Patrick Cowley - Some Funkettes - Dark Entries - Italo Disco

Information on the Italo Disco Genre

Italo Disco is a very broad term, encompassing much of the dance music output in Europe during the 1980s. It is one of the world's first forms of completely electronic dance music and evolved during the late 1970s / early 1980s in Italy, Germany, and other parts of Europe.

Italo Disco music has a distinct, futuristic and spacey sound, which was created using synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders. The term, "Italo-disco" was marketed only in Europe in the early 1980s by a German record label ZYX Music.

The entry of synthesizers and other electronic effects into the disco genre produced electronic dance music, including America's Hi-NRG and Europe's Space Disco. The latter received its name because of its odd synthetic sounds, sci-fi costumes, and space-related themes. Dancers and listeners experienced something new because the artists' use of new music-shaping technologies created the perception of being in a very large space and because of the discotheques' lighting displays. Italo Disco's influences were Italian producer Giorgio Moroder, French musician Didier Marouani, a couple of hits by the French drummer Cerrone, electropop (Telex, Devo, and Gary Numan), and the early Hi-NRG albums of San Francisco producer Patrick Cowley with such singers as Sylvester and Paul Parker.

By 1980, Italo appeared as a fully developed form in Italy and other parts of Europe. Songs were sometimes completely electronic and featured drum machines, catchy melodies, vocoders, overdubs, love-song lyrics sung in English with heavy foreign accents, and, occasionally, nonsensical lyrics (due to artists' poor command of the English language). 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. Italo Disco was widely played on radio stations and in discotheques in Europe, but in the English-speaking world, it was mostly an underground phenomenon that could be heard at night clubs.

1982 and 1983 saw the releases of the irony-laden "Dirty Talk," "Wonderful," and "The M.B.O. Theme," three tracks cited as influential in the development of house, by Klein & M.B.O., a side-project developed by Davide Piatto of the Italo disco duo N.O.I.A., with vocals by Piatto and Rossana Casale.

Many see 1983 as the height of Italo, with frequent hit singles and many labels starting up around this time. Such labels included American Disco, Crash, Merak, Sensation, and X-Energy. The popular label Disco Magic released more than thirty singles within the year. It was also the year that the term italo disco was reputedly coined by Bernhard Mikulski, the founder of ZYX Music (Germany), when ZYX released their first volume of "The Best of Italo Disco" series.