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Cosmic Euro Nation part 2
By House of Coma | January 5, 2009
While the cosmic seed had been inserted into the body of funk, a new wave of machine-driven dance records invaded the European charts. Euro-disco was born and one of its one main strands sprung out of the minds of a new generation of Italian ‘funksters’, quickly earning itself the nickname of ‘Spaghetti dance’. While most of the production failed to evade a sort of Cuban refugee nightmare, somewhere in between the ‘tropical wet shower’ feel and a poor New Order cover, a few gems rose from beneath the kitsch to invade our minds with sounds imported straight from another galaxy. Here is a subjective selection of such Italo Disco space-age rarities.
Donna Summer (produced by Giorgio Moroder) /
« I feel love » (1977)
Legendary producer Giorgo Moroder is no less than the man who single-handedly catapulted the organic sound of funk into the new age of synthetic love, thereby influencing the course of all synthetizer music, from new-wave to techno and electro. While some of Moroder’s personal hits such as “From here to eternity” (under his own name) or “La Nuit Blanche” (under the name “Munich Machine”) are pure gems of interstellar funk, his particular place in the pantheon of cosmic disco stems from the most spaced-out of all his collaborations, the aptly named “I Feel Love” by soul diva Donna Summer. Taken from her 1977 concept album “I Remember Yesterday”, the track’s production was designed to represent the ’sound of the future’. Based on the hypnotic repetition of a robotic bassline, it created a precedent in club music which all tracks ever after sought to emulate, casting into the obscurity the age of acoustic big bands and inaugurating the age of machine funk with one long ode to futuristic love and time travel. Bowie himself, who was recording some of his Berlin masterpieces with Brian Eno as producer when the song came out, has spoken of the track’s influence in terms of a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ :
“One day in Berlin … Eno came running in and said, ‘I have heard the sound of the future.’ […] he puts on ‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer […] He said, ‘This is it, look no further.’
Stefania Rotolo / « Marameo » and « UFO robot » (1979)
Only just a few years after the “I feel love” landslide, the Italian television dusted itself up and began producing a series of outrageously funny disco-infused programs. Stefania Rotolo quickly became the queen of such shows and an icon for a whole generation. These shows, which were created on the Italian public channel at the end of the 70s, incorporated disco music to produce a new form of spectacle designed to cater for the tastes of a younger, discoball-hungry generation. They focused as much on music as on the general atmosphere of the performance, from choregraphy to costumes, aiming to offer a real ‘feel’ of a disco party to the young public. Here, in these two extracts from “Tilt”, her 1979 success show, Stefania, along with her two young fabulous astro-henchmen, is seen in a mind-blowing ballet of robotic moves that make you think those kids must have spent just about the rest of their teenagehood in rehab.
La Bionda / « I wanna be your lover » (1980)
La Bionda is such an ambiguous name. It sounds like one of those nicknames which Italians are so fond of when it comes to their porn-stars reconverted as politicians. But the ”blonde girl” was in fact no blonde and not even a girl, but rather was composed of two brothers, Carmelo and Michelangelo La Bionda. Active as producers and composers throughout the 70s and 80s, they are perhaps best known as the ones the world has to thank for Righeira’s international anthem of Spanish horror, the unforgettable “Vamos a la Playa” (”We’re going to the beach”). Before pouring such wonders onto our undeserving ears though, they took the time to produce the most kitsch of all cosmic disco gems, the mesmerizing “I want to be your Lover” whose video clip itself looks like it must have been watched over a trillion times by Daft Punk. A Personal all-time hit and a special dedication to that special someone who will never take the time to read this post. Cos that’s how the cookie crumbles in the disco wonderland.
Topics: Sound |