#cosmo tron

[airecoloralgodon]

“Cosmo Tron” de Laserdance, del disco “Discovery Trip” (Spacesynth, Holanda, 1989).

[melodia-poetica-blog]

As disco went on the downswing in the the US, it found a new revival in Italy. Italo Disco was a late form of disco from the late 70s into 80s that utilized drum machines and synthesizers like much of other 80s music. Miffed by the lack of new disco tracks coming in from overseas, Italians got up and made their own (overblown and underdone) version of the genre. It was a lot like disco, but a little bit more club-focused and a lot-a-bit cheesier. Disco was already a lot, with big hair and flashing lights, but italo disco was even more. It’s basically stereotypical disco condensed. 

In Italy in the 80s, what the rest of the world considered italo disco was just pop. Tullio De Piscopo, above, reflects this reality. He’s still active in the Italian music scene today. As far as I can tell, he is the sort of musician who moves with the times and is extremely versatile. In the 80s he did a ton of italo disco work, although you can’t find a lot of it now except on Youtube. In 1988 he sang Andamento Lento, above, for the Festival di Sanremo. This song is a particularly good example of the genre. The combination of lyrics in English and Italian is a hallmark of the italo disco songs that actually came out of Italy, although most of them are just in English. Like regular disco, these lyrics are extremely repetitive, and the beat is heavy and active. The first lyrics of Andamento Lento, then, are rather ironic:

Come un’onda libera ti porta via / Andamento lento questa melodia 

Like a free wave this melody takes you away slowly (or, brings you slow progress)

, but they speak to the state Italy was in, wanting to still dance, to have music that would remove them from the problems they continued to have, to be caught up in music that would take them away on un’onda libera.

Italo disco faded out by the 90s, but went on to influence much of dance music in the future. Chicago house music was heavily influenced by the genre. It’s currently experiencing a weird sort of kitsch revival in dance tracks today. For example, I’ve got a feeling that Cosmo, who I talked about a couple weeks ago, was in some way influenced by the Dutch italo disco band Laserdance. They had a song Cosmo Tron (similar to Cosmo’s album title Cosmotronic) in 1989 that used a lot of the later features of italo disco, called Spacesynth. Maybe we’ll be hearing more from italo disco in coming years.