Disco meets the synthesizer

At the end of the 1970s, disco ruled the clubs, and Europe was already giving it its own accent. In Munich, Giorgio Moroder had shown with Donna Summer's I Feel Love (1977) that a dance record could be built almost entirely from synthesizers and sequencers. Across Europe, producers started to replace orchestras and live drummers with drum machines, arpeggiators and vocoders.

Italy had a very practical reason to follow that path. In the early 80s, the lira was weak against the dollar, and imported American records became expensive for Italian DJs and radio stations. So the country started making its own electronic dance music, in small studios and on small budgets. Records such as Klein & M.B.O.'s Dirty Talk (1982) already had everything that would define the genre: a hypnotic bass line, cold machines and a warm, catchy melody.

The year it got its name

1983 is the year everything exploded. Gazebo's I Like Chopin, Ryan Paris' Dolce Vita, Righeira's Vamos a la playa, P. Lion's Happy Children and Savage's Don't Cry Tonight climbed the charts all over Europe. Den Harrow, Tom Hooker, Silver Pozzoli and Ken Laszlo followed, and producers like Theo and Ivana Spagna or Larry Pignagnoli (with Mike Cannon, among others) turned out hit after hit.

The same year, the German label ZYX, run by Bernhard Mikulski, released the compilations The Best of Italo-Disco and Italo Boot Mix. Whether ZYX invented the expression or simply made it famous is still debated, but from then on the music had a name: Italo Disco. Both series ran to sixteen volumes, until 1991.

Cold machines, warm melodies, and English sung with an unmistakable Italian accent.

The golden age

For five years, Italian studios produced records at an incredible pace. Labels were often tiny, records were pressed in small quantities, and a new single could replace the previous one in a matter of weeks. Some artists were real singers, others were faces chosen for the cover while a session vocalist sang in the studio: part of the legend of the genre.

The sound travelled fast. Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe embraced it, and Italo-inspired productions were soon made far beyond Italy. Baltimora's Tarzan Boy (1985) became a worldwide hit, and in Germany the same spirit fed the Euro disco of Modern Talking and others.

France and the United Kingdom were the big exceptions. Radio and TV mostly followed the Anglo-Saxon charts, and Italo stayed an underground passion, kept alive by specialist DJs, import shops and a few local labels. Ironically, several French hits of the time were actually recorded in Italian studios.

Spacesynth: Italo without words

Some producers took the instrumental side of Italo all the way to the stars. In Italy, Anfrando Maiola and Stefano Cundari created Koto, whose sci-fi instrumentals sounded like the soundtrack of an imaginary arcade game. In the Netherlands, Erik van Vliet and composer Michiel van der Kuy launched Laserdance in 1984; their album Future Generation (1987) became the reference of the genre.

Spacesynth kept the Italo ingredients (sequencers, big melodies, energy) and added epic leads, cosmic effects and a strong sense of adventure. It is still alive today, with a loyal community of composers and fans around the world.

The sound changes shape

At the end of the decade, house music arrived and the classic Italo formula slowly faded. But its DNA did not disappear: it split into new styles. In Japan, Italian productions became the backbone of Eurobeat. In Italy, the same studios moved to Italo house and then to Eurodance and Italo dance, with artists like Eiffel 65 or Gigi D'Agostino a few years later. The melodies were still there, the tempo and the sounds had changed.

A cult that never ended

Far from being forgotten, Italo Disco became a cult. In Russia and Eastern Europe, the 80s sound shaped a whole pop generation. In Mexico, Finland, Poland or Japan, Italo nights still fill clubs. Collectors hunt for original 12" pressings, and some rare records now sell for hundreds of euros.

Since the 2000s, the genre has had a real revival. Labels reissue the classics on vinyl, ZYX publishes new mixes, and its Italo Disco New Generation and Italo Disco Spacesynth Collection series give a stage to a new wave of composers who create today with the spirit of 1983, and the tools of today.

That is exactly where Italo4ever comes from: a love of those melodies, of those synthesizers, and of that mix of energy and nostalgia. Forty years later, the conclusion is still the same: Italo is forever.