DJ Tennis

From guitar-driven margins to the panoramic club

The tension between post-rock, long-form house, and club culture defines the figure of DJ Tennis. Before stepping into the booth, Manfredi Romano gained experience away from the spotlight: band tours, alternative music events, college radio, and a relationship with sound that came as much from collecting as it did from production. After studying computer science at the University of Pisa, he founded DAZE in 1995, considered the first Italian agency specifically dedicated to electronic music, a key step in understanding his way of reading the scene from within.

Life and Death as an identity laboratory

In 2010, he shaped Life and Death, a label and aesthetic platform that helped consolidate an electronic sound with a dark pulse, expansive melody, and band-like sensibility. From there, he built his own identity as a selector and producer, with sets that connect house, techno, disco, breaks, and indie dance without losing narrative tension. His catalog includes releases on Life and Death, Kompakt, Running Back, !K7, Cercle Records, Aus Music, Circoloco Records, and fabric Records, with pieces and projects such as Local, Divisions/Chirality, Convex, Certain Angles with Fink, Gordon Starck, DJ-Kicks: DJ Tennis, fabric presents DJ Tennis, Cinecittà with Carlita and Alex Metric, All In A Dream with LP Giobbi and Joseph Ashworth, or Playa Paradiso with Eliza Rose.

A booth with an auteur's pulse

His international reputation has been built in booths where storytelling takes precedence over obvious impact. He has performed at Circoloco Ibiza, fabric in London, Panorama Bar in Berlin, Club Space Miami, Sónar, Time Warp, Primavera Sound, Coachella, and other high-profile festivals and clubs; in 2022, he also held a residency at Phonox, London. In parallel, since 2017 he has co-founded and curated Rakastella during Art Basel in Miami, a project associated with Life and Death and Innervisions that reinforces his role as a cultural agitator, not just as a booth artist.

Cooking, collaboration, and an expansive present

His recent trajectory expands that hybrid identity. Together with Carlita, he has developed Astra Club, while with Ashee he launched Tenashee, an audiovisual project connected to the SUPERPOSITION installation. He has also brought his passion for cooking to Munchietown and culinary collaborations linked to the electronic community. Recently based between Paris and Miami, DJ Tennis maintains a unique position: that of an artist capable of moving between punk memory, the emotional architecture of the club, and a curation that continues to open spaces for new connections.