From Portuguese to the Salento dialect, from sitar to brass-band instruments, from afro house to melodic techno: Italian DJ and producer MaxNeri presents an album that journeys through the Mediterranean, Brazil, France, the desert and the dancefloor, transforming electronic music into a cultural atlas that renews its dialogue with places, languages and imagery
United States, 17th Aug 2026 - Italian club culture of the 1990s meets the new global geography of electronic music through five female voices and a 15-track sonic journey interweaving different languages, rhythms and imagery. Italian DJ and producer MaxNeri, whose path is rooted in the club culture of the early 1990s and whose classical training began with the saxophone, returns with “UNIVERSAL”, a record that approaches the album format as a sonic atlas.
The project does not follow a single genre. Moving between afro house, melodic techno, synthwave and Mediterranean sounds, it brings together different languages — Italian, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, the Salento dialect and echoes of Neapolitan culture — as integral elements of the tracks’ architecture.
The production is built on a constant contrast: electronic textures, analogue synths and club grooves on one side; real instruments — sitar, oboe, saxophone, flute, clarinet, accordion and brass-band instruments — on the other. This lends the record an acoustic breadth and a physical presence reminiscent of the golden age of European electronic music, when meticulous attention to analogue sound was the essential foundation for every synthetic venture.
Each track on the album is a route, a window opening onto a specific place: the warm, physical Brazil of “Pulso Dourado”; the dawn of “Before the Sunrise”; the sea as a symbol of freedom in “Non torno più”; the French night of “Dans la Nuit”; the Mediterranean myth of “Cor’e’Mar”; the rebellious Salento town square of “Mo’ sona la festa”; the electronic jolt of “Far from Here”; and, finally, the hypnotic, expansive closing track “To the Desert”.
The voices form one of the central pillars of “UNIVERSAL”. Neuma, Nasha, Margot, Leonor and Élen Virel are not merely featured guests, but distinct, clearly defined presences, each connected to a language, a culture and a different idea of movement. Neuma shapes the nocturnal, electronic and introspective dimension in English; Nasha opens the music to Mediterranean warmth, moving between Spanish and mantra; Margot brings the Italian language, rebellion and a more grounded, instinctive presence linked to the body, the sea and the town square; Leonor outlines the Lusophone and tribal dimension; Élen Virel defines the French chapter, urban and nocturnal.
This plurality of voices, sounds, atmospheres and colours becomes the defining trait of an album conceived not as a collection of disconnected singles, but as a sequence of stages in one continuous journey.
With “UNIVERSAL”, MaxNeri seeks to answer a question running through much of contemporary electronic music: how can an international sound be created without losing one’s origins, history, roots and traditions? The answer comes in the form of a project that looks beyond Italy while carrying a distinctly Italian sensibility: melodic finesse, attention to the voice, a sense of context and landscape, a taste for storytelling, and a deep connection with dance and progressive culture.
“UNIVERSAL” begins with the warmth of the body and reaches the desert, travelling through the sea, the city, the night, celebration, memories, personal boundaries and the desire for a possible elsewhere. It is a synthesis of the physicality of the dancefloor and the need to tell a story.
The album’s tracklist and track-by-track guide follow:
“UNIVERSAL” – Tracklist:
1. “Pulso Dourado” (feat. Leonor)
2. “Before the Sunrise” (feat. Neuma)
3. “Non torno più” (feat. Margot)
4. “Zama Leyo” (feat. Nasha)
5. “Dans la Nuit” (feat. Élen Virel)
6. “Eh vai, eh vai” (feat. Margot)
7. “Back to You” (feat. Neuma)
8. “Cor’e’Mar” (feat. Nasha)
9. “Don’t Touch My Silence (Elettro Vision)” (feat. Neuma)
10. “Roda Devagar” (feat. Leonor)
11. “Move Your Body” (feat. Neuma)
12. “Mo’ sona la festa” (feat. Margot)
13. “Don’t Stop Now” (feat. Nasha)
14. “Far from Here” (feat. Neuma)
15. “To the Desert” (feat. Neuma)
“UNIVERSAL” – Track by Track:
Opening the album is “Pulso Dourado”, performed by Leonor: a track pulsing with afro-tech vibrations, Brazilian influences and melodic techno, where Portuguese becomes percussion, breath and heartbeat. The title — “golden pulse” — immediately establishes the album’s atmosphere: sun, body, skin, rhythm and movement.
