italo disco

F

francesco

Minerva Estassi
"in the sublime the filth, in the filth the sublime" (you're advised now).



ok, some italo disco comps suggestions for the curious; '80 italo disco made in italy, even if they sing in (funny) english and this stuff was mostly intended for export (germany and chicago and japan being the most receptive places). all the comps are not mixed.

if you only want one italodisco comps on your shelves, this, fresh from print, is the one to get:

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Various : RELIX - Italo Disco 2CD (Ritmica/www.halidon.it)

CD1 HITS
1. KANO Another life
2. MIKO MISSION How old are you?
3. GAZEBO Masterpiece
4. JOE YELLOW Lover to lover
5. P. LION Happy children
6. SAVAGE Don’t cry tonight
7. DEN HARROW Mad desire
8. KEN LASZLO Hey hey guy
9. RAF Self control
10. RYAN PARIS Dolce vita
11. VALERIE DORE The night
12. ALBERT ONE Heart on fire
13. NOVECENTO Movin’ on
14. SANDY MARTON People from Ibiza

CD2 CULT TRAX
15. GAZ NEVADA I.C. love affair
16. LA BIONDA I wanna be your lover
17. CASCO Cybernetic love
18. ATELIER FOLIE No rhyme, no reason
19. ALEXANDER ROBOTNICK Problemes d’amour
20. KLAPTO Mister game
21. STYLOO Pretty face
22. FRED VENTURA The years (go by)
23. MY MINE Hypnotic tango
24. KOTO Japanese war game
25. ‘LECTRIC WORKERS Robot is systematic
26. FUTURE STATE Future state
27. SCOTCH Penguins invasion
28. BOB SALTON Starknight

compiled by Fred Ventura, you get a vast amount of plastic cheese, all trax are classic of the genre, this is the best comp available of the genre (note: there are also a awful lot of old ZYX german label comps, the best is "Italo Disco Classic 4cd/lp box", that are cheaply looking and probably you can find them in the used bins, since are a decade and more old.) . Sorry no Sabina but the ultratrash anthem "People from Ibiza" is there. Robotnick is the vocal version, inferior to the instrumental version on "disco not disco 2" or the new religion comp but what the hell. A very big omission is MBO and Klein "Dirty Talk".

If you need your Italodisco more (relatively speaking) experimental and actually the trax that influenced early techno or Gigolo Records or Morgan Geist and I.F. then best to track this:

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Various - I-Robots : Italo Electro Disco Underground Classics (Irma) cd/lp

Tracklisting:
1 Charlie Spacer Woman (Vocal) (7:28)
2 Capricorn I Need Love (Instrumental) (6:13)
3 Sun La Shan Catch (Dub Version) (5:25)
4 Peter Richard Walking In The Neon (Club Version) (8:18)
5 Sphinx Collision (Mix) (6:39)
6 'Lectric Workers Robot Is Systematic (7:03)
7 Dharma Plastic Doll (Remixed Instrumental) (5:40)
8 Scotch Penguin's Invasion (Hot Version) (4:54)
9 Steel Mind Bad Passion (Instrumental Version) (4:50)
10 Kano Ikeya-Seki (5:51)
11 N.O.I.A. Stranger In A Strange Land (Club Mix) (7:31)
12 Alexander Robotnick Dance Boy Dance (5:09)
13 Klein & M.B.O. Wonderful (Instrumental) (4:44)

Here most trax are the 12" version, most are the dub and instrumental version, so no overdose of cheesy italian melodyand embarassing lyrics.


Then the italodisco equivalent of Mutant Disco, alias italo postpunk goes disco or italodisco goes postpunk:

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Confuzed Disco 2lp, 2cd (Irma records)

Included in the cd/lp are Answering Service Call Me Mr Telephone , NOIA Do You Wanna Dance , Kirlian Camera Blue Room (Radio Slave edit) ,Funky Family Funky Is On ,Fawzia Please Dont Be Sad ,AIM Thailand Seeds ,Gaz Nevada Going Underground, Gaz Nevada Special Agent Man (Morgan Geist edit) , NOIA True Love ,Stupid Set Hear the Rumble , Hi Fi Bros The Line. Double Lp and Cd differ a little in tracklist, also the Cd version contain a second Cd with new remixes (have yet to listen to). Great Cd packaging anyway (haven't seen the 2lp version).

Sorry have actually no more possibility of burning copies, at the moment and at the place where i'm now. Adios.

Francisco.
 
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bruno

bruno

est malade
francesco said:
Here most trax are the 12" version, most are the dub and instrumental version, so no overdose of cheesy italian melodyand embarassing lyrics.
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thanks for that overview, francesco.

but isn't the whole point of italo the cheesy italian melody and embarassing lyrics? nothing wrong with a bit of that now and then. it would be nice if these comps reproduced the vocal and dub back to back (obviously that will never happen).

the sun la chan track on i-robots is very amazing.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
"the sun la chan track on i-robots is very amazing."
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Is this the one that was super-rare and people paid silly money for - until someone found an undiscovered and undistributed box full a year or so ago?
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Wow, never heard of confuzed disco before - must check it out. Thanks.

Francesco - what's your take on Cosmic? What mixes are available there?
 
