Visualizzazione post con etichetta italo disco. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta italo disco. Mostra tutti i post

lunedì 25 novembre 2013

the season of steel

The idea of an Italian Wave as a genre remains a difficult beast to try and capture, file or contain. The music often collected under that banner is strongly associated with a sort of "total derivative" sound that looked at uk post punk bands, but it also grew by itself becoming something more interesting and complex. Nowadays, from our lofty 21st Century perspective, Italian Wave appears to mount repeated incursions into an almost unknowable number of previously well guarded genres: Synthpop, Techno, Dark, Punk, Garage etc.. United mainly by barely commodified electronics and tiny print runs of 7“s and later cassettes (although somewhat morbidly respectable by today’s sales standards). All of this decentralised music making makes an easily digestible guide all but impossible. And exactly like many of the Uk post punk bands that inspired our italian wave movement, our bands faded into domesticity and obscurity soon after their ninyl debuts. No Depeche Mode and no Cure here in Italy, just a pair of bands like litfiba & Diaframma that were arguably the most successful, carving out a career that’s now spanned (amazingly) four decades. but we're more interested in the ones that couldn't survived the passing of time. This is a simple "homage" to them through a compilation of  updated sounds from  those "now reformed" heroes of italian wave... a little adventure in the music from a far decade which we don't want to become another forgotten story.

martedì 25 settembre 2012

In the days of our lucky days...


Hey my friends, what about the most original italian music of the eighties... no, i'm not talking about post punk amenities and joydivisionesque songs, no cure whispers and no bunnymen guitars... what i'm talking about are vocoders, computers big as a car & cheap synthetizers, great chorus and build-up, bad English accents, and cheesy synthesized melodies to give you an idea. This was Italo disco. N.o.i.a. were the champions of this style,  born out of the ashes of us disco music in the late 70s and probably a natural evolution of disco dance music.  They collected some interesting recordings in the eighties, starting with strong Kraftwerk influences but learning the Moroder lesson about dance music. No one understood that they were a great group just because they were quite ironic with their "summer tourists on the beach" look, fresh and funny at first sight, but good musicians at last... for those who loose this golden period (yes, they have a little commercial success too!) of italian wave, here's a "journey to the center of love" with their classic songs we're still dancing to...