With “Before the Sunrise”, entrusted to Neuma’s voice, the journey shifts perspective. The track focuses on the time before dawn, on those moments when things are not yet over but no longer entirely safe. Here, synthwave and electropop textures are carried by a melodic line in which the oboe emerges as a distinctive signature.
The first Italian chapter arrives with “Non torno più”, performed by Margot. The title becomes the declaration of someone who chooses to break the cycle of returning, leave behind what causes pain and change course.
“Zama Leyo”, featuring Nasha, shifts the centre of gravity towards a more organic, sensual and fluid dimension. Spanish, vocal mantras, flute, clarinet, afro house and deep house give the track a rhythm that envelops, accompanies and draws the listener in.
With “Dans la Nuit”, sung by Élen Virel, the album enters a French night with a European spirit. 1980s Italo disco, contemporary electropop, soprano saxophone, piano, analogue pads and filtered drum machines define a track in which French creates intimacy, while the English phrase “Feel the fire” opens the song to a broader identity.
The album’s brightest and most immediate moment arrives with “Eh vai, eh vai”, once again featuring Margot: an instantly accessible Mediterranean pop-dance mantra made for the shoreline and summer nights. Here, MaxNeri works through simplicity: a handful of words, a repetition that stays in the mind, a voice guiding the movement.
“Back to You”, featuring Neuma, returns “UNIVERSAL” to a more inward space. It is a track about an attraction that keeps calling, about the mind returning to a person, a memory, a figure with whom nothing has ever truly ended. The lyrics move through sparks, silences, echoes, currents and fire beneath the skin, while the production maintains a steady melodic pace.
“Cor’e’Mar”, performed by Nasha, recounts the Mediterranean myth of Parthenope. Moving between Spanish, references to the City of the Sun and marine imagery, the track takes the form of an electronic fable: a figure dancing in the sea, transforming, living through the night and continuing to exist within the music.
One of the tracks that takes the album beyond the club alone, giving the project greater narrative depth, is “Don’t Touch My Silence (Elettro Vision)”, featuring Neuma. The song introduces the theme of boundaries: “Don’t come closer, don’t pretend” opens a clear declaration of distance, self-protection and autonomy. Silence becomes skin, a boundary, a space that must not be violated.
With “Roda Devagar”, entrusted to Leonor, the journey returns to the body through a slow, circular and hypnotic dance. Portuguese, syncopated accordion, pan flute, afro house percussion, bass and synth stabs create a sensual yet controlled track, designed to draw the listener gradually into its rhythm.
In the new version included on “UNIVERSAL”, “Move Your Body” takes on the role of a retro-futuristic dancefloor chapter: 1970s disco, nu-disco, synthwave, melodic techno, EDM and afro-tech converge in a track where disco bass, funky guitars, strings, clavinet, handclaps, tambourine, saxophone and analogue synths bring movement back to the heart of the project.
“Mo’ sona la festa”, performed by Margot, is one of the album’s most original tracks: Salento brass band, ska, folk-pop, dark synthwave and contemporary electronic music merge into a scene set in a town square at night. Trumpet, flugelhorn, clarinet, trombone, tuba, snare drum, processional bass drum, tambourine and accordion converse with electronic bass and analogue pads. Sung in Italian, the Salento dialect and Spanish, the lyrics reject manipulation, possession and false desire: “Nu sugnu tua, no soy tuya” becomes a pivotal declaration of autonomy, while the celebration plays not for those who caused harm, but for those reclaiming their own space.
