Italo Disco: The Sparkling Sound of the 80s
Italo Disco: The Sparkling Sound Of The 80s is playing at Antenna Documentary Film Festival in Sydney. Addy Fong checks it out:
Diving into this documentary with a hesitant curiosity about Italo Disco I’m told by a passionate man waving his hands in front of camera, ‘Italo disco is a virus, a magical virus’. I’m unsure if this is overly cheesy comment is trashy or a brilliant observation made by a man who’s captured my attention. Just like a virus, viral content often explodes online because it’s part trashy, vomit-inducting, and part brilliant because of how simple it is.
Alessandro Melazzini’s Italo Disco: The Sparkling Sound of the 80s is the same, it’s an easy watch that captures the feeling and imagination of youth and touches on the current 80s resurgence which has made a comeback in recent years. The documentary consists mainly of interviews paired together with cutaways, archival footage, and an 80s inspired soundtrack composed by long time collaborator Luca Vasco, of which I found to be super catchy to listen to. Italo Disco is paired with the line ‘the sparkling sound of the 80s’ in its title, perhaps presents audiences with the question as to whether this Italo Disco genre is something of a time gone by, once viewed as ‘one of the least cool music styles ever created’ to a genre that has now been transformed and given a new perspective by contemporary audiences.
Looking back on trends and feelings of nostalgia, the saying ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ has never felt more true. When paired with the current backdrop of our doom filled world, our current world seems to find joy in the familiarity of nostalgia, in music, TV shows, or movies that remind us of a time gone by. This year alone, there has been a cultural resurgence of sorts, TV shows set in the 80s such as Netflix’s Stranger Things, modern remakes of TV Shows, Bel-Air, Heartbreak High, films such as Top Gun: Maverick, Sonic the Hedgehog, band reunions and comeback tours, from groups such as ABBA, Blondie, and Queen, it seems that what was old is new again.
Exploring the influence of Italo Disco on music and culture, I drew upon the rise in popularity of Eurovision in recent years, in my reading of this film. Despite the tacky, trashy, and kitsch nature of the genre, Italo Disco is a guilty pleasure you can’t help but indulge in. The film explores the cultural significance of the Italian Disco genre and its influence on the world, and rise from the underground to become commercialised and mainstream. Weird English lyrics that don’t make sense performed by men in spacesuits, absurd animation, electronically produced rhythms and the use of synthesiser to create melodies that are obscure and intriguing, inviting audiences to dance to catchy predictable beats as a way of escaping their mundane world.
Beginning with an upbeat synth track and a voiceover that sounds almost automated, Melazzini’s Italo Disco delicately dances between an exploration of the complexity of the electronic music genre, the rise of electronic technology, the manufacture of keyboards, mixing desks, and a newly experimental studio sound which allowed for a modulation of acoustic instruments or vocals, repurposed and sampled by artists, balanced with a simple and predictable melodic structure of a song that we’re used to hearing even now in today’s pop songs. Melazzini’s documentary touches on the ‘two souls’ of Italo Disco, the arrangement of the technical and acoustic, and the romantic lyrics which have widespread appeal. The experimental nature of creating music evokes a playfulness in experimenting with equalisation, pitch modulation, repurposing, and re-evaluating how music is structured and how sound sits within a song. Italo disco, once shunned, highlights how the composition of a song was driven more by melodic riffs rather than heartfelt lyrics in the dance or club culture of the 80s. The simplicity and predictability of pop is fun and comforting, Italo Disco touches on the club culture of which the genre had its rise, underground at discos where people of all sorts were accepted and able to dance freely, the romance of summer was in the air, the nightlife was lively and the everyone felt flirtatious and free.
Perhaps we could state that Italo Disco’s popularity gave way to the rise of commercially produced pop that we all know and love, there is a familiarity to the simplicity of songs composed of a basic verse, chorus, verse with possible a bridge thrown in to tie the piece together. The film states, ‘The melody wasn’t crucial but the drive was. The melody was composed of two or three notes repeated continuously, the rest were effects, the sound.’
Personally I don’t mind the predictability of songs and would suggest the composition of a successful song requires a balance of creativity, an experimental pushing of boundaries, and familiarity helps audiences connect with a piece quickly and easily. The dilemma is whether or not the familiarity audiences are drawn to becomes tiring over time and fizzles out as quickly as its rise. Similarly, the predictability of the film’s narrative beats felt at times little exhausting. Like a pop song the predictable structure of documentary consists of these main elements: interviews, archival footage, and cutaways, which, if viewers already have sort of understanding of music history may find that Italo Disco feels like every other kind of music documentary they may have previously seen.
Consisting of interviews with famous musicians, DJs, music journalists, and producers, and samples of songs and music videos, and shots of attractive Italians in revealing outfits enjoying summer and dancing in nightclubs invites viewers into a world that is flirtatiously fun and carefree that you are more willing to forgive how basic the film feels. I’m not stating here that Alessandro Melazzini’s Italo Disco is ‘basic’ as an insult, but bring light to the fact that there is a challenge in trying to address the complexities of the Italo Disco music sub-genre in the span of an hour documentary without missing or the skimming past some points I wished were touched upon further in the film. I’m unsure exactly how this would be done, but I was intrigued by the weird style of space themed music videos produced within the genre, the liberation and criticism or female bodies and sexuality during the time, and the process of song composition, and the rise of fans amongst popular music. I’m not sure if I was left unsatisfied by my viewing of the film, or left wanting more, and wondering if the film would have worked as a 5 part miniseries that explored the aspects of Italo Disco in more depth.
Growing up in the early 2000s, where the introduction of the internet, personal computers, and social media allowed for a sharing of music produced in programs such as Super Duper Music Looper or Garage Band, this eventually lead to the modern day rise of DIY bedroom musicians who found fame on social media platforms such as YouTube, Soundcloud, or Vine to name a few. There’s a cheesiness to the DIY nature of songwriting that highlights the creativity and beauty of the imperfect, the freedom in choosing whether or not collaborate with other artists, and the consideration as to whether musical talent is needed or can be programmed by an algorithm. Just like the simplicity of Italo Disco, the internet gives rise and accessibility to the creation of music that is homemade, that doesn’t need any particular training or musical degree to be enjoyed and understood.
Italo Disco: The Sparkling Sound of the 80s is a documentary which presents us with a hopefulness for the future, a newly rediscovered soundtrack that feels fun and exciting. With lyrics such as ‘making contact in 1984, picking up a signal never heard before’ or ‘during the night you saw a spaceship coming out from the floor’ you can’t help but feel excited for the absurdity Italo Disco brings. Ultimately, it’s up to the viewer to decide whether or not this genre is trashy or brilliant, but I’ve been infected and have now embraced the trashy, absurd, and weirdly wonderful. There is no denying the virus of Italo Disco has taken hold and now I’m dancing.
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Review by Addy Fong.
Antenna Documentary Film Festival launches on 15th October. For details of screenings of Italo Disco: The Sparkling Sound of the 80s, go here.
