Italo Disco, Italo Disco

The presenters of the Italian music show Discoring (produced by RAI), usually referred to the Italian productions of what later would became Italo Disco as "Rock Elettronico" and "Balli da Discoteca" (disco dance). This first version of Italo Disco sounded like a down tempo version of Space Disco, a short lived Eurodisco instrumental style with futuristic sound effects and lyrics heavily influenced by David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars band.

Typical songs were simple with catchy melodies, and were often sung using vocoders and overdubs. Much of the genre featured love-song lyrics sung in English with heavy foreign accents. English was more often than not the artists' second language, creating lyrics that were often considered to be almost nonsensical. Along with love, italo disco themes deal with robots and space, sometimes combining all three in songs including "Robot is Systematic" (1982) by 'Lectric Workers and "Spacer Woman"(1983) by Charlie.

Italian producers are still producing songs for the Japanese (super) Eurobeat market in 2007. This evolving sound of Italo disco, involves a much higher BPM, as well as more rapid synth-lines and faster vocals. The genre itself upped the BPM in the late 80s, all the way into the 2000s. While the genre has seen many recent releases with slower BPM, the sound still remains true to what the Japanese fans call "the Eurobeat style". The two most famous labels of this genre include A-Beat-C Records and Hi-NRG Attack. Two record labels that produced Italo Disco in the past, S.A.I.F.A.M. and Time, now produce Eurobeat music for Japan.

Its renewed popularity is inspiring re-releases and new mixes on many of the record labels that initially released Italo Disco. ZYX records has released many new CD mixes since 2000. and labels like Panama Records and Radius Records have gone through great lengths to find the original artists of obscure Italo tracks for re-release on vinyl.

In the UK, that twist seems to lead to "Scouse house" The Swiss artist Harre Money (pronounced rmani, like the world wide famous Italian designer) released in 2006 an album called The Picture of Dorian Gray , which included many Italo Disco like tracks. His shows are also characterized by a theatrical performance reminiscent of the eccentric 80s style.

Source: Wikipedia > Italo Disco