Re: Best Of Italo Disco Mp3 Download Ru
Patrick Fog
I hope this kind of post is allowed here. I'm doing a little project where I go to different subreddits of music genres and I ask the members what the best album of that genre is. After this, I listen to the album that got the most upvotes after 24 hours and write my thoughts about it (I will write this as a comment under this one, so if you want to read it, make sure to check back in 2-3 days. This won't be a professional review btw. I don't know anything about music theory so it's just gonna be the thoughts of a random guy). The list I'm following is Wikipedia's list of the most popular music genres in a randomized order. I'm planning to listen to one album per day and this time the genre is Italo Disco. So please recommend me an album in the comments. It could be the best one in your opinion, your personal favourite, or the album that best represents this genre according to you, but please, only submit one album. If you submit more than one in your comment, it won't count (If you really want to submit more, do it in separate comments). I know absolutely nothing about this genre, so I'm going in blind. I'm specififcallly looking for Italo Disco and not Spacesynth (that will come later), so please keep that in mind.
Imagine, if you can, if somebody made a B-movie of the entire disco genre. Music so obviously emotional, it becomes inescapably affecting. This is Italo and its heartstring-pulling magic. It's not disco, in fact in most cases it's technically a lot worse, but there is untold charm in the chintz.
From here Italo splits off into two discernible, but equally valuable categories. It should be recognised that there were tracks made by OG disco musicians; composers and producers with amazing equipment and years of experience, who blended new synthetic, space age sonics into the glittery glamour. Yet there were also tracks made with the same intentions, by producers who didn't have the equipment or the experience. If anything, it is the latter that give Italo its enduring lovability. Choruses of romantic clichés sung through bad English accents, over ARP synths and pinging walkabout bass-lines. It is the sound of imagined worlds: an imagined America, an imagined sports car tearing down an imagined open highway, before lowering imagined sunglasses and jetting off into an imagined cosmos.
Okay, so Giorgio isn't necessarily an Italo disco artist in the truest sense, but he is a crucial jumping off point for the genre. His influence is actually less to do with him being Italian, and more to do with all that electronic music pioneering he did. Moroder represents the moment the slick chintz of disco began to segue into more synthetic spaces. It's an observation of musical development more obvious than Noel Gallagher telling you Oasis were influenced by the Beatles, but Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" really is the production that set up the new template. Also watch the video to "Together In Electric Dreams" and tell me it's not Italo as fuck mate.
These three represent an important part of Italo: the pop star. However the female vocalists weren't stars in the same way as the divas of the original disco era. Names like Valerie Dore were often in fact projects, put together by producers who used the star's identity as a meta-vehicle for the track. Put simply, Italo was doing PC Music before Danny L Harle was even born. It probably hasn't escaped your notice that Italo-disco wasn't the most positive space when it came to representing women.
From an international perspective ZYX was probably the most significant label. Not only did the German label coin the term Italo, but they were responsible for the hugely important Best of Italo-disco compilations. As is often the case, it takes an outsider to realise an insular phenomenon, and it is fair to say the most important contribution of ZYX was exactly this. They recognised Italo as a microcosm, packaged it, and sold it to the world.
Headed up by the megalomanic, unreliable, but ruthlessly ambitious Jacques Petrus, Goody Music was one of the few native Italian labels to truly hold its own among the big international players. Macho's record "I'm a Man" is a particularly notable example, being the first disco record made entirely by Italian musicians to become a worldwide hit, smashing the charts everywhere from America, to Japan, to Brazil. However, Petrus' shaky reputation and inability to recognise his own failings, led to business decisions that took him further into the murky underworld of borrowing more money than he could ever hope to pay back. He was assassinated in 1986 age 47, at his villa in Guadalupe.
Basically the "classic" Italo track. Released in 1982, so just long enough after disco for drum machines to be popping off, but not too deep into the 80s for everything to have gotten all techno, techno, techno.
Yes, you're correct, "Everybody, let's go to the gig, we can dance there, dance and eat an ice-cream, everybody dancing all night long, try to do it, sing a happy song" are the best lyrics on any dance track ever released.
