La musica si muove appena: The ILM ITALO Poll (Results Thread)

some real choice cuts on this mix. also now i want limoncello

https://soundcloud.com/welcometorimini/lymoon17-suonodilimone

Diving into what could be the most amazingly uncool genre ever created https://t.co/Fn7MFnW6DT

— Pitchfork (@pitchfork) May 7, 2021

I was bummed he only hit me up for the top tracks at the end and I wasn’t interviewed for the article! Same thing happened a few years later when FIAT sponsored a boiler room Italo night. I was added at the end to a panel that included Josh from Dark Entries, Justin Strauss and Charlie Grappone from Vinylmania records. They had already booked the DJ lineup, I had to “offer” my services and Boiler room said “well we could put you on in the hour after the doors open but before the broadcast starts, from 9 to 10 and we can only pay you $300 but I assume you wouldn’t want that”. I was like uh, that sounds ok.

I started DJing to a huge empty room as people started filing in and by 9:45 had a full room of people dancing. At 10 I handed it over to Cheon and his Honey Soundsystem pals and the broadcast started. The other DJ’s that night were Jacques Renault, Juan Maclean and Nancy Whang and Disclosure. While talking to Josh and Jacques they both said something like “we’re gonna play Italo mixed with other stuff, who wants to hear just Italo?” And I was like if there’s ever a night to just play Italo this is it!

Sorry Classixx, not Disclosure. The panel is online if you want to watch it. Jacques also made an Italo mix for it that was great.

Oh dear! I dearly love mixing italo with all sorts of stuff and love the change of energy you can get juxtaposing with other stuff, but you are right there is a time and a place and there’s real pleasure in hearing a 100% set. The cynic in me might see it as an easy cop-out, because purely playing a set of pure italo with the sometimes difficult non-standard intros and infinite possibilities of clashing notes can take a lot of knowledge or planning.

It's 3 AM on a Saturday night, and I have stumbled upon this sleek Greek Italo-ish track, which begins with the lines "I feel a burger inside me me me me / I feel a jazzburger in my brain brain brain " and it's earnest, beautiful, even sexy, and the LP cover is ridiculous and hints it's a soundtrack to something called Jazzburger so what am I going to do? I had to tell someone about it.

Loukas Thanos - Jazzburger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn1uawSuUec

What‘s not to love.

that cover art is amazing

incredible

Hell yes

sick song! 1984, i guess! https://www.discogs.com/Loukas-Thanos-Jazzburger/release/2195376

I feel a burger inside me
I feel a jazzburger in my brain
I feel my skin erupting
something's running (?) in my head
something is collapsing down me
i feel like i'm coming (?) again

we're searching
we're moving
we're flying
through the ecstasy

It sounds timeless, because Jazzburgers are evergreen. Can’t imagine what it was supposed to soundtrack. There are a number of italo style records, that, perhaps because of the English translation, have strange sexual imagery, and this may be one of them.

beautiful chorus on this one:

colors - lonely night (technicolor version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcKOHcFDx7U

^^ always been my favorite mix of that track

I'm super into "Fire Lady" by Christal lately. Vocal is very nice, but might prefer the instrumental because I want that extra-groovy/deep chorus riff to just repeat forever.

Instrumental
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMaFS41wjz0

Vocal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz-J3zJVqZ8

Definitely the instrumental. The vocals on the chorus aren’t nearly as good as on the verses, it’s crying out for a dub mix. (But then I almost always prefer instrumental italo unless it’s something like Righeira.)

Thanks for the thread bump tho, I was recently searching for the most active italo threads but missed this one. Seems like it’s basically the default rolling italo thread. And now I have an excuse to devote my day to italo.

I’m currently smitten with the Donato Dozzy edit of Space Operator that I linked in the italo POX thread but maybe it’s too cosmic for some dance floors.

