The Italian take on disco established itself as a style in its own right, influencing everything from house to synthwave
It’s very common for genres to be named after the place in which they were first developed – think Detroit techno, Philly soul or UK funky – but there’s a second category of genre which represents a location’s take on an existing style. Sounds like Berlin techno, UK drill or even Scouse house weren’t completely new, but were a local evolution of an existing sound. The same can be said of this month’s genre, Italo disco. What makes this interesting though, is how the sound evolved into its own distinct style and went on to influence countless other genres.
The roots of Italo disco date back to the late ’70s, when the disco era was still in full swing in the USA and artists around the world imitated the sounds coming out of New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Miami. Across Europe, musicians put their own take on disco, from ABBA in Sweden to Boney M in Germany, Ottawan in France and the Munichbased international trio of Giorgio Moroder, Donna Summer and Pete Belotte. By the early ’80s, Italy started to move on from aping American disco with tracks like Kano’s Super Extra Sexy Sign (1980) and began to develop its own distinct sound. The ‘Italo disco’ tag was retrospectively applied, widely used from around 1985 by the German ZYX label.
The defining characteristics of Italo disco set it apart from the sound’s US roots and the more mainstream Eurodisco sounds from around Europe. Musically and melodically, early Italo artists cited the influence of American hi-NRG pioneers Bobby Orlando and Patrick Cowley just as much as the more ‘serious’ electronic sounds of Moroder or Kraftwerk. Thanks in part to a willingness to experiment with other languages and embrace theatricality in music videos, there’s an overt sense of camp to iconic Italo tracks like Alexander Robotnick’s Problèmes d’Amour (1983), Fred Ventura’s Zeit (1984) or Savage’s Don’t Cry Tonight (1983).
Secondly, the timing of the genre’s popularity is important. The original wave of disco was largely a ’70s movement, coming at a time when electronic music technology was in its infancy. Synths and drum machines existed, but the majority of American disco was based heavily on live instrumentation. The fact that Italo disco endured into the ’80s meant that electronic instruments were slightly more accessible, and the genre’s producers leaned heavily into the sound of synths like Roland’s Junos and JXs, Minimoogs, Yamaha DX7s and electronic drums courtesy of Roland TR-808s and the Simmons SDS.
Italo disco’s international success was mixed. European audiences latched on to some of the more popular Italo singles, but UK record buyers hav
