A video of the Italian duo huffing cigarettes and pouring aperitifs on a Mediterranean balcony might have gone viral – but there’s nothing slapdash about their blissful electro evocations of la dolce vita
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ven if you’ve never heard Mind Enterprises’ music, there’s a good chance you will have seen them. A clip of the neo-Italo disco duo standing behind a pair of decks on a balcony in a Mediterranean city, casually pouring themselves big glasses of Campari and blowing luscious smoke rings, has become a widely shared meme on social media over the last 12 months. Its message feels like an inversion of the “This is fine” cartoon dog: the world might be on fire, but in Europe we still have la dolce vita and, actually, that is fine.
Yet, when Mind Enterprises embarked on an 18-date North American tour at the start of this year, they had to fight to take their hedonistic hallmarks with them. “It’s been our daily diplomatic battle: every concert we’ve done, we always had to argue and discuss with the local production crew because they didn’t want to let us smoke. In some cases, they don’t even want to let us drink, and bottles are not allowed on stage,” Andrea Tirone tells me over a video call from his Barcelona apartment, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with his creative partner, Roberto Conigliaro.
