For the past decade Italian songwriter-producer Dario Faini has been on a mission to keep us on the edge of our seats with the chameleonlike sound of his solo-project Dardust (portmanteau of Dario and Stardust). Consisting of 6 albums, 500 million streams, epic stage shows with 50-piece orchestras, sync-deals with Apple and Hyundai, and commissions with luxury brands such as Krug, Vanity Fair, and Maserati, his body of work merging neo-classical piano with contemporary electronica is a secret rendezvous between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Moby in a parallel universe. His latest album ‘Urban Impressionism’ is out on 8 November via Artist First / Sony Music Masterworks.

Born and bred in a small village of Ascoli Piceno in the eastern region of Marche, Dardust’s childhood was pervaded by one particular emotion. “I grew up with this feeling of alienation, totally like an outsider,” he describes. “So, I tried to compensate this alienation by colouring my reality with music and imagining a lot of things happening outside in this world.” Inspired by his older sister, piano lessons became Dardust’s first musical outlet. “I began to study classical piano with this old fashioned teacher who was very strict, very disciplined.” A few years later Dardust entered the conservatory where he studied classical piano for the next 8 years. It was around this time when Dardust found his kindred spirit. “I stumbled across an image of David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust in a music magazine, this kind of alien with red hair and different coloured eyes,” he exclaims. “I was totally bewitched by him.” What this encounter led to was more than just the discovery of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, though. “David Bowie represented the door to electronic artists like Brian Eno, Chemical Brothers, Kraftwerk, and Underworld. My roots are there.” After his father bought him Novation Bass Station, Dardust gained freedom to move between two worlds: the one of demanding classical piano repertoire, and the other one of minimal sound of single chords. This sense of liberation is evident on Dardust’s album ‘7’ (2015), a life-affirming debut where Yann Tiersen-style piano arpeggios, Renaissance-era rolling basslines, and symphonic post-rock swells akin to Sigur Rós make an aesthetically coherent and pleasing whole. Inspired by his degree in psychology and the theory of musical listening, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats soon became Dardust’s mission in music. “I was always fascinated by the expectations that you can create musically – and that you can absolutely not fulfil them,” he states. “It creates a lot of different colours and elements of surprise.” Introducing an element of danger into his music had a major appeal to Dardust. “To enter a new zone and feel you’re in danger – this is the perfect place to be, this is exactly what I want to create with my music every time.” This danger zone with its sudden seismic moments extended from Dardust’s music to his personal life in tragic ways. In 2018 his home was reduced to rubble after being hit by an earthquake. “It was the place of my teenage life, the place of my childhood, so to see all my past crumbling, the cradle of my imagination of my creativity was totally lost in that moment, it made me feel like I was without a shelter, without anything.”

The aftershock that followed Dardust’s majestic sophomore record ‘Storm and Drugs’ (2018) was infinitely worse. ”Around the same time I lost my father. ‘Storm and Drugs’ was at the start of his illness,” he says gently. “It was the beginning of a very dark period.”

That Dardust’s life experiences have made his music so visceral and immediate comes as no surprise. “On every album, there is a cathartic aspect,” he points out. “It’s designed to get you into a very dark zone where you can experience the grief of losing everything, being in a storm without a shelter,” he explains. “But at the same time in every piece I’ve written there is a luminous horizon of hope. Because we have to survive.”

The cathartic quality is created with stark musical contrasts, one of Dardust’s trademark. Take ‘Duality’ (2022), a mercurial album divided in two distinct halves: the first one of vocoder-driven Italo-Disco, soulful UK Garage, and dirty French House followed by introspective pieces on solo piano, an artistic statement revealing Dardust’s resistance to labels. “I don’t like to be put in a box. I don’t want to be pure in music,” he states. “I’m always looking for something that surprises me. I want to explore different worlds.”

Dardust’s take on collaborations follows the same logic. “The biggest challenge is to do something disruptive,” he encapsulates his approach. ”When I worked with the French rapper Stromae for Notte della Taranta, I wanted to introduce him to pizzica [Puglian folk music]. It was something totally new for him, and for me too.”

Exactly how versatile an artist Dardust is becomes obvious when reading through his long list of projects ranging from commissions for luxury brands such as Krug, Vanity Fair, and Maserati to collaborations with high-profile artists – Benny Benassi, Mahmood, Sophie and the Giants, to name a few – not to mention film scores. The latest of them, ‘Mani Nude’, will be screened at the19th Rome Festival on 23 October. “I was exploring a lot of new sounds with Minimoog and Moog One, merging analogue and digital with the world of contemporary classical and Bulgarian music. It was really intense work.” These collaborations have made Dardust one of the most successful producers in Italy, yet another unexpected event in his life, “a beautiful accident”, as he calls it. “I didn’t want to become like this. I wanted to explore my music.” Fame and fortune did come with a big price tag, however.

“I had this big burnout because I felt a lot of pressure coming from everyone who wanted to work with me. But at certain point of my career as a producer I said: No. Stop.” Learning to set better boundaries and exercising restraint in his life go a long way in explaining why Dardust thinks his upcoming album ‘Urban Impressionism’ “could be a sign of maturity”.

Entirely void of contrasts and danger, Dardust’s ascetic yet picturesque piano-driven album with careful use of electronics is reminiscent of some of the most memorable moments by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Toshifumi Hinata. A paean for wanderlust inspired by the Brutalist architecture of Parisian bleak suburbs, written in the Latin Quarter and Germano Studios in New York, traveling played a pivotal role during his creative process. Dardust compares it to a psychological phenomenon between a client and a psychotherapist knowns as transference. “Every place where I decide to go, it’s something very inspirational because the history of the place,” he says. “You can project your inner world onto this new place and that place will project back a new perspective. Much like his childhood idol, Dardust drew his creative power for ‘Urban Expressionism’ from the entire universe. Prior to the process, he was advised by his astrologer that a solar return could have potentially disastrous impact. “He told me Saturn is against me,” he recalls. “And because of that, I could have two very bad years ahead of me.” In order to mitigate this, Dardust scheduled additional stays in Quebec and New York to work on the album. What the future has in store for this man, no one knows. We can only wait in anticipation – and awe.