A Retrospective of Italian Records | IRMA import
By MICHAEL FREEDBURG | June 14, 2006
PROGENITORS: Confuzed Disco reissues Italian disco |
From Bologna’s IRMA label comes this two-CD reissue of Italian disco tracks from 1978 to 1982, when musicians inspired by the work of Giorgio Moroder and Jean-Marc Cerrone started creating songs that would lead to the next era’s techno. These 25 tracks were no mere copies. Here was a sharply electronic, sound-effected, atmospheric music full of speeded-up funk and slowed-down soul, goofy and tipsy, with heavily accented (and thus beguiling) English-language vocals as well as some in French and Spanish. Here too were soundscapes creating the impression of flying (or just drifting) in space, in search of dreamboat lovers and even dreamier bliss, a kind of disco equivalent of the Who’s “Magic Bus.” That weightlessness is the message of N.O.I.A.’s “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Funky Family’s “Funk Is On,” Answering Service’s “Call Me Mr. Telephone” (later covered by Cheyne, whose version became a dance-music hit), A.I.M.’s “Thailand Seeds,” and Gaz Nevada’s “Going Underground” — dream pop for sure, contemporaneous with the even dreamier work of Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins.
On the Web
Confuzed Disco: http://www.mantravibes.com/confuzed/wp/
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