Having listened to a lot of music in what we call the genre of italo disco (or even “European space disco”) over the years, for me it’s sort of like a never-ending layered onion: the more you listen to it the more you discover more increasingly obscure tracks in the genre. Many artists and producers in the genre — at least in my observation — tend to put out a handful of 12″s or singles and then that’s it. In some cases, European artists that usually work in other genres might take a crack at a doing a release in that style, especially those that may have had some momentum going for themselves in previous decades and then look to re-invent themselves with the technological advancements of the 1980s (ie: synths).
Closer to home here in the UK, an artist like Brian Auger comes to mind. A renowned British R&B organist of the 60s and 70s — most notably with Steampacket (an early musical venture for singer Rod Stewart) and then Brian Auger & The Trinity with Julie Driscoll (Driscoll’s cover of “This Wheel’s On Wire” ended up being used as the theme song for UK sitcom Absolutely Fabulous) — Auger even had his stab at doing some italo with a mélange of Italian musicians with his track “Night Train To Nowhere” * in 1985, complete with what sounds like a ripping digital “pan flute” solo. There’s a clip below, with Auger rocking a keytar in some bizarre carnival setting with a trio of overtly enthusiastic female dancers.
It’s a similar case for Delanuà — the stage name for Italian rocker Domenico Ricchini — who getting into the 1980s moved over to space disco and synth. Delanuà only released three singles, the first being Flood in 1980 that’s a jaunty 6/8 number with some triumphant sounding, noodle-y synth fingerwork. Another was yet another 6/8 number called Pollution with some robot vocoder action released in 1991 that’s oddly labelled as house/techno. This track seems to reference the overall vibe of Flood that came a decade earlier.
And then there’s a third — a track “How Many Fill” which came out as a single in 1982. It’s a more synthier disco number with a perplexing title — likely a “lost in translation” thing as English was likely not his first language. This track has appeared on numerous italo disco mixes done by DJs in the genre, some of those being friends or acquaintances I know. It’s a track that stands out, as well as sticking out like a sore thumb for me, mainly due to what I perceive as a number of glaring flaws in the production.
Starting off the composition contains obvious arrangements and rhythms that tick off any given number of italo disco trademarks of the time, things then start to go “weird” at the 1m04s mark of this track. After the first chorus of the song, there is a breakdown and from there goes into an extended synth solo. Here, the lead synth and the bass line are probably close to a full semi-tone out of tune from one another, and for me was pretty chaotic when I first listened to it.
This was during the days of classic analogue synths, with digital tuning of oscillators just on the horizon. So for all you readers out there that work with synthesizers — especially old analogue beasts — make sure you tune your synths before you start laying down those tracks!
Then, at the 1m34s mark, it would seem the bass synth here is played by hand in a very loose, badly timed rhythm that would definitely not be able to be done using a sequencer, which were still relatively still in their early days of use in music production. Maybe this track was produced in the deep hours of the morning after the whole crew “hit the powdery slopes” ahead of getting down to the business of writing and recording. Or maybe they were on an extremely tight deadline, or had to get it all done in one session. I’ll likely never know.
To give some credit to the musicians here, some of the lead synth lines are played quite well and with some technical expertise, despite the weird technical flaws that if anything make the track an interesting listen. The fingerwork of some of the synths shows a bit more apparent skill in that field than some of the more recent synth/darkwave that keep things safe by sequencing pretty much everything and relegating what fingerwork they actually do to very, very simple one-note lead lines or basic pads. And for the flaws? At least for me perhaps they’re a bit of “fresh air” against a lot of sequenced electronic music that can at times be devoid of character with absolute precision being so easily done with computers and cutting edge hardware that’s available these days.
A completely different angle at looking at this is that there’s a lot of underground punk and post-punk that get obsessed over that isn’t technically proficient — if not just downright messy — that is deemed “proper” punk or whatever. Maybe this track could be seen that way, although I highly doubt the influence of punk was a major contributing factor to the drive behind this track, as punks working with synths in those days tended to work in styles more dark and obtuse, and generally not jaunty disco jams.
Let’s just say it’s a fun listen, and digging through the genre over the years there’s many tracks I’ve come across with absolutely bizarre production and arrangements!
* There’s a vocal sample in this track that’s pretty much the same one featured in the hit “Firestarter” by The Prodigy released over a decade later, if you listen closely. This sample comes from the track “Close To The Edit” (1984) by British experimental synth group Art Of Noise.