Thursday 30 September 2021

Bite-sized Bits 13

Lothar Charoux - Horizontais (1960)


Making good on my promise from a few weeks back to expand more into the Italo Disco world - but a little different this time. I've made a big show of the inherent cheese that is present in all Italo Disco and its eventual evolution in Eurobeat, and it's an element I do love in a completley un-ironic way, however I am also aware it's very much not for everyone. So today I bring you some Italo that I think is quite far removed from that.

The vocal version might suffer a little from that classic Italo/Eurobeat pitfall of the lyrics being written by non-native speakers, but otherwise I find Spacer Woman to be much more modern sounding than the Italo I've posted before - slightly ironic as I think it'll be the oldest example I've pulled up, originally released in 1983, but I figure that might also be a factor in how different it is - it avoids a lot of Italo clichés because those they hadn't had chance to become cliché yet. I absolutely adore the spacey feel of this one, it's almost in that same 'space-synth' category as bands like... well, Space of Magic Fly fame, the way the pitch bends on the repeating melody is to die for.

I actually found this one years ago on a Vitalic mix on a complation called Colette N°7 and recently unearthed it again as I sail those Italo waters once again. At the risk of repeating myself, it does sound quite modern considering - and it's perfectly at home on Vitalic's mix of his various influences, if you're a fan of his you'll probably be able to hear some similarities here and there. I saw some folk complain about the vocal but I personally like it, while lovely, the instrumental can get a little stale over the 7 minutes. Thankfully both the instrumental and vocal are included on the single so you can have both!



And that'll be all for this time, another time where these small posts have paid off becuase it gives me a chance to talk about tracks I've been in love with recently without worrying abiut sound cohesion with 2-3 other tunes. That and who knows if I could find other Italo tracks on Bandcamp. Spacer Woman is actually a pretty popular tune and even had a new EP of reworks put out this year that you can find on that Bandcamp as well, they're pretty faithful to the original from what I've heard - no super wild genre flips that don't really fit or anything like that. It's also pretty heartwarming to see a label so old embrace Bandcamp as well, a lot of these older Italo and Eurobeat releases can be tricky to get your hands on legitimately otherwise. And finally, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

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