F

francesco

Minerva Estassi
Baboon 2004 On Cosmic. First, there should be a lot of mixes around in the web, i haven’t never had broadband so I have never downloaded, but should be not difficult to search. Never seen of hear of a comps about cosmic, but you never know, after comps about Gallery, Loft, Hacienda and others maybe one about the Cosmic club in Lazise (Garda lake, North Italy) would surface (by the way I don’t live in italy anymore). Second, Baldelli hated cheesy italodisco, the only trax he loved were by Hipnosis (Vangelis disco cover versions!), Koto and Klein and MBO. Gazebo, Tarzan Boy et similia he considered commercial music. What really he played and mixed were a lot of African music, late Sky records productions and others late ‘70/early ’80 krautrock productions, Brazilian batucada, Kraftwerk mixed with Shelia Chandra, Steve Reich, Ravel Bolero, Remain in Lights Talking Heads, proto new-agey stuff mixed with drums from ethnological records. A personal brew, very white sounding (notwithstanding all the Afro stuff) and strangely proto-trance.

Bruno On cheesy italian melody and embarrassing lyrics. Are an acquired taste and I like it, but dub b-side are almost always were dance music showed the seeds for progression. And sometimes (especially in Diva Garage House) a not so great and insisted singing or a mediocre vocal tune can ruin a otherwise beautiful instrumental dance track. Remember Tom Moulton was initially hated by the singers he remixed because he dispended of most of the vocals in a track and expanded the instrumental sections (that’s how you get the good Primal Scream trax: you call great remixer who erase Bobby voice!). But yes, I love to death the dub b-sides in reggae, disco, rap, house, but I also love the vocal version. To have both would be perfect.
 
bruno

bruno

est malade
i'm beginning to appreciate singing in everything, not just italo.

and i can't make up my mind on which is the pinnacle of human achievement, this

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or this

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the synths.. the voices.. these tunes are perfect.
 
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D

daren

Well-known member
These comps look good, but none of them have my favorite Italo Disco group, Baby's Gang.
 
C

clappa

Aka Skrewface
LOL, I remember I was into this music loooooooooooooooooooooooong ago. I used to buy my Max Mix albums in Spain.They still making it?
 
M

martin

----
swears said:
I googled this and it actually exists.
Fuck.
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It most certainly does exist, young man, and you'll be saying 'fuck' again when you hear it, the synths send shivers down my spine

Casco's 'Cybernetic Love' probably makes the first CD in this thread worth buying alone, ditto Charlie's 'Spacer Woman' for the 'I-Robots' one. But one record I've never managed to track down, and have only heard once, was Grace Kennedy's "New Love Affair" - not 'purely' Italo, but very close - sadly this track seems to be Google-proof though
 
B

borderpolice

Well-known member
theo said:
1) The best mix ever by any DJ in any genre (big words)
DJ Zardo's Italo Disco Megamix - it has all the classics in there (baby's gang , ken lazlo etc etc)
and the mixing is super tight.

http://a.parsons.edu/~theodore/ItaloDisco-Megamix.mp3
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great mix. nice melange of various flavours. even Self-Control! and in the rare Raff version! do you know who does the rapping? presumably not raff himself?!? I also love it's nod to NY electro (Shannon, and ... sort of ... Kano). did you mix with ableton?
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
Can anybody give me a decent definition of what Italo-disco is?
I am led to understand the sort of electronic dancefloor music that filled the gap between late seventies disco and late eighties house? A Georgio Moroder on a budget sort of deal. And at the time it wasn't taken very seriously?
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I'm by no means an authority on this, but as I understand it Italo-disco takes in that disco music of the early 80s (term was coined in 1983, I think) that was less modelled on the soul/RnB template that a lot of Americans followed, and was more indebted to the kind of pulse-disco and sweeping synth sound originated by Giorgio Moroder, Cerrone etc.

Not all of it was Italian by any menas, but I presume that this is where the scene was at its strongest. Canada was another hotbed of Italo, for example.

The PSBs have proabbly been the most famous Italo-influenced band, but the Detroit trio were surely indebted to the sound to a large degree.
 
B

borderpolice

Well-known member
swears said:
Can anybody give me a decent definition of what Italo-disco is?
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why don't you check theo's mix ;) italo emerged out of disco and synth pop. it is characterised by liberal use of reverb, plenty of Major chords, arpeggios up to the eyeballs and a very peculiar way of singing. the latter is the most distingishing feature, i reckon.
 
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T

theo

pollymarchs 4 eva
borderpolice said:
great mix. nice melange of various flavours. even Self-Control! and in the rare Raff version! do you know who does the rapping? presumably not raff himself?!? I also love it's nod to NY electro (Shannon, and ... sort of ... Kano). did you mix with ableton?
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Thanks! Though I can't claim credit for it - It is mixed by a DJ called DJ Zardo
- Don't really know who he is - I wish I could mix that well though!

Sorry I don't know more about it - I usually just give it to friends who have never heard Italo and say 'this mix will change your life' -usually it does! :)

.
 
H

hamarplazt

100% No Soul Guaranteed
swears said:
Can anybody give me a decent definition of what Italo-disco is?
I am led to understand the sort of electronic dancefloor music that filled the gap between late seventies disco and late eighties house?
Click to expand...
You're pretty close already. In some ways it was the european equivalent of early chicago house; a chrysalis in which disco hibernated until acid/house/rave opened up new ways for it.
 
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