Pôngo: "We wait for the right moment, because a record needs a reason to exist"

Pôngo is the electronic music project of Italian brothers Giovanni and Daniele Bruni, a duo whose sound moves fluidly between electro, soul and techno. Over the years, they have built a distinct identity through evocative songwriting, refined production and a powerful live approach, earning support from some of the most respected names in electronic music.

From early releases on Connected and Blaufield to appearances on labels such as Disco Halal, Systematic Recordings and Diynamic, Pôngo have steadily carved out their own space within the European electronic scene. Supported by artists including Dixon, Âme, Trikk and Solomun, the duo continue to evolve while staying rooted in a sound that balances melodic depth, raw energy and a strong sense of character.

You've been noticeably quieter over the past year, at a time when the music industry seems to demand constant visibility. What did you need to build away from the spotlight?

Silence wasn't a retreat, it was a design space. In recent years, the market pushes hard to get you to publish constantly to feed the algorithm, and eventually you start to believe it. We understood that we couldn't build something serious while maintaining that pace.

Nothing Serious was born from there, from an idea that deserved time; not just for the music, but to define what it really was as a project, as an aesthetic, as a vision. It was necessary to disappear for a moment to come back as something more conscious of what we were before. The noise of the market was drowning out the voice we wanted to have.

Nothing Serious is clearly more than just a record label. What do you want people to understand about your world when they step into it, even before they hear the music?

Nothing Serious is an environment. When someone looks at the logo, they see an aesthetic, a visual language, a sensibility. We want them to understand that there's total coherence between the sound and the space around it; the artwork, the philosophy, even the silence between releases.

It's a world where music isn't disposable. It's a place where electronics still dialogue with the tangible, where the digital doesn't sterilize human sensibility. Even before listening to a track, we want people to ask themselves what's behind a certain choice.

Today, releasing constantly often seems more important than releasing something that lasts. Where do you stand on that: quantity, consistency, or waiting for the right moment?

We wait for the right moment. Not out of laziness; we're always working; but because we believe a record needs to have a reason to exist. Speed has become a default virtue, but it isn't.

If something adds nothing, if it changes nothing, if it says nothing, then the world doesn't need it. We prefer people to wonder when the next Pôngo is coming rather than whether they've already forgotten the last one. We prefer every release to be an event for us, not a stream.

AI is making music production more accessible than ever. Do you think we're heading towards a world with more producers but fewer artists with a truly distinctive identity? And where do you draw the line between technology and a shortcut?

Technology is a tool, not a thought. AI is an incredibly powerful tool but it's essentially killing creativity.

Even if you have the ability to decide in advance with a prompt what music you want to make, it's hard to actually believe in it because what makes you believe in music is the process of elaboration and creation; because it takes the right amount of time to metabolize a creative idea before expressing it to the public.

If there's no time to delve into the details, the sounds, the arrangements, everything comes out superficial in the end, leaving little room for satisfaction in the medium to long term.

This is what AI becomes in music when used as a totalizing tool; it doesn't produce identity. Today we have the perception that there are many people using AI to make music in a superficial way and few who make music actually leveraging AI where it truly serves; there's an enormous difference.

The line is there; when technology decides for you, you've already lost.

Your sound combines a certain rawness, electro influences and an aesthetic that looks back to the '90s. How difficult is it to stay true to that identity without being absorbed by whatever is trending at the moment?

We believe our musical background is very ramified in our lives from when we started listening to and producing music at a very young age, separately. Both of us had experiences in rock bands, hip hop before we came together as Pongo, and I think that kind of totalizing experience is the real bond; not just between the two of us, but with a certain type of sound that was practically the soundtrack to much of our lives.

We come from that mid-'90s language; we grew up with the rawness of rap, soul and metal, the crossover of those years. And this helps us stay grounded in our sounds. Trends come and go.

Being brothers and sharing a booth means knowing each other extremely well, but it must also mean clashing from time to time. How much of your strength comes from that dynamic?

Everything, practically. We've always grown up together and were fortunate to cultivate the same interests in music and urban culture in general, until we decided to join our paths.

Being brothers certainly means in our case having fewer filters in some moments; this is because being such a deep bond, you tend to address the other as you would yourself, with a lot of brevity and few preambles.

In some creative phases our points of view can certainly be different, but we've learned over time to always be extremely sincere in pursuit of the best possible result. That's the goal we both care about.

You move between raw underground clubs and much more exclusive, high-end environments. What is the one thing that must never change about Pôngo, regardless of the audience in front of you?

Actually, we've always had a very vast background, a wide range of what we like to play. Everything comes back to a sound that has fixed points on every record we choose; intrinsic things, not obvious ones.

I think of groove, which for us always recalls battery, electro, funk, disco. Or the melodic parts, which are always very decided and synthetic. These are small details we perceive on every record we choose, whether it's a house record, indie dance, melodic or techno. So in every situation, in the end, we're always us.

With Nothing Serious, you're deciding what gets released, when it gets released and what identity it carries. What is the most important freedom this has given you; and what is the biggest responsibility that comes with it?

The greatest freedom is being able to plan our narrative on our own timeline. We've lived firsthand the anxiety of having to produce so much music in such a short time only to see it released over extended periods; because you depend on other labels, other artists, calendars you don't control.

That kills creativity, takes away your control over how you do business. Because yes, music that deserves to be given all the time it requires to be the way you want to release it needs to be a business. Otherwise it's only right that it stays a hobby without much pretense.

Now we can breathe at our own pace, and that changes everything.

If an unknown producer sent you a demo tomorrow, what would make you think, "This is Nothing Serious"?

The doors of NS are open to music we find strong on a personal feeling basis, on the artist's sensibility.

We look for three fundamental things: sound design that has a sensible aesthetic sense and not a random one; an arranging ability that allows you to express what you're telling in the best way; and no pretense of looking good by offering us a photocopy of what's already saturated the market.

We're not here to build a fast catalog or get mass approval without saying anything new. We're not even looking for music that escapes public understanding, in the pretense of feeling different or being labeled as underground.

We're basically looking for music that can be close to our background and that moves us.

Twenty years from now, when today's trends have probably disappeared, what would you like people to say about Pôngo and the first Nothing Serious releases?

We want them to say: this music held up well. Not it came back into fashion, but it never stopped making sense.

We want someone to listen to our catalog without the algorithms, without the context of the moment, and find something authentic. That can feel it was a conscious choice, the voice of two people who knew what they were saying.

We're not looking for immortality, we just don't want to be forgotten because we were important at the time; we want to be remembered because we had something to say that still has value.

Follow PÔNGO

Instagram / Facebook / Soundcloud / YouTube / Spotify