A nice inclusion for charting the link to a more classic disco sound. Released in 1981 this marks the period where Italo was more directly characterised by knocking off Studio 54, and it's magnificent.
Italo is as popular today as it has ever been, with dedicated nights emerging in East London, and DJs like Bicep spinning exclusively Italo disco and house sets as they did at Glastonbury. This is all well and good, but we shouldn't for a second start to think that Italo is a kitsch movement, a curious corner of culture for us to ironically groove to after a few drinks. Yes, it is has about as much class as a polyester Hawaiian shirt, but it changed everything.
If you fancy yourself an electronic music scholar you have to know Italo disco. At first listen, some might sound really cheesy, but it's an integral block in the edifice of current electronic dance music. The name "Italo-disco" can be misleading. It doesn't sound like what we would traditionallly classify as disco. It's indebted to disco, mostly the late period disco of producers like Cerrone and Georgio Moroder, who relied more on electronic sounds, and also owes much to the music of Karftwerk. It came about because there was an drastic drop in the price and increase in simplicty of electronic music instruments, which meant that more people than ever could make music. As you'll hear in the tracks we've selected, the result, though diverse, had certain unifying qualities and themes. It's music that, at it's heart, is very simple. The drum programing is often repetitive, the music is not complex, the words are often nonsense, but when it works, it works perfectly. It shouldn't come as a surprise if you're a current fan of global bass. Time and time again from Brazil to Angola to Baltimore we've seen amazing music emerge from the most simple of ingrdients. Thematically, much of the music is about technology and love, which have recurred throughout electronic dance music history from acts like Cybotron, Daft Punk, and Robyn. Before we hop into the music, know that this list is not meant to be exhaustive. This was a very prolific scene with hundreds of tracks coming out every year. Everyone has their secret favorites. Feel free to add yours in the comments.
Year: 1983
Label: OutHelen is an act that is typical of Italo-disco music. There was no actual "Helen." It was made up of various different producers and female vocalists at different times. Makes you think a lot of how the whole contemporary issue with ghost producers is nothing new. The drum programming in this track is crazy.
Year: 1985
Label: Memory RecordsThis one is such a certified masterpiece and has all the elements of an Italo disco classic. The synth is amazing, the vocoder is on point, and the drum programing is tight. To me this sounds like the intro soundtrack to a wacky anime film. It's such an interesting song. Do yourself a favor and check out this slowed down version, which some would argue is better than the original.
This track might have one of the best basslines ever. It was so powerful that I remember hearing this track once as a child. It stayed with me for almost 20 years and then after I started getting into Italo disco I finally discovered what song it was from. If there was one Italo disco track to like, it's this one. This track was so influential it was both remixed by Frankie Knuckles and sampled by Carl Craig.
Year: 1984
Label: Discomagic RecordsThis is another hands down Italo disco fave. I could see how people could hate it but I find it so melodic. Rose is another one of those acts that involved different people at different times so it's hard to pin down who was involved on this specific track. This is a big guilty pleasure.
Year: 1985
Label: Blow Up DiscoI discovered this through an article from last year about Classixx's 10 favorite Italo disco tracks. I agree with them, the guitar on this track is sexy as hell. This track gets people pregnant.
Year: 1986
Label: Night'n Day RecordsThis track is here because it bangs and it's unabashedly wacky. Even though Mike Mareen was a German, his music was considered among the best and most well known of the Italo disco era. This song is really intense and crazy.
Year: 1983
Label: American Disco"Penguin Invasion" is the biggest track from the Italo disco group Scotch, who were big in Europe but not at all in North America. I put this version of the track because the vocal version sounds too corny (it's literally about penguins invading). You can check the original version, though, if you really want to.
Year: 1980
Label: Full Time RecordsOf all the acts mentioned on this list, you're more likely to have heard of Kano. They did have a huge monster hit in "I'm Ready" which was a certified classic. I chose this track instead because it was sampled on Felix Da Housecat's album Kittenz and Thee Glitz, which was partially responsible for getting me into Italo disco.