Little is known about the early life of Mario Demanio. Born into a family of wandering minstrels who were also the court musicians in the tiny central-European principality of Romohunscrovia, he hecame reknowned as a child prodigy on both the squeezebox and bass lute.

Word of his precocious talent spread far and wide and at a young age had left his native land and was performing in the major concert halls of Europe. As time went by he was introduced to the works of the great composers (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Clapton) and he began to perform them alongside the traditional Romohunscrovian music he knew so well.

Exposure to this new music opened his eyes to a whole new world of sound but left him perplexed. The folk music of his native land no longer satisfied him and yet no matter how much he loved the classics he felt that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony played on a squeezebox didn't really cut it. It needed something more...

That something came as a bolt from the blue. One night after a concert, he was wandering the streets of Vienna and he heard a sound he had never heard before. Drums. Percussion. Beats. Big beats. He followed the sound to its source and listened and watched in awe. The sound was vast, primal, intoxicating. He saw the people, a mass of bodies entranced by the sound and moving, gyrating, writhing as one in time to the music. Instantly he knew what was missing - the beat.

He made it his mission then to master the technology to produce this kind of music and it proved to be the final break form the music of his childhood. No longer would he feel that the classics were missing something - he would bring them into the 21st century with the new technology. Avanti! was the first of his releases and he is continuing with similar dance-based projects .

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