Musicians from Napoli usually choose one of two paths: either they become part of their city’s noise, or they leave. Iuliano chose a third option—he left for Malaysia and Thailand, spent years producing other people’s music, then came back with an album that sounds like he understood something important about restraint.

The Place comes out in the first quarter of 2026, and it’s the result of a classic formula: breakup plus pandemic. But Iuliano, a Berklee College of Music graduate with an Independent Music Award from 2019, approaches this material differently. He’s interested in the difference between how a person suffers and how a producer works. The first one feels, the second comes later and makes the sound coherent.

In the conversation he quotes Sorrentino, talks about frequencies and eighty-eight piano keys, explains why his classmates would write six pages and feel proud of it, while he fit into less. And why Jeff Buckley managed to make only one album, but that turned out to be enough. Quality over quantity—a formula that sounds almost radical now.

Thanks for taking the time to chat with me. You say that music followed you, not the other way around. But when you were producing for other artists in Asia—was that running away from yourself, or, conversely, a way to understand what exactly you needed to say?

For me, music shifts meaning over time. It’s a variable. There are moments when I’m a performer, others when I’m a producer, others when I’m just a listener. And sometimes I’m none of them at all. I don’t force it—it follows me.

Napoli is a city where emotions aren’t hidden but put on display. How does this principle of total emotional honesty work in music that sounds so restrained and minimalistic?

The idea that honesty needs volume reminds me of school. I had classmates who’d write five or six pages and feel proud of it. I’d write much less and still get to the point. Truth isn’t in length—it can live in three words or in thirty. Napoli understands that too. It’s the city of Sorrentino as much as it is of noise. Restraint can be deeply honest.

The Place is a studio and simultaneously a community space. I’m curious: when you’re creating something so personal, how does the presence of other people in the same physical space hinder or help?

First of all, The Place isn’t a studio, it’s an album. But it really depends on the phase you’re in. There are moments when I need to be alone, and I stay home and work there. Other times, when creativity really hits, you get so immersed that you don’t even perceive the people around you.

You caught the moment when Berklee was still preparing musicians for the traditional industry, and now, when the whole system has collapsed. What from what they taught you turned out to be bullshit, and what was unexpectedly useful?

I don’t really see a collapse. An instrument is still an instrument—a piano still has eighty-eight keys, and for a producer, frequencies are still the same ones we hear. What changes is the technology, not the craft. What Berklee gave me has always mattered, especially the ability to understand when something works, and when it doesn’t—and when you might actually want it not to.

Jeff Buckley died at 30 without making a second album. After years of searching and producing for others, do you feel like you’ve found what he was looking for, or is The Place still part of that same ongoing search?

There’s never a point where you can say your search is over. Albums are just pictures of the moment you’re living. In Buckley’s case, his life was short, but what he left is extraordinary. Quality matters more than quantity. The Place is simply a snapshot of where I am, not an arrival point.

A breakup and COVID—that’s the classic narrative for a 2020s album. But you have years of working with other people’s material behind you. How did that change the way you approached your own pain—do you look at it as a producer or as a person?

A person suffers. A producer doesn’t. The producer just comes later and tries to make the sound coherent with what needs to be said.

“Who Knows” got comparisons to indie-pop and alternative rock, but critics clearly struggled to categorize you. Is existing between genres a deliberate artistic position, or more of an unintended consequence of following your instincts?

I follow instinct. An instinct formed by years of listening, studying, playing, and by life itself. I don’t really choose anything. What comes out is just the different things that live inside me.

What’s the last album you listened to that made you think “fuck, I wish I made this”? And did it change anything about what you were working on, or did you just feel jealous for a week?

I’m a listener first. When I hear an album I love, I don’t feel any kind of jealousy. That music could never be mine—it belongs to the person who made it. I just feel grateful, and I keep listening to it over and over. Listening means letting someone else’s emotions pass through you. That’s where music starts for me.

You’re creating music for people who value “presence, sound, and artistic integrity above trends and speed.” That sounds beautiful, but let’s be honest—how many of those people are left, and are there enough of them for you to keep doing what you do?

People choose how to spend their time. Some go deeper into music, others don’t, and that’s completely fine. No one can judge that. I’m responsible for what I do and how I do it, but I have no control over where it ends up. I do the work and let it go where it goes. Of course, I hope there will always be enough listeners for me.

You went from Napoli to Malaysia to Thailand, then back to making deeply personal music. Do you think physical displacement was necessary for you to hear yourself clearly, or could you have made The Place without leaving in the first place?

I only have one life, and I’m not ubiquitous, so I can’t really answer what would have happened otherwise. I can assume the music would be different, simply because life would have been different. Not because I absorbed local music—I didn’t—but because living somewhere else changes you anyway. So no, it wouldn’t be the same music.

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