Lian Ross - Fantasy (1985)
Italo disco is a very wide term that refers to various types of European disco and pop-styled dance music, that evolved during the early 1980s in Italy, Germany, Spain and other parts of Europe. Italo disco music has a distinct, futuristic and spacey sound which was created using synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders. During the 1980s, the term "Italo-disco" was used in Europe to describe all the non UK-based dance productions, including some Canadian ones. In the UK and the USA, Italo-disco was unknown, except some later Italian eurobeat productions and very few German hits.
The name "Italo disco" originates from the Italo Boot Mix series - a megamix featuring Italian and German produced disco music - created in 1983 by Bernhard Mikulski, the founder of German-based ZYX Music. Prior to 1983, the genre was simply referred to as 'disco music' or 'dance music' from Europe. The presenters of the Italian music show Discoring (produced by RAI), usually referred to the Italian productions of what later would became Italo Disco as "Rock Electronico" and "Bailandi Discoteka" (disco dance). This first version of Italo Disco sounded like a down tempo version of Space Disco, a short lived Eurodisco instrumental style with futuristic sound effects and lyrics heavily influenced by David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars band.
Technically speaking, Italo Disco was simply the 80s version of Eurodisco. Today, the term 'Euro Disco' refers to all disco music produced in Europe during the 70s and the 80s. But during the 1980s this term was used to describe the 1970s and early 1980s European disco productions, especially those from Germany (Boney M, Eruption, Dschinghis Khan, etc).
In the mid 80s, the Stock Aitken Waterman team created a commercial music genre in the UK labelled as "Eurobeat". Those first hits (Dead or Alive, Bananarama, Jason Donovan, Sonia, Kylie Minogue, etc) were heavily based on how Italo Disco sounded to the Brits. Once arriving in the USA, the Eurobeat hits helped the evolution of New York's "Freestyle". In USA, eurobeat was marketed as Hi-NRG.
The term Eurobeat also used in Japan (around 1987) to describe all Italo Disco and Eurobeat imports. Italo Disco became very successful in Japan and when 80s Eurodisco ended and the music switched to Eurohouse and New Beat, "Super Eurobeat" produced especially for Japan's market, as a kind of Japanese successor of the Italo Disco (called "Eurobeat" by the Japanese fans). During the 90s, another spinoff successor appeared called Eurobeat Flash. Both the Super Eurobeat and Eurobeat Flash genres are virtually unknown outside Japan.
During the 90s, disco polo created in Poland heavily based on the Italo Disco sound.
On early Italo disco productions, the vocals were usually in English, performed by non-native English speaking singers. After 1985, other European languages became common, especially Italian, Spanish, French and Greek. At the same time, most of the German-produced Italo disco hits had both English and German-speaking versions.
The German variation of Italo disco, very popular during the 80s, danced in the discofox style. In the German Speaking European countries, this variation of Italo disco mixed on the dancefloors with the German schlager music style, that around 1988 sounded very close to the German variation of Italo disco. About that time, older Germans, Austrians and Swiss, start calling both Schlager and the German Italo Disco hits "Discofox", because they use to dance them both with the same discofox style. The German variation of Italo Disco, took the nick-name "Discofox" since then. For the rest Europe, the term "discofox" for the German variation of italo-disco, never existed.
The later productions for Japan (Super Eurobeat), frequently had meaningless and sometimes incomprehensible lyrics.
Author: DJHazElCuban0
Keywords: DJHazElCuban0 Italo Disco Music Euro 80's Electronic Pop Dance House Italy Italian Techno Trance Freestyle Free Style
Added: March 24, 2008
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/M8093C3NVPc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/M8093C3NVPc</a>]]>
Bloglipi Blog