In the album’s closing stretch, “Don’t Stop Now”, featuring Nasha, reopens the record to collective momentum: an afro-melodic groove, percussion, vocal chants, emotive synths and a reverberating trumpet that seems to arrive from afar. It is a song of new beginnings, of movement that refuses to stop.
“Far from Here”, featuring Neuma, recaptures a more minimal and memorable dance attitude, with an immediate chorus and lyrics built around the idea of escape: “Take me far, far from here. Far away, no fear”. MaxNeri’s homemade whistle and the dream-pluck piano become two recognisable sonic signatures, small signals that evoke the memory of old-school dance music while remaining rooted in contemporary production.
Closing the album is “To the Desert”, once again featuring Neuma: a nocturnal, hypnotic track created at the crossroads of afro-tech, melodic techno, synthwave, EDM, African percussion and Middle Eastern influences. The sitar, Hijaz scale, female vocal chops, rhythmic strings and EDM bass carry the album towards a final horizon that feels not like an ending, but a new beginning.
MaxNeri’s trajectory helps illuminate the scope of the project. His training began with music theory and classical and jazz saxophone from childhood, soon intersecting with electronic music, keyboards, sequencers, synthetic sounds and dance structures. In the mid-1990s, he experienced Italian club culture at close quarters, working as a freelance DJ across Piedmont and Lombardy and entering the production environment connected with several dream-progressive labels.
From that era, he inherited a precise vision of electronic music: not only BPM, but melody; not only the dancefloor, but emotional intensity; not only production, but a recognisable sonic identity. Over the years, his language has moved through dance, electropop, synthpop, synthwave, dream progressive, melodic techno, afro house, nu-disco, EDM and world-music crossovers, while maintaining a consistent direction: bringing together tradition and the future, club culture and storytelling, real instruments and synthetic sounds.
Moving well beyond the logic of the functional track — playlists, club edits, short-form content, productions destined to be consumed within the confines of an algorithm — “UNIVERSAL” embraces the album format through an expansive, collective trajectory in which the physical dimension of dance remains connected to the possibility of storytelling.
A sonic cartography that begins on the dancefloor and opens onto the world; a project blending Italian club culture, the European night, Afro-Brazilian warmth, folk celebration, the desert, silence, the body, tradition and the future.
An electronic record, yet never impersonal. An album made for dancing, but also to be followed like a map, holding rhythm, identity and narrative together without allowing the production to dissolve into mere background sound.
Biography.
MaxNeri is an Italian DJ, producer, remixer and songwriter whose musical journey began in the early 1990s and has developed across electronic music, melody, club culture and sonic cross-pollination. He currently lives in Salento, in the province of Brindisi, although his music has travelled through a range of Italian scenes and regions over the years. His training began in childhood with music theory and classical and jazz saxophone, shaping his attention to harmony, melodic lines and real instruments within electronic production. In the mid-1990s, he experienced Italian club culture at close quarters, working as a freelance DJ across Piedmont and Lombardy and entering the production environment surrounding the dream-progressive scene. Over time, his language has moved through dance, electropop, synthpop, synthwave, dream progressive, melodic techno, afro house, nu-disco, EDM and world-music crossovers. His recent projects include a collaboration with Roland Brant on “Nuclear Sun (2K25 Vocal Vision)”, a contemporary reworking of a classic from Italy’s 1990s electronic scene, and a collaboration with JK Lloyd on “Divina Commedia (2k25 Voyage Vision)”. With “La Scatola Verde”, his first album sung entirely in Italian and performed by Margot, MaxNeri opened a more narrative and authorial dimension. With “UNIVERSAL”, he delivers his broadest and most international project to date: a 15-track album bringing together multiple languages, voices, cultures, rhythms and instruments, and affirming an artistic direction founded on the meeting point between dancefloor, storytelling, tradition and contemporary sound.
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