Oscar Rosmano has seen house music from more angles than most. The Portuguese-Mexican DJ first came to electronic music after years immersed in underground metal, with a Mexico City rave featuring Sasha, Paul van Dyk and Green Velvet opening the door to a completely different world. By 1998 he was DJing himself, beginning a career that would eventually take him across Europe and Asia and onto line-ups with Hernan Cattaneo, Guy J, Dave Seaman, Anthony Pappa and Danny Howells.

Today, as owner and curator of Lisbon’s Temple Club, he occupies an interesting position: part DJ, part producer, part student of what actually happens when music meets a room full of people. After 25 years, Rosmano has earned the right to have a few opinions about it too.

We talked to Oscar about pre-planned DJ sets, disappearing patience on dancefloors, lessons borrowed from metal, the value of simplicity and why longevity remains a better measure of a record than immediate impact.

In a recent interview you said that “a line-up should feel like a journey, not just a collection of names.” Does that same philosophy shape the way you build your own DJ sets and productions? Are there any similarities between programming an eight-hour club night and arranging a six or seven-minute record?

Absolutely. For me it’s exactly the same mindset, just on a different scale.

Whether I’m programming an eight-hour night at Temple or producing a seven-minute record, I’m thinking about storytelling. Every element should have a purpose. You need tension, moments of release, surprises and space to breathe. If everything is at maximum intensity all the time, people eventually become disconnected.

A good club night and a good record both create emotional movement. They take people somewhere instead of simply showing them a collection of tracks or sounds. That’s always been much more interesting to me than chasing the biggest drop or the latest trend.

You often talk about atmosphere before individual tracks. When you’re in the studio, what usually comes first for you: a technical idea, an emotion, or a mental picture of a dancefloor? How do you know when you’ve captured the feeling you were chasing?

For me it almost always starts with an emotion. Sometimes it’s a melody, sometimes just a pad or a single chord progression that creates a certain mood. From there I begin building the world around it. I rarely start by thinking about technical details. Those come later.

I know a track is finished when it makes me forget I’m analysing it. If I stop thinking like a producer and simply enjoy listening, then I know I’ve captured something genuine. That’s also why I often leave tracks alone for weeks or even months before coming back with fresh ears.

You’ve said that Temple wasn’t created to be everything for everyone, and that consistency has been more important than following trends. Has sticking to that vision ever meant turning down opportunities that might have made more commercial sense?

Definitely. There have been opportunities that probably would have been more profitable in the short term, but they didn’t fit the identity I wanted Temple to have.

I’ve always believed that trying to please everybody is one of the fastest ways to lose your identity. I’d rather have a smaller audience that genuinely connects with what we’re building than constantly reinvent ourselves to follow whatever is fashionable that month.

Consistency builds trust, and in the long run I think that’s far more valuable.

You started your musical life immersed in underground metal before discovering electronic music at a rave in Mexico City. Looking back now, are there any qualities from those early influences that still find their way into your house and progressive productions, even if they’re not immediately obvious?

Without question. People usually associate metal with aggression, but what stayed with me wasn’t necessarily the heaviness. It was the intensity, the atmosphere and the emotional commitment.

Some of the best progressive music creates that same feeling of tension and release, just in a completely different language. I also think my appreciation for longer musical journeys comes from those early years. I was always attracted to music that evolved rather than simply repeated itself.

You mentioned that a lot of younger DJs now arrive with completely pre-planned playlists, whereas you still prefer to improvise from a huge music collection. Do you think that’s mainly a product of technology, or has the culture around DJing itself changed? What advice would you give to DJs who want to become more confident reading a room rather than following a plan?

Technology has definitely made planning easier, but I think it’s more of a cultural shift. Today there’s a lot of pressure to deliver a perfect performance, and pre-planned sets reduce the risk of making mistakes. I understand why people do it. But DJing has always been a conversation with the audience. If you’re not listening to the room, you’re only performing for yourself.

My advice is simple: know your music so well that you don’t need to think about it. The more familiar you are with your library, the more freedom you’ll have to react in the moment. Reading a dancefloor isn’t a talent you’re born with. It’s something you develop through experience, curiosity and making plenty of mistakes. I still mistake a lot.

Karyna sat on your hard drive for almost two years before finding its home on Manual Music. Did living with the track for that long change the way you heard it, or did it reinforce the idea that some records simply have to wait until the right label and the right moment come along?

It reinforced that idea completely. Every producer knows the temptation to release music as quickly as possible, but I’ve learned that patience can be incredibly valuable.

Karyna always felt like a special record to me. I could have released it much earlier, but I never felt I’d found the right home. I was playing it once at Temple and my wife came to me asking the name of it as she really liked it. SO I just answered Karyna which is her name.. I thought well, if she likes it so now its time to send it to some labels. When Manual Music came along, everything made sense.

Sometimes the right label doesn’t just release your music, it understands it. Looking back, I’m glad I waited because the track is doing it really well.

Running a club means you’re constantly hearing unreleased music from touring artists and watching how records behave on a dancefloor. Has that ever challenged assumptions you’d made in the studio about what you thought worked, only to discover an audience responded in a completely different way?

Many times. One of the biggest lessons from running a club is that the dancefloor is always more honest than the studio.

I’ve heard technically brilliant productions that left almost no emotional impact, and I’ve seen incredibly simple records create unforgettable moments. That constantly reminds me that production isn’t about impressing other producers. It’s about creating a connection with people. Whenever I find myself overcomplicating an arrangement, I remember those nights and usually end up simplifying it again.

After more than two decades in the scene, you’ve seen formats, genres and technology change dramatically, but you’ve also spoken about valuing music with real longevity.

It’s been fascinating to witness how much the scene has evolved. I’ve played vinyl, CDs and now digital, and I’ve seen genres rise, disappear and sometimes come back again. Technology has made producing and DJing more accessible than ever, which is a great thing, but it has also made the scene move much faster. Despite all those changes, one thing has never changed for me is that great music has no expiration date. Some of my favourite records are twenty or thirty years old and they still create the same emotion today. That’s always been my benchmark. I’ve never wanted to make music that’s exciting for a month, I want to make records that people will still enjoy years from now.

Looking ahead, what do you hope people will say about Oscar Rosmano’s catalogue in another twenty-five years? What would you like your lasting contribution to be?

I hope people will say that my music was honest. I’ve never been interested in chasing trends or making tracks just because a particular sound was popular at the time. I’ve always tried to create music that I genuinely believed in, music with atmosphere, emotion and depth.

If, twenty-five years from now, DJs are still playing some of my records because they still connect with people and not because they were hits, but because they stood the test of time and that would mean everything to me.

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