by
Juno Daily
on 20.05.2026 at 17:41pm.
Last edited: 21.05.2026 at 10:37am.
Wax works
It’s 9:40 am in Mexico City, and Gledd is a little worse for wear. “Last night I was drinking with friends,” he admits, with the cheerful lack of apology of a man who has never once worried about what comes next. By Saturday, he’ll be playing a party two hours outside the city. By Sunday, another one. Somewhere in between, he needs to talk business – his Saint Wax label and newly formed agency, the emails piling up from bookers and remix clients – and the thought of all that admin seems to pain him more than the hangover. “I can’t stick with the phone,” he says, wincing slightly while holding his mobile out at arm’s length.
This is, more or less, how Gledd moves through the world – on a whim, without much of a plan, motivated by musical curiosity. He’s a wiry, long-haired Italian from a small town outside Venice who has popped up in gospel churches in Harlem, techno clubs in London, on a rooftop in Dakar recording a kalimba player he met 20 minutes earlier in a record shop, and in the back rooms of studios in Tulum, Ivory Coast, Panama, Colombia and Uruguay. He travels with a pocket recorder, with beats already sketched out on the laptop, always ready to hand them to anyone who wants to work together. Most DJs travel the world but seem to see none of it. Gledd is an exception, and it shows in every record he makes, from disco edits to Afro gospel fusions.
His musical foundations were laid early and deep. Growing up outside Venice, he was surrounded by music from every direction – one grandfather a jazz musician, the other devoted to soul and rock and roll, his mother playing Otis Redding around the house, his father lost in the classic rock of the 60s and 70s. He picked up the guitar as a child and by 17 he was DJing local parties, playing trip hop, hip hop, jazz-inflected soul – anything with feeling, basically.
Electronic music entered his purview through MTV and the internet. Early Chemical Brothers and Moby sat alongside whatever he could dig up online. It was discovering the German scene, artists like Glenn Astro and the Cologne and Hamburg axis of jazz-informed house that gave him the framework he’d been looking for. Here was music that did both things he loved at once: the warmth and musicality of the records his family played fused with the drive of the dancefloor.
The first of his now endless trips abroad took him to London. He moved there at 18, worked in catering to survive and explored the likes of fabric, Ministry of Sound and Cable. Then came Madrid. Then he went back to Italy, took a residency in Milan, hosted his own parties and, seven years ago, took up an invitation from a friend to check out Tulum. He now spends large chunks of his time in Mexico when not on the road.
Mexico City suits him. The weather, the culture, the diversity, the music. Cumbia drifting from open windows, salsa clubs open until morning, a continent’s worth of rhythmic tradition on tap. Gledd has always been curious to go to the roots of his inspirations. Over the last two years alone he has made it to Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Panama, Colombia, Argentina and Uruguay, each trip funded by a combination of DJ bookings, label connections and an easy-going social confidence that means he’s accepted into spaces most people would never find, let alone enter.
The Senegal story is the one that tells you everything you need to know. He walked into a record shop in Dakar with no particular plan. The guy behind the counter told him a kalimba player was coming in. The kalimba player arrived, liked the look of this Italian wandering around his city, and invited him back to a friend’s rooftop. Within days, Gledd was staying at the musician’s house, recording tracks on a pocket recorder. “I already had the beats made at home months before, a structure of the track,” he explains. “I played it, and they said, ‘ We’re gonna sing on that and play something on top.”
This is not cultural appropriation. It is genuine immersion and authentic exchange. Gledd is careful on this point. “I think appropriation doesn’t exist at the moment when someone gets into the culture and studies and learns from it,” he says, adding that he fell in love with gospel music after visiting churches in Baltimore as a young man. He has been buying African vinyl for years. The trips to West Africa are not a lifestyle accessory – they are an extension of a lifelong obsession with finding music at its source.
His recent productions – and boy, have there been a ton of them – fold Afro rhythms and gospel vocals into a house framework – floor-ready but spiritually grounded. Remix requests are arriving from artists he admires, such as James Curd, Tigerbalm and Art of Tones, and his label, Saint Wax, has become an agency so that he doesn’t have to deal with the increasing amount of “business stuff” coming his way. “My girlfriend is gonna take care of all that,” he smiles.
Gledd‘s dreams don’t revolve around fame and fortune, festival main stages and Ibiza residencies. Connecting with musicians from as many different cultures as possible is what motivates him most. He also hopes to develop Gledd & The Moving Orchestra, a live project built around local collaborations wherever he happens to be. That could be a violinist in Eastern Europe, a percussionist in Senegal or a guitarist in Tulum, so long as they add authentic local colour to his grooves. “I want to give a different taste from wherever I am,” he says. “It’s still my music. But with a different flavour.”
Gledd‘s life could already be a movie: he’s a man with a guitar, a laptop, a pocket recorder and an open itinerary who moves from rooftop to studio to dancefloor to record shop, accumulating sounds and stories and connections. Forrest Gump had his Nike Cortez and his box of chocolates. Indiana Jones had his hat and his whip. Gledd has his beats and his wanderlust.
Kristan Caryl
Buy ‘My House Is Your Church’ on 12″ vinyl and other Gledd releases here
