing. It was like10-20 thousand plays. Then like a year later I got tagged in a video and Tietsto was playing it, Afrojack was playing and Eddie Van Buuren. I think someone must have heard it and thought, 'this is cool' and it just snowballed from there. A lot of the following has come from that track.
If you all didn't know the name Dimatik comes from his actual name Domenico with an addition of "Matik"- which translates to "self willing."
Since his track Punjabi was the song that really grabbed our attention. We asked Dom about how he got into incorporating the South-Asian Indian sound.
"I used to write these trancy ethnic type breakdown with really nice violins , strings and
flutes. Too be honest, at the time, I couldn't execute them enough when I first started producing. I didn't want to attempt something and fail at all. I had all these ideas, but I just waited to make sure they were good quality. Once KSHMR started releasing that sounds as well and I could see people were going crazy over it - it gave me a little more confidence to push those original ideas that I wanted. 'Giratina' was the one that really stated it and from there I continued with to push out my ideas. I started bringing them to life and I still have like 3 or 4 of them that I'll be releasing soon."
When going into the arts, it can be a difficult career choice and even more difficult to tell your family and friends that you want to pursue it full time. We asked Dom to talk about his personal experience with his family and if he has any advice for young artist just starting off.
"I didn't want to be in any family or friend businesses, which is very typical in my community. In the beginning it was like 'you're doing this as a teenager and its was fun or whatever, but when are you going to get a nine to five job.' I told everyone I wanted to travel around the world, but people would tell me that's not a real job - but I knew there was more to it. If you're not in the entertainment industry you're not going to understand it. Honestly, I don't think they really understood until it recently started shifting. Now they'll hit me up and say "Hey your song is playing at this store and your tracks playing in the gym. So they see it happening and they get it now and are supportive."
"I choose to ignore a lot of people that got me down. When people are starting off they often have their families ripping into them and I always say you gotta ignore it and when the time is right go for it. You just have to say, 'I understand what you are saying, but this is what I'm doing and I'm happy doing it. I even had old school teachers that I would talk to. When I would tell them I wanted to be a DJ they would be like yeah that's cool, but you might want to get more realistic and now I notice some of those teachers are on my fan page liking my videos."
Whats next for you?
"I'm going to Malaysia and playing a show with KSHMR on New Years Eve which is really exciting. In between I'm trying to finish new tracks. I have my own label and I'm not the biggest believer in waiting 10 months to release one track. For the bigger labels yeah sure, but if a track that needs to come out right now it won't be as current in 6 months so I put it out when I want to. I have 13 other tracks that need to be finished and I'm planning on dropping them consistently. Other than that I'm going to be touring and playing shows around Australia.
Make sure you check out all of Dimatik's newest release "SHIVA"!
Instagram: @dimatikmusic
Twitter: @dimatikmusic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dimatik/
