1. How has your summer been so far? What have been your highlights?
It’s been an amazing summer so far, with some really special highlights both personally and musically. Lele got married and travelled across China and Malaysia for his honeymoon, which was obviously a huge moment on the personal side. On the music side, Alex played some sick festivals and shows: Ushuaïa Ibiza and Tomorrowland were definitely magic and two of the biggest highlights of the summer. At the same time, we’ve kept producing a lot of new music and working on our label, Arena Records, with plenty of releases from talented artists who keep sending us great demos. So yeah, it’s been intense in the best possible way
2. How did you both meet and what inspired you to form MARNIK?
We met back in 2013 in the same studios that we actually own today, through a mutual friend. It was probably the biggest period for EDM, and we simply started making some music together and immediately felt that it worked. From there, forming a new project came pretty naturally, and that’s how MARNIK was born. Luckily, things started to blow up quite quickly, and what began as two guys making music together turned into something much bigger than we expected.
3. You both play different roles within MARNIK, with Alex focused heavily on live performances and Lele on the studio side. How does that division of strengths influence the MARNIK sound?
It actually doesn’t divide things as much as people might think, because Lele is also a DJ andAlex is also a producer, so we both understand the studio and live sides of the project really well. Lele is more focused on the music and production day to day, but because he knows what works on a dancefloor, he’s always producing with the crowd in mind. At the same time, Alex understands production deeply enough to give very specific feedback when a track needs changes, whether it’s technical details, arrangement, or new creative input
4. You’re celebrating 10 years of MARNIK. What has been the biggest change in your sound and identity since you first started?
It’s actually been 12 years of MARNIK, and during that time we’ve lived through very different periods and eras of electronic music. We started during the golden era of EDM, then went through the pandemic period when everything slowed down (literally, even the music), and now we’re in a moment where the rave and harder scene is pushing the boundaries again. We’ve always tried to understand where the scene is going without simply chasing trends, while keeping the core of our identity alive. We know dance music history well enough to evolve through these different cycles without losing ourselves, and maybe that’s one of the reasons why we’re still here after 12 years.
5. You’re entering a new creative era focused on hard dance, techno and neo-rave. What inspired this evolution, and why does it feel right for MARNIK now?
MARNIK actually started with a big room sound that was already a mix of trance and hardstyle, with that cinematic and epic vibe that has always been part of our identity (it was just slower in BPM compared to today’s music). In a way, what we’re doing now feels like the same DNA, just faster, harder, and adapted to where the scene is today. We’ve always loved rave music, so this evolution happened very naturally for us, and it also felt like the perfect moment to bring our ARENA universe back. It doesn’t really feel like we’re changing direction; it feels more like coming back to something that was already there from the beginning.
6. The ARENA label concept brings together music, visuals and storytelling. How important are these elements in accordance with the way you make music?
Imagery has always been a key part of the way we make music, because when we compose a track, we literally see it in our heads. We see fantastic and ancient worlds, gladiators, goddesses, heroes and epic scenes, and those images naturally influence the sound and atmosphere of the music. Now that visuals have such a bigger impact in the industry, it felt very natural for us to amplify that side of our identity through ARENA. The music, visuals and storytelling are really just different ways of expressing the same universe we’ve always had in our minds.
7. What advice would you give to someone aspiring to start their own label?
You need to be ready for a lot of work, but it’s incredibly rewarding when you start seeing other artists and producers understand your vision and want to be part of it. For us, one of the most important things is building a real community around the label, which is something we’ve been working on from the beginning and are slowly starting to see the results of. The sound should be coherent, of course, but we think more in terms of a global mood board rather than one specific genre. That’s why on ARENA, bouncy techno, hard techno, rave and trance are all welcome: if a track has the right ARENA vibe, then it makes sense in our world.
8. You’ve performed at major festivals such as Tomorrowland, Creamfields and Sunburn. Is there a particular performance or crowd that stands out as a defining moment in your career?
We don’t think there’s one particular performance that stands out above all the others, because every crowd is different and gives us an incredible feeling every time we step onstage. Different cultures, different faces, different countries and different stages, but in the end there’s always one universal language connecting everyone: music. That’s probably what still makes performing so special for us after all these years.
9. What is one track this summer that has been a staple on your USB sticks?
Not only one but if we have to choose a non MARNIK or ARENA Records track it’s definitely ’Stomp your feet’ by Hannah Laing, Marlon Hoffstadt and Caroline Roxy.
10. Finally, what is next for MARNIK in the remainder of 2026?
We have a lot of club weapons ready to drop on ARENA Records, so there’s plenty of newmusic coming before the end of the year. We also have a couple of really cool MARNIKcollaborations coming out on other labels that we’re excited to finally share and we areplanning more ARENA writing camps at our studios in Milan. From October, we’ll be fullyback on tour again, and at the same time we’re working on bringing some ARENA NIGHTshows to life over the next few months, taking the whole label universe from the music into aproper live experience. So yeah, it’s looking like a very busy end to 2026.
