I’ve been on a little bit of a pissy italo kick lately. All viked out, I decided i am naturally more interested into the ones with the female singer with thick accents and strange English lyrics. I’m pretty sure most of these italo singers couldn’t even speak English but it seems to be a very validating theme for the genre. Anyway, the accent sounds sexy and when its accompanied by cheesy digital voice samples, heavy voice reverb, regal ass strings, bells or brass synths, and/or anything reminding the listener of castle ball rooms, crystal glass, mirrored platters, gold chandeliers and colors magenta, lime, and blue its a recipe for a italo hit.
the following are good examples of this:
Alba - Only Music Survives
Reverbed assed out piano starts it off in soulful style only achievable by a white person. Think white-soul(khaki shirt unbuttoned, makes you wince a little soul). Arpeggioed bass and playful support synths are led by synthetic strings. the singers voice sounds distant and delayed. Chorus has some kind of distortion synth bullshit. Female voice sounds very filtered like shes singing inside the middle of a cloud or something. Like you can only see her silhouette maybe. Only Music Survives is about love and the future, just like almost every italo song.. ever.
Big Ben Tribe - Tarzan Loves The Summernight.
This track just fucking rocks, snappy digital samples glitter this track, it sounds sun-bleached and bright from the very start. Evil whip snapping snares, phat bass, awesome lyrics, wicked breakdown, wet ass tribal shirtless Phil Collins style drums. The song seems to be about some imaginative ideal love fantasy. Song mentions dragons for some weird reason.
Clock On 5- Take It
Maybe i shouldn’t include this track because it has a male lead, buts so silly I’m leaving it in… ”Take It’ includes horrible accent and lyrics, playful/childish and confusing style music paired with lyrics solely about making love. Seems to me like the song should be called ‘Take ME’. Its catchy and rare-ish i guess. It was probably the Wuss-Pop of its day. The song reminds me of one of those USA spaceships that you place quarters into and place toddlers in for minute rides, only this one has some shitty 70’s erotic space backdrop painted on velvet.
Fun Fun - Colour My Love (Original Mix)
Dope track all around. Crazy girls sing while flash dancing in unison. who cares if i can’t understand anything they say. Fun Fun’s produced by Alvaro Ugolini who made Advance’s ‘Take Me To The Top’ previously featured on this blog. His stuff always rocks. When they sing ‘colour my love’ its clear that they are saying ‘colour’, and not the American ‘color’.
Fun Fun - Happy Station
This Track is even more energized than ‘Colour My Love’ sounds like a sewing machine just sewing stitching all over some person who’s trying to dance while sweating heavily in brightly coloured flowing clothing. The digital vocal sampling is over the fucking top. That sewing machine just doesn’t quit stitching over their smiling faces till you can’t even understand what the lyrics are.
Funky Family - Funky Is On
This track an italo ballad or something. I still can’t understand what is sung in the chorus and refuse to look up lyrics or find any info about this artist or this track. It’s a pretty dope track though and a good example of bad lyrics and bad accents. Sounds like some little girl just screaming from the mountain tops while it rains some kind of bright peach coloured rain. Maybe it sounds like some morning fruit juice commercial.
Helen - Witch
Pretty sick track. Lots of delay and reverb and ‘toms. The singer is obviously surrounded by chandeliers in some fogged out cave. The ground I’m sure is wet and covered in broken glass slippers and rubber mice. The signers accent Isn’t too bad in this one, but i personally just can’t catch what shes saying.. probably something about love, or the future, or both.
Sheila B. Devotion - Your Love Is Good(Remix)
Sheila B. is super cool. Shes a French singer but her accent is no better than they Italians. Great lyrics through and through though. Its a bit of a slower track. I gotta give it to her though..
This track happens to be about love.
Sheila B. Devotion - Misery
The French created existentialism, so it only makes sense they would make an upbeat disco happy ass track about misery. Lyrics rock and is catchy as hell. I’m only including this for laughs.
Sylvia Love - Extraterrestrial Lover
You listen to it. Its awesome, and for some reason difficult to find on the net. This track actually has nothing to do with the rest. Its just fucking A+. I apologize my copy couldn’t be of even better quality.
Vivien Vee - Destiny
Vivian Vee is super hot and has a awesome voice and can’t speak English at all. This is pretty dope track. Just listen closely, you can almost hear her reading the lyric notes in the booth and not understanding any of it, both nostrils covered in white.
Vivien Vee - Higher
More of her stuff, this particualr track is all ‘castled’ out, as one friend put it. Marble floors, roaring fire. Just an awesome track though, it seems just as much about the instrumentation as the singing. her accent makes it what it is though.
For the past 2 months I’ve been craving ambient music for some strange reason. This is a first for me, I can only guess its the mild gray winter weather hitting us and maybe my deep opiate binges ruining my life. Ambient I especially dig is the techy based stuff because of its ghostly sterilized white surgical-safe synthetic pads and bass that usually accompany it. My personal favorite track i have found so far has got to be ‘Will you know where to find me’ by BVDUB.(his site offers free 80min bvdub mixes) This was the last track featured on the Pop Ambient 2010 collection. The track is over 17 minutes of slow sympathizing chords and evolving soundscape made mostly of blissful guitars strumming and haunting voices, reverbed-out until clean and sterile. I keep on coming back to this one, and personally think its his best track so far. It sounds like the sunrise if you were in some fantastic weird marble castle courtyard covered in English Ivy, thorny vines with purple flowers all waving in the wind. It would only make sense in a dream. The castles sparkling marble hallways are matte white and appear to almost glow as the sun rises. Slowly the track changes from pitch black, to purple, red, to bright orange. It’s a really beautiful track.
