This song I was initally going to post, 'Take It' by Clock On 5, has so much of what I loved about the synthpop of the 80s, and what made me love Italo Disco (before I knew what it was called).
I tried to write a few words to describe this song (and why I like it), but I only wrote words that are quite meaningless if you think about it. I like the word 'honest' -- that's something I think describes Italo Disco really well, and is one of the reasons why that's the type of music I've been listening to the most over the last years.
Not that I don't like other stuff. Mike Paradinas, a/k/a µ-Ziq, is one of my all-time favorite artists. The way he combines and layers beautiful melodies and harsh beats made me fall in love instantly. Not that it is as simple as I make it sound: he does much more than layer different sounds, his melodies are unbelievably beautiful, and his beats very very sinister, and you can hear that it's all honest; the beats are not just there to contrast the melodies, and the melodies are not just something sweet to mellow out the harshness. And beautiful does not mean some one thing. Something ugly can be beautiful. As can honest music. Legowelt's Gladio project is beautiful. So is Telex's 'Plus De Distance', Alexander Robotnick's 'Problems D'Amour', Cyber People's 'Polaris', and Moderne's 'La Romance'. You get my point, I hope.
I could also say "I've always been a huge sucker for melodies", but that doesn't quite explain it. The thing is that I've always loved melody that is positioned perfectly in the middle between cheesiness and something beautiful, so it just barely rides between the two. Something that might need context to be understood fully, instead of being written off or judged as pure crap. This is not something I necessarily wanted to like, that is, I never set out to find music that fit this criteria. This is something I found out.
Disco is a perfect example of context-sensitive music. While I always liked synthpop (and the typical 80s hits) and Italo Disco and Italo House, I could never stand disco. It was all in the context: all I could hear were the same disco "classics" again and again (which weren't even all disco): Abba, KC & The Sunshine Band, Chic, Boney M, Gloria Gaynor, etc etc. (You know this list just as well as I do.) I was so overwhelmed with disco-shit that I ignored everyone who tried to persuade me that there were hundreds of gems.
Maybe it's because of my age. I'm born in 1976, so when I start listening properly to music, disco is way more than dead. It's more like the ultimate undead: the zombie that you can't even kill with a headshot. The only people that liked disco were my friends parents (and everyone knows that your parents listen to shit, right?) and kids who didn't seem to listen to music at all. It was the genre for the non-listener (typically girls), and office parties (where no-one was listening) and whenever you needed something to please a crowd of everyone.
Then much later, when I had started digging for music, I started seeing some names pop up again and again, and when I checked them out, I sometimes realized that their stuff had been in front of my ignoring face all along.
But that part is also what I love about discovering stuff, even if it's really "late", after so many others have been raving it about it forever. Then there's only more for me to discover, you know?
My first memories of music, apart from the obvious children's music and traditional folky stuff, was listening to Led Zeppelin, and various Now! and Hits compilations, reading Pop Rocky and Bravo magazines, and liking whatever was popular at the time, simply because that was what I heard. My uncle lived in England for a few years, and through him I heard so much music that I probably would never have listened to until much later. That includes Erasure, Bronski Beat, Jimmy Sommerville, The Communards, Pet Shop Boys and Divine. I also liked Eurythmics because my aunt listened to them all the time, and I like them to this day (have you heard the production? it's crazy). My favorite band was always A-Ha!, which makes perfect sense when I compare it to the music I listen to today...which, oddly, is the same music...
And just for the record: I still think Morten Harket is a hunk of a man.
Late 80s I started listening to whatever softcore I came across (acid house, Chicago house, electro house), then hardcore (old skool hardcore) and KLF and all that stuff, and there I stayed for a few years. Apart from moving into darkcore, jungle, and then drum&bass (hah, all those genres), I never got into 90s house (in fact I couldn't stand it) while loving Italo House and the old skool hardcore tracks that were heavy on the piano riffs. I also liked the Eye-Q label a lot, because it managed to sound honest while dipping the big toe into the seas of cheese.
My friend Krilli said that I like music that is "funny and beautiful". I think he's right. I also think that I still feel the best when I hear music that makes me feel the way I felt the first time I started liking music, that is, while I have of course changed, and like stuff today that I simply didn't understand before, I still think that the same core things are just as attractive (unconsciously) as they were in the beginning of (my) time.
Maybe that goes for everyone. Maybe all this is blatantly obvious, but then again this post started out as me showing some love to Clock On 5, not as an essay called 'Reflections de musique'. So bear with me, and just click the links.
The three tracks I'm posting are all by the same group of guys (same writers, different producers). Show them some love and play these tracks on repeat.
Clock On 5 has some major talent behind it. Firstly, there's Alberto Carpani, better known as Italo hunk-of-chunk Albert One, who produced all of Clock On 5's releases (and released oh so many gems of his own). Then there are the guys who wrote the songs: Paolo Tassi, who, with the other songwriter, Raffaele Fiume, was also behind the other two tracks I'm posting here, 'Shoot Me' by Malcom & The Bad Girls, and 'You...See' by Helicon. Raffaele Fiume wrote an incredible amount of brilliant songs, among them a few for Giusy Ravizza and Radiators.
I'm not name dropping just for the sake of sounding like I know anything. This info comes from the internet or the back of some records. I'm just writing this so you know that these guys are f***ing geniuses. But hopefully you already knew that.
Clock On 5 - Take It
Listen / Buy: GEMM / eBay / Amazon.com
Malcom & The Bad Girls is another collaboration by Paolo Tassi and Raffaele Fiume, and is incredible. It starts out as some semi-dramatic majestic synth-opera (semi-dramatic opera? hmm) but then the chorus kicks in, and your shirt comes off. Look look, look me in my eyes, indeed.
Malcom and The Bad Girls - Shoot Me
Listen / Buy: GEMM / eBay / Amazon.com
Helicon features the perfect Italo-duo. You hear the guy speak his word, you get the feeling it's kinda pointless, see, she won't listen anyway. Then there's a dream-voice (echo, reverb, the works), some more drama, and a beautiful bell-intro to the chorus. Then there's a french part, which I don't understand, but hey, I hardly get the english lyrics anyways, so no harm there, friends.
I think they become friends in the end.
Helicon - You ... See
Listen / Buy: GEMM / eBay / Amazon.com
p.s. Sean Donson at the amazing As Restless As We Are recently posted an awesome track by Radiators, produced by the same guys as the tracks I just posted. Check it!
