This is a piece I wrote for
theconceptionist.com:
Italo Disco, put in basic terms, is the cool tonic after the electronic frenzy of the last few years. It's the music of class and black cabs and silence and smoke. It's what you hear when you stare across an open dancefloor at a girl you realise does not give a shit about you...
...Woah, heavy guy! It also has a somewhat goofier past, as most dance music genres here in Europe do. A past of fun dancing chicks, basically. Today we're going to focus on the cooler side of what Italo has become - namely a slow, icy genre obsessed with the cruising and the sailing of the most ghostly synths ever.
One of the most heartstoppingly cool tracks of 2007 was undoubtedly
Chromatics' 'In the City' (released on Italians do It Better). A seven minute groove with one of the most brittle, instantly moody riffs since Glass Candy, it paints some incredible Hopper-style mental pictures of a stoic, uncaring New York (or any city you like), with top end shrieks and subtle, stood straight basslines. Ruth Radelet (above)'s vocals are an especial luxury of breathy, midnight lust and confusion, aided by the fact that she looks for all the world like a French yé-yé girl circa 1959. In short, she's way purty.
Sweden's
Sally Shapiro represents the sweeter, daintier side of what Italo offers electro, with her quietly snowy tracks like 'I know', with an added bonus of loliti-vocal weirdness. Very MD, basically.
Another favourite is Toronto's
Parallels, AKA the guy that drums for Crystal Castles at live shows. Who knew he was such a master of crisp, popsicley kraut-disco? 'Dry Blood' and 'Magnetics' are particular robotic-Italo chillers. 'Dry Blood' especially takes the idea of the vocal as instrument to an amazing new level. It's vibrato + possessed-girl = something that makes CC's Crimewave sound like a Playskool toy. Deeply underrated.
Anyway, that's Italo Disco in 2009. Next week, Donk.
(kidding).
AndrewDS
