Raiders of the Lost ARP is Mario Pierro's solo project. He is also known as one half of Mat101 and Jollymusic. His professional career started in 1996 when he met Marco Passarani from Nature records and together they decided to start a series of projects: releases, radio-show and organization of parties. At the beginning the first musical project was called MAT101 and it was realized with Francesco de Bellis (aka Francisco) and Emiliano Tortora who lately decided to split from the band. They've released an album and a couple of singles that helped them to become popular in the electronic underground movement. So far they've collected many live performances, many tracks on compilations and remixes using the name MAT101.

After 3 years MAT101 decided to start another project called JOLLY MUSIC: While MAT101 is more electro oriented, JOLLY MUSIC is more into psychedelic disco and electroacoustic soul. The first track came out on a FINALFRONTIER 12" sampler with tracks from the rest of the NATURE RECORDS crew and it did get the attention of the most respected underground crews. Then a couple of singles came out in order to anticipate the full lenght album called “Jolly Bar”. As soon as the album came out the reaction from the press was very strong: from England to Italy, from Japan to Germany the specialized magazine where shouting like “one of the most original record of the year”. After a short while Nature records licensed this album to Sony UK, and even if the end of the story was pretty sad, with the major label not releasing the album, the duo had the chance to experience a great adventure working with some very talented singers (such as Erlend Oye from Kings of Convenience and Sonya Madden from Echobelly) and producers (such as Steve Dub of Chemical Brothers and New Order fame).

As Jolly Music, the duo also remixed artists such as Jamiroquai (accepted by the artist, but never released by the label) and Garbage. In 2002, Mario, Marco Passarani and Francesco have created the Pigna label as a sublabel of Nature, in order to release their most dancefloor-oriented tracks.

In 2005, the three guys joined forces to celebrate the 10th release on Pigna, releasing the LP "Let 'em Talk" as Pigna People and playing live at several festivals. When you talk about Mario's solo projects, it's impossible not to notice his love for soul, funk and jazz: that's exactly the flavour you get in Mario's electro-techno.

As Raiders, Mario has released several EPs and one LP: "Electric City Phunk Vol.3" (Plasmek 012), "Drive" (Pigna 003), "3" (Nature, NAT2126), "Funk Series Pt.2" (Pigna 006), "4" (Nature, NAT2125).

In 2007, the "Beyond the Dark" EP showed the Raiders sound revised by two inspired remixes by Detroit pioneers Galaxy2Galaxy and Los Hermanos. In 2008 Mario released his last Raiders of the lost ARP LP "Tema5" (Nature, NAT2127).

Since the release of the "4" LP, Mario has been perfecting a live set which features a combination of vintage analogue synths, drum machines and a laptop, playing several european clubs as well as the Detroit Fuse-In festival in 2006. The set features improvised tracks built on-the-fly as well as excerpts from released ones. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.