Disco Italia: Essential Italo Disco Classics 1977 – 1985.

Synth comprised, futuristic space music, Italo Disco was generalised in Europe as non U.K produced dance music. The term ‘Italo’ originated from the ‘Italo Boot Mixes’ that featured Italian and German music created in 1983 by ZYX label boss Berhnard Mikulski. Prior to 1983 the music was simply referred to as ‘Disco’. When disco musicians started to experiment with synthesizers and electronics in the late 1970’s the result was either Hi-NRG (North American) or Space Disco (European) which by 1982 had fully developed into it’s own sub-genre in Italo. Typically simple with catchy melodies often sung with the aid of vocoders, many songs were sung in English with heavy Italian accents, creating almost nonsensical lyrics where the themes of love, robots and space where more than prevalent. When we heard that the next release on Strut was going to be an ‘Italo Disco Classics’ compilation we received the news with both excitement and trepidation. Excitement because we love the genre and trepidation because we know that for all the great tracks out there, there are a dozen more shockers that would be best left unearthed. Fortunetely for us, Bear Entertainment boss Steve Kotey has compiled what turns out to be our favourite Strut release to date, no easy task given the genre can be somewhat a minefield in less knowledgeable hands.in cosmic disco