The deeper I go into Italo, the more I appreciate the vocals and the questionable/ridiculous lyrics. Sometimes I listen to to the instrumental side of a record first and try to guess what will be sung over the backing track, and when the vocals end up being super weird or high-pitched it’s very satisfying. Take “Hold Me” by Squires or “Golden Queen” by A.Avenue, for instance. The vocals totally disrupt any of the hipster cool of the backing track, like an obnoxious party crasher.

I would totally do an italo listening thread if we had enough people and interest in it. Could also include ‘80s eurodisco (from Spain, Sweden, French, Belgium, and Germany etc) as there is a lot of overlap in sound and style there.

Personally I’d rapidly lose interest if the subject was broadened to all eurodisco. It seems like from other recent activity around here, there might be more interest in the overlap between italo, US boogie disco and possibly some post-disco (although that could be more my own pet subgenre).

I actually like those vocals on Hold Me. I see what you mean tho, they are a bit ridiculously kitschy.

I mean, one could just open things up to all ‘80s dance music then.

Hi-NRG and eurodisco aren’t too far from italo (See “Love Spy” or “Right by the moon”) yet seem to have always been less in vogue. Kind of feel they are both still ripe for some rediscovery beyond Patrick Cowley and Bobby Orlando. Whereas Boogie is usually more classy so it brings in plenty of people who like R&B, funk, soul, and disco, as well your regular record nerds/cratediggers. It’s almost too well-done most of the time to sit alongside Italo’s cheese, but they are definitely some records that blur the line. A lot of Full Time records stuff comes to mind.

no please give me more eurodisco!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d7SJPWzuDw

Love it

(That’s “Nathalie Letertre - Reveur” in case the video becomes lost to time)

Squires Hold Me vox are awesome!

Beautiful track!

I’ve long ago went passed the wormhole of preferring instrumental, tracky, italo into almost always preferring vocal versions, and exapanding out into hi-nrg, eurodisco and almost anything else not considered “tasteful” among 80s dance music.

Not in the same league perhaps, but the Nathalie Letertre track reminded me of this tucked away French synth-pop track I dig.

Bibi Flash - Voyage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=243g89oTatY

i definitely have a high tolerance for cheesy/weird italo vocal styles, although i guess i can see on a dance floor how they might be off-putting

another great bibi flash track is “vie privée” - i mixed it into “the pleasure principle” at a DJ night once and it worked beautifully imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQEHPAJn-Xo

<3 chews and donna

I feel I have heard "Voyage" before somewhere, digging it.

Also liking Logo's swift-and-spacey "Bossa Nova 'till the end" right now, although I was pretty sold on the title alone. I don't know if it was because of P-Lion, but I enjoy how much saxophone shows up in italo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tJY4-7RThs

nice French posts! Reminds me of Jennifer Planisphere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd1k5DCYemA

which is a good outro for Patrizia Pellegrino's Automaticamore...

I like the vocal for Jennifer planisphere, and the mid tempo instrumental version (posted up thread) is one of my ALL TIME favorites. Sort of like an italo take on “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” (aside from the actual italo take on MCMR by Clock on Five).

Moscu_ion (amazingly prolific italo/eurodisco youtuber) either deleted their youtube account or had it terminated. A bummer! They were responsible for a lot of videos on this thread (they all now show as unavailable). I was in the middle of attempting to listen to all 5,000 songs they had posted, and was finding a lot of gems.

whoa, truly a bummer! heard a lot of great stuff thanks to that account :(

a "hi-nrg" mix I made a few weeks ago for a radio show, with much italo and italo-adjacent sounds. Arguably more "italo" than "hi-nrg" but who's counting?

https://soundcloud.com/the-magic-message/009-magic-message-radio-dan-selzer-womr-921-wfmr-913?fbclid=IwAR3Gs4TSPHALkZWUCktQuKhQN09rUQ45dqDhhIrw62CTqcTFkUTyqC-TFFw

xxpost:
https://www.discogs.com/user/moscuionica/collection?header=1
7,000+ (mostly italo?) in the collection of discogs user moscuionica (aka Moscu ION)
maybe this can help you continue your dive, Michael?

