Touch Sensitive throws a Curve Ball
The music element of Vivid Sydney uses venues across the city. Supplied
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It is billed as “the warehouse party of the year” featuring acclaimed dance music artists and a light show in a standout industrial setting at Sydney’s Carriageworks.
The line-up for this year’s Curve Ball includes Touch Sensitive, whose track Pizza Guy, has had international recognition in advertising campaigns for Telekom in Germany and others in the UK, where it was the most "Shazamed" song for a period and charted on iTunes.
“It goes to show how powerful it can be when your music is part of a commercial,” says Michael Di Francesco, aka Touch Sensitive.
“It can showcase it to an audience that may not have heard it before. There was a period where it was used in commercials all the time and I’d get messages from friends saying they had heard it.”
Curve Ball is now in its fourth year as part of Vivid Sydney’s music line-up, which activates venues all over the city from the Sydney Opera House to the City Recital Hall to smaller pubs and clubs. As well as Touch Sensitive, this year’s Curve Ball features Hayden James, Mallrat, Set Mo, Young Franco, Cassian and more.
The show on Saturday, June 8 stars Touch Sensitive’s full band, which includes him on decks and bass guitar, as well as a vocalist, drummer and a keyboard player. Di Francesco says he is delighted to be playing with the other artists on the bill, who are his friends. That extends to Fuzzy, the event’s promoters, with whom Di Francesco also has a long relationship.
“I used to go to their parties when I had just turned 18 and started going clubbing,” he says. “They used to run a club night at [former nightclub, Sydney’s] Sublime. Eventually, I got to work with them and play at the parties. So that's cool.”
Di Francesco says planning for an event like this depends on the size of the room and the scale of the event. “It's always a work in progress. Each time I do a show I try to make it different; it always ends up being more work than I originally anticipated. It could always be better, so it's always evolving and changing.”
There are plenty of commercial considerations that go into being an artist who travels the world. Touch Sensitive is signed to the seminal Australian dance music label Future Classic, with which he has been working for two decades.
Stablemates include Nick Murphy, formerly known as Chet Faker. Di Francesco is presently based at Future Classic’s Los Angeles office, and he plans on working in the US for the remainder of 2019.
Di Francesco has some advice for up-and-coming artists when navigating the business side of the music industry.
“If you make $1000, you don't make a $1000. You make about $700 after you’ve paid outgoings. Suddenly having money can be a trap if you’re not used to earning much from your music and you’re not aware of the commercial side of it.
“You can't have your head in the clouds and just do what you do. You are a business and you have to be responsible. The art itself is important but it's essential to have a business mindset, too.”