Pop Blog: Sally Shapiro and Italo-Disco
December 1st, 2009
posted by Ciaran Gaynor
Looking for respite from the cold, drizzly Irish winter, but unable to fork out for a trip to foreign climes? You don’t need to leave your sitting room, just put an Italo-disco record into your CD deck or mp3 player and prepare to travel into outer-space. This is the greatest music in the entire universe.
Italo-disco flourished on continental Europe long after disco had peaked in the United States or United Kingdom. It is associated with Rimini, a seaside resort in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagne - arguably the nitelife capital of southern Europe until Ibiza came along and stole its crown. But the Italo-disco sound was by no means restricted to a few clubbers on the Adriatic coast. A Polish variant called disco-polo was successful in Eastern Europe, and many of the genre’s best practitioners were French or German. Before long, Italo was everywhere and became the pan-European pop standard. A classic of the genre, Living On Video, was written and recorded by the distinctly Canadian Trans X. Although the term Italo covers a broad range of music, the key components of the Italo sound are lyrical references to outer space or robots, lots of whooshing noises, hyper-melodic tunes (to the point of sounding a bit cheesy) and backing vocals that go “ohh-ohh-woah” or “oh-OHHH-oh” (well it’s difficult to capture in print isn’t it). Some key artists are Spagna, Alphaville, and Modern Talking; and the best known Italo hits are Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy and Raf’s Self Control (which, possibly owing to English listeners’ suspicion of European pop, needed a cover by Laura Brannigan to get a leg up into the UK top 10). This music has its roots in gay clubs, in Hi-NRG and europop. Basically most 80s europop is Italo-disco, but you know you’re on the right track if the song has a broken English lyric about falling in love with a space-robot from the future.
Italo-disco has had a surprising, but welcome influence over pop in 2009. An underappreciated album of recent months, Sally Shapiro’s My Guilty Pleasure, is a great example of Italo-influenced dance pop. Sally Shapiro is actually the pseudonym of a Swedish duo, consisting of John Agebjorn and well, no-one really knows who the singer is. Not that it matters: part of the fun of this genre is the anonymity of the people who make it. This anonymity harks back to the Italo-house boom of the very late 80s, when acts like Black Box and The 49ers raided the charts and had models front the act, miming on Top of the Pops to a sampled vocal from Loleatta Holloway or some similar soul “diva”. Whoever the singer, My Guilty Pleasure is an utterly joyous record from start to finish, replete with handclaps and melody heaped upon melody, heaped upon yet more melody. Looking At The Stars and Moonlight Dance are simply sublime and the record’s sunny holiday atmosphere is completely addictive. The thunder crashes on Miracle are a perfectly over-the-top touch; this record isn’t understated, nor is it earnest in the slightest but it is as deserving of your attention as the work of Annie or Little Boots.
The Italo revival follows on from recent spectacular nu-Balearic releases by Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve, Lindstrom and Cut Copy. This music sits comfortably with the notion of Balearic house; that is the attitude adopted by DJ Alfredo at Amnesia in the mid 80s whereby ideas of credibility and cool are tossed out the window in favour of anything goes eclecticism. Balearic is completely anti-elitist, playful and laid-back. Italo-disco was often a feature of Balearic sets, so it’s no surprise that the style has had something of a rennaissance of late. Annie’s very Italo single (even the sleeve parodies Italo artwork) Antonio sums this sentiment up perfectly, a sad but beautiful love letter to a failed holiday romance which captures the end-of-summer pathos of the Balearic scene brilliantly. On Annie’s MySpace page she was befriended by the aforementioned Anthonio, who offered an answer song called Annie leading to a bizarre kind of Italo-themed pop ping pong. Like the subjects of many holiday romance boasts, Anthonio doesn’t actually exist - he is the creation of Annie and her co-producer Richard X, but it was all a brilliant wheeze all the same.
Take the silly lyric from Sheila & B Devotion’s Spacer, add the throbbing electro-disco sound of Magic Fly by Space and mix with the hedonism of Cerrone’s Supernature and you have the basic recipe for Italo-disco. It’s cheering to hear contemporary pop acts have a stab at capturing the Italo sound. Royksopp and Robyn came up with a gloriously Italo lyric for their single The Girl and the Robot. Little Boots is hugely influenced by Italo-disco, and not just in terms of artwork, you can hear its influence all over her album Hands, and particularly so on Stuck On Repeat and recent single Earthquake. Italo’s influence even spreads to Lady Gaga; just listen to Alejandro from the Fame Monster - it has the requisite oompa-oompa bassline, over-abundance of melody and cod foreign accent. For a neat and seriously amazing experience - one which invokes the spirit of the Studio 54, Paradise Garage and Amnesia in one fell swoop - track down Strut’s Horse Meat Disco compilation. Named after a club night which takes place in Vauxhall in London, expect slow-grooves, gay disco euphoria and daffy songs about outer-space a-plenty. The trembling voice of a worse-for-wear reveler, which opens the set, is worth the admission price alone. Other highlights include Karen Young’s “Detour”, Gino Soccio’s “It’s Alright” and Fern Kinney’s “Love Me Tonight”. Similarly, the recently released Disco Discharge series of CDs provides a great opportunity to familiarize yourself with the roots of Italo. There are discs devoted to “Disco Ladies”, “Classic Disco”, “Gay Disco and Hi-NRG” and “Euro Disco”. The Euro Disco themed disc features Raf, Sheila B Devotion and Giorgio Moroder. These CDs perfectly capture the hedonism and fun of disco generally and Italo-disco specifically. Buy them now and banish the winter blues for good.
Sally Shapiro’s My Guilty Pleasure is out now on Permanent Vacation.
Disco Discharge is out now on Harmless Records.
Horse Meat Disco is on Strut Records.
Tags: Balearic, Disco Discharge, Horse Meat Disco, Italo-disco, Sally Shapiro