Two awesome posts 😎

I need to dig out that Data track you start the mix with, I sued to play that a lot when I discovered it. An underrated gem.

thanks. Yeah they've got a few gems, and the b-side of that single is great too. A-O (No Bungalow), which I have an italo version of as well and played on the Lot a few weeks back. A fair amount of italo in here: https://soundcloud.com/thelotradio/superimpositions-special-guest-dan-selzer-the-lot-radio-12-20-2021

On my second listen to the mix now. What’s the track around 7:30ish? I’ve heard CC:Disco play it before and couldn’t work out what it was then either.

Ashaye - Electricity.

Complete tracklist:

1. Data - Living Inside Me
2. Vicious Pink - Cccan’t You See
3. Ashaye - Electricity
4. Peppermint - Light a Light (US Mix)
5. Klein and M.B.O. - Keep In touch (Dub)
6. Tapps - My Forbidden Lover
7. Shy Rose - I Cry For You
8. Gotcha - You’re Wrong
9. Hotline - Guilty
10. New York Models - Love on Video
11. Jock Hattle - Yes No Family
12. Los Angeles TF - Everlasting Fever
13. Amanda Lear - Love Your Body
14. Ramming Speed - When You Walk in the Room (Instrumental American mix)
15. Azul Y Negro - La Noche
16. Rofo - Flashlight on a Disconight
17. Lauren Grey - Putting the Night on Hold
18. Vera - Baby Won’t You Dance With Me
19. Charlene Davis - Aggression
20. Lime - Babe, We’re Gonna Love Tonite
21. Phyllis Nelson - Don’t Stop the Train

Man, Ashaye really covered some ground in his not especially extensive discography. 'Fantasy' on Strictly Rythym is a pretty good house tune but 'Dreaming (Jungle Mix)' is like one of the holy grails of UK streetsoul, amazing song. And his first release was the closest he ever got to a hit and that was a medley of Michael Jackson songs - mercurial guy.

only noticed when playing this time that it was written/produced by Andy Sojka from Atmosfear, of Dancing in Outer Space and Motivation UK Jazz Funk fame.

Sojka was also a key figure in UK streetsoul, all that stuff on Elite. And was involved with Level 42s early stuff as well iirc

Interesting that he'd dabble in hi-nrg. The big UK figure I think of in hi-nrg is Ian Levine, who came out of the Northern Soul scene. He's behind the Ramming Speed on my mix, which is the instrumental of a cover version of the Searchers classic.

I’ve played that Ramming Speed track quite a bit, an evergreen bargain bin staple in record shops round here.

I dug out Everlasting Fever on Friday and gave it a spin at our mainly italo-focussed night after being reminded how good it was on your mix.

Also played on Friday by another DJ was this one I don‘t recall being aware of before, but I am currently addicted to:

Bryvan Stage - Wayout!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBsiC9K-ZSI

new to me track i heard a DJ play at an italo night tonight, so killer

Jerry Moon - Over and Over

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlqPntfyxEk

^That's awesome.

I heard this for the first time earlier this year, probably the most beautiful italo track I've ever heard (doesn't seem to be mentioned in this thread):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhUQ34YWT38

Over and Over is great...kills me when even the repressing are 25 dollars plus.

another nicolosi family banger:

Angie Care - Your Mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grzsNOJAgq4

Great memories of one of my DJ partners playing this down the years, such a beautiful heartbreaker.

Heard this one on a Hysteric mix recently and it really caught my ear.

Alfredo E. Muschietti – Winner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCGqeU0JRsU

Also been enjoying this one I had overlooked previously involving some of the people behind Mr Flagio.

Art of Love - Looking Through The Night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-wWhSVhzDM

love both of those!

another big weepy number:

Alyne - Over the Sky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG3nLpZUukw