Italo Disco RFI

den harrow's "broken radio" is fantastic (and a useful educational record as well)

i'm hearing some italo disco stuff for the first time, i love it. like regular disco, but cheesier!

but as a (not really all that clued in) dj, i must know - is this stuff still cool, or is it's trendyness a thing of the past? seems like i still hear ilm'ers people namedropping the whole italo thing on other threads, but then i can't help but notice no one's updated this thread in a while...

Italo is like electro in that it'll always be cool.

that's what i thought - hard to see how this stuff could ever not be cool!

btw thanks for answering my dumb question :)

Not strictly all italo, but Intergalactic Gary is an awesome DJ and well worth checking out.

This is a great set he played at the Bleep43 party in London in Feb:

http://www.bleep43recordings.com/mixes/IGBleepFeb09.mp3

Italo covers so much more stuff than people realize that writing it off is like saying "disco isn't cool anymore", which some people do anyway, but just because slavishly reviving chicago house circa 86 is cooler now, even though the debt chicago house circa 86 pays to Italo is great.

I was listening to righeira all weekend

Are you going to the beach?

no—i dont have any money

http://discohorror.blogspot.com/2009/05/vamos-la-playa-hater.html

^^^ featuring an a++++ dad joke fyi

if i do say so myself

<3 that blog post even if it meant i had to read a blog

i still like chopin btw

max, i heart you. i have both the righeira and Miami's 12"s of that song

also, how come those dudes can't dance on the beat together?

mentioned forever ago upthread, but peep it cuz it's great:

magazine 60 - don quichote

http://discohorror.blogspot.com/2009/05/lesson-in-literature.html

anyone knows the lyrics to dharma's plastic doll?

anyone know any good italo mixes?

The mixeshereare possibly my absolute favorite Italo mixes. Enjoy!

Sorry about the crowded text in that link there.

thanks :)

http://www.robotsforrobots.net/

any specific mixes to recommend from those websites?

Have a listen to the Intergalactic Gary mix I posted upthreada if you haven't already.

holy crap, almost 0,5 GB! i hope it's worth it.

Completely.

i am currently obsessed with Ris- Love-N-Music . way too fucking good.

yes! loved when bus station john dropped it last week (like two minutes before i left)

esp. the "my boyfriend's a music jock" line

o, you're in SF too?

oakland, til the end of august

w/ frequent trips to SF i'm sure

OH! hey, what's the deal with drinks, j03? might be tied up tonight...

but i'm going to be in oakland on Sunday. great reading at 21 Grand...

ah I freak out anytime I hear "Love and Music." There was some other italo-related thread somewhere where people went on about it a bit. I need a copy of that record. Such a magical chord progression!

I'll play it tonight in NYC.

well I'll try to make it but we'll see...

Digging into this stuff this weekend (ok, I'm about a decade late into Italo) -- but this Overfitted Disco mix is pretty great:

http://misteritalo.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-spaced-out-disco-mix-from-robot.html
Milkways Galactic reaction Barclay 1978
Keyboards Affair Tubular bells Polydor 1983
The Black Angel Change an angel (instr) American Disco 1983
M-Basic OK, run Deejay 1983
Elitechnique Spectral escape Radius 2006
Electrick Dragon Davorite Moustache 2009
Tanya Jackson Twisted Love (instr.) Sizzle 1984
Kano Ikeya seki Teldec 1984
Lucy Montenegro Lucy loves hairy boys Moustache 2009
Crazy Gang Every Sunday (extended edit) Flexx 2006
N.O.I.A. True love ZYX 1984
Mirage Change your life (instr.) Memory 1984
Revolving eyes Do your time on the planet Moderne Rec. 2007
Rude 66 Deeper space woman Loeb 2008
Alden Tyrell Odessa theme Clone 2005
Doctor's Cat Watch out! ZYX 1983
Q The voice of Q Philly World Records 1982

That mix looks good. Thx for the link!

look forward to trying out the Overfitted Disco mix, looks promising.

(btw, Capitaine, those dmp mixes you linked to above are freaking amazing)

I should add that (what I think is) Mirage's Change your life (instr.) Memory from the Overfitted mix (it comes in about 42 minutes in) is absolutely incredible Moroder-esque throb.

(wait, it might be Revolving Eyes' Do your time on the planet -- who fucking knows, regardless, it's awesome)

As I keep coming back to the Overfitted Disco Spaced Out Disco Mix (and the good-but-overrated Mixed Up at the Hague Vol. 1 mix on which is an instrumental mix) I feel compelled to note that Q's "The Voice of Q" is a fucking Italo godsend. It's not really Italo, as it's a couple of black American dudes. But holy shit, the popping bass, the haunting whistle melody and vocoder, and the "why doesn't any soul singer sing like THAT anymore" vocal make me wish these guys did something/anything else.

firstly, haven't we already established that "italo" doesn't have to be from italy?

secondly, I'm being ornery because you badmouthed Mixed Up at the Hague, but it's hard to call it overrated. It has it's flaws, but when it came out, it was a real game-changer for so many people. We would likely not be having this conversation if that mix wasn't released. And while they seem like familiar canon classics now, at the time Spacer Woman, Mr. Flagio, World Invasion etc, even that particular mix of Dirty Talk, were all pretty damn obscure and that's a lot of classics to have one one mix.

So, is all electro soul "Italo," then? I mean, what distinguishes, say, the Jonzun Crew from Q (aside from "Voice of Q" being better than anything on the former's record barring maybe "Ground Control")? Are Jonzun Crew "Italo" too? Are Kraftwerk? I guess that was what disappointed me about Mixed Up at the Hague 1 -- it seemed more like a collection of (mostly great) contemporaneous dance tracks than anything that existed along any kind of thematic continuum.

We could probably debate this ad nauseum, but I feel like the easiest way to determine if a track is Italo is by asking the following question:

Would the Pet Shop Boys like it?

(I'm not actually kidding -- and in this case, I don't think they would. Plus, I think Dan's soft spot for electro is clouding his vision here)

The one group that's actually Italian that kind of makes me question this line of thinking is Kano who are possibly my favorite Italo act...tho something about the debut strikes me as the kind of thing Neill Tennant might appreciate.

by the time the term "italo" started gaining popularity, particularly in the US, it was used to define a certain type or early 80s euro-disco/synth-pop, and generally nobody gets too disturbed when stuff like World Invasion gets lumped in with the term. Electro is one of the key ingredients in italo, so there's crossover, but generally italo is more poppy.

I know they've been around for a while but I need to rep for the two You Can Trust A Man With A Moustache EP's. If only because nobody on ILM has mentioned them.

just glad to see someone repping for "Ground Control" ...heavy stuff indeed!

yo, i repped for ground control on my site back on 10.07.07

that does't really mean much, just joining in on the repping.

xxpost: listened to 2 overfitted disco mix and I could barely finish it. it's the mixing.

How do you mean? It's def. smoother than the mixing on, say, Mixed Up in the Hague Vol. 1 (sorry, Dan) -- and that's legit.