The Roman producer spent a decade making music in private. Now, as a nurse working in prisons and hospitals, she’s channeling what she’s witnessed into deeply human electronic music. There’s a particular kind of electronic music that exists not to help you escape, but to make you feel more present—more aware of the weight of a moment, the texture of memory, the way a room sounds when someone is trying to hold themselves together. DominiNiobe makes that kind of music.

For ten years, the Rome-based producer made tracks solely for herself, a private practice of translating feeling into sound. By day, she works as a nurse in hospitals and correctional facilities—spaces where silence carries meaning, where every sound registers differently. By night, she sits with FL Studio and lets those experiences settle into basslines and dissolving frequencies. Her recent track “I’m Not Afraid,“ released across Deep Strips Rec, Impure, and Proton SoundSystem, established her as someone working in the overlap between deep house warmth and Northern European techno’s introspective chill—what she calls “cinematic techno.”

In this interview, she opened up about the ethics of transforming other people’s pain into art, why AI-generated music only makes her want to go deeper emotionally, and what it means to score memories instead of films. What emerged was a conversation about presence, silence, and making dance music that asks you to stay with yourself rather than lose yourself—a rare thing in a genre built on escape.

Hi Domini, it’s a real pleasure to speak with you! You make all your tracks in FL Studio, which is interesting because there’s still this weird snobbery around it in electronic music circles. People act like you need Ableton or hardware to be “serious.” Does using FL Studio actually work better for you because it’s more intuitive, less academic? Like, when you sit down to make a track, are you thinking about music theory at all, or are you just trying to capture a feeling and FL lets you do that without overthinking it?

I’ve been using FL Studio for many years because it feels natural to me. It’s not about theory or structure — it’s about immediacy. The interface lets me translate an emotion into sound before it fades. I don’t start from scales or grids, I start from a feeling, an image, or even a sound I’ve heard during a night shift. FL Studio gives me the freedom to follow emotion before overthinking it.

“I’m Not Afraid” came out on three different labels at once—DeepStripsRec, Impure, and Proton SoundSystem. That doesn’t happen often. Usually a track belongs to one label, one vibe, one audience. Was that multi-label thing planned from the start, or did the track just turn out to be something that worked in different contexts? And now when you’re making new stuff, does that change how you approach it—like, are you thinking “this could work here or there,” or does that kind of thinking mess with the creative flow?

The journey of I’m Not Afraid happened very organically. Deep Strips Rec and Impure belong to the same family but express different moods — Deep Strips has a deeper, club-driven identity, while Impure is more introspective and atmospheric. The track simply lived in between those two worlds. Proton, on the other hand, is the platform that connects and distributes this kind of curated sound globally. So it wasn’t a strategy — it was just a track that resonated in more than one space. To me, that means it carried a feeling broad enough to reach different audiences without losing itself.

Deep house is usually about escapism, right? It’s about getting lost on a dancefloor, forgetting your problems for a few hours. But your music comes from working with people who literally can’t escape—people in prison, people dealing with addiction. The same genre, but the emotional purpose feels completely different. Using those warm basslines and grooves not to help people escape, but maybe to help them stay present, to reconnect with themselves? Does that ever feel weird, like you’re working against what the genre is supposed to do?

For many people, deep house is about escape — losing yourself on a dance floor. For me, it’s the opposite: it’s about presence. I’ve spent time with people who can’t escape — patients, inmates, people in recovery — and I’ve learned that the deepest movement often happens inside. My music isn’t about forgetting, it’s about reconnecting. I want the rhythm to bring you back to yourself, not away from it.

You talk about transforming people’s stories—things you witnessed in prisons and hospitals—into music. That’s powerful, but it also feels like it could be tricky territory. There’s a fine line between honoring someone’s experience and exploiting it. How do you figure out what’s okay to translate into sound? Like, when you’re working on a track and drawing from something heavy you experienced at work, how do you know you’re doing it right? Is there a gut check that tells you when you’ve crossed a line?

I never consciously decide to turn something into music. It happens when an experience stays inside me like an echo — long after it’s over. I don’t bring other people’s stories into sound; I bring what they made me feel. Music comes when pain stops being a wound and turns into understanding. Sometimes that moment never comes — and that’s okay. Silence can be a form of respect too. It’s the kind of music that doesn’t need to be written.

You call your sound “cinematic techno,” which makes sense when you listen to it. There’s this visual quality, like each track is scoring a scene. But you’re not actually working with film—you’re scoring memories, experiences, moments from your nursing work that stuck with you. Do you listen to a lot of film scores and soundtracks? And have you ever thought about actually collaborating with filmmakers, or would that change what you’re trying to do?

I call my sound cinematic techno because every track feels like an internal scene. I love composers like Max Richter or Ben Frost — people who work with emotion and space. I don’t score films; I score memories. Every melody comes from something that still echoes in me. I’d love to collaborate with filmmakers one day, but only if I can keep that freedom — where sound doesn’t describe, it suggests.

Rome isn’t exactly Berlin or London when it comes to electronic music visibility. Italy has this amazing history with dance music—Giorgio Moroder, Italo disco—but your sound feels more aligned with that melancholic Northern European techno vibe. Do you feel connected to the Italian electronic music tradition at all, or are you doing your own thing? 

Rome isn’t Berlin or London, but it’s full of contrasts — sacred and chaotic, bright and heavy — and that shapes my sound. Italy has a strong electronic heritage, but my direction feels closer to the Northern European aesthetic: colder, minimal, introspective. Still, I carry something Mediterranean inside — warmth, emotion — so maybe my sound is a meeting point between those two worlds.

We’re in 2025, and AI can now generate pretty convincing electronic music from text prompts. There’s this growing conversation about what makes music valuable when anyone can generate something that sounds “professional” in seconds. But your music comes from such a specific place—years of nursing, real human experiences that shaped you. Does the AI music thing affect how you think about your work? Like, does it make you feel more confident that what you’re doing has value because it’s coming from lived experience? Or is it just background noise and you don’t really think about it?

AI can now generate technically perfect music, and that’s fascinating — but it reminds me why human experience still matters. My tracks come from real moments: from exhaustion, compassion, or silence. That kind of origin can’t be replicated. In a strange way, AI motivates me to go deeper emotionally, because that’s where authenticity begins — not in perfection, but in presence.

Techno can be really dense—every frequency filled, constant energy. But you’ve spent time in spaces where silence is heavy and meaningful. Hospital rooms, prison cells. How do you make emptiness feel intentional rather than like something’s missing?

Silence, to me, is a form of rhythm. Working in hospitals taught me that silence can be heavier than sound. I use space intentionally — long reverbs, dissolving frequencies, pauses that breathe. Emptiness isn’t absence; it’s the part of the track where the listener can enter. It gives meaning to what remains.

You describe your music as suspended between melancholy and release, which suggests you’re not really doing the typical build-drop-payoff structure that most dance music relies on. You’re keeping things more ambiguous, more open-ended. Do you ever feel pressure to give listeners that cathartic drop, or are you finding ways to create energy and movement without the obvious payoff? 

I don’t feel the need to create a typical drop or payoff. I’m more interested in building tension that never fully resolves — because that’s how life works. My music moves in circles, not straight lines. The energy comes from subtle motion, from details that slowly evolve. I want listeners to stay suspended inside the movement, not waiting for an explosion that never comes.

You released “I’m Not Afraid” in 2025, and it clearly established your sound—that blend of deep house, chill, and cinematic techno. But no artist wants to make the same track twice. The interesting part of following someone’s work is hearing how they evolve, what new obsessions creep in, what directions they didn’t expect to go. What’s actually happening in your studio right now? Not the promotional answer—what sounds or ideas are you genuinely excited about for your next releases? 

Right now I’m exploring a more physical side of my sound — still emotional, but more tactile. I’m recording real ambient samples: doors, footsteps, hospital monitors — and turning them into rhythmic textures. I want to merge the organic and the synthetic, as if the heartbeat and the kick drum were part of the same body. My goal is to make techno more human — to let it breathe, tremble, and feel alive.

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