Fake – Frogs In Spain

I discovered this song about a month or two ago and now it is my new favourite Italo Disco song. It has the usual nonsensical English that I have come to know and love. It has a really different feeling though than a lot of the Italo songs I typicallygo for. I would say it has a really high school feel to it. I could see 80’s high school kids sitting around angsty trying to figure life out listening to this song. It’s not really a club song unless you like moping. That feeling I think especially comes from that “buh buh buh” thing going on in sections of the song. I find it really interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yai-9u5_VZ4&feature=related

Kano – I’m Ready

Alright, now I’m gonna talk about one of the most overused and overplayed songs in electronic dance music making and playing. What’s funny is I bet many more people know this song to hear it played than to hear it’s name. Kano is a group that made funkier sounding Italo Disco in the early 80’s. They have other great classics as well like “Don’t Try and Stop Me” and my personal and era of my life defining favourite “Now Baby Now”. This song is great but it was ruined a few years back when every dj in my town rediscovered it and I heard it at 8 parties in a row. It was sampled for tons of hip-hop tracks, most hilariously 1993’s classic “Whoomp! There it Is” by Tag Team. I just love how from the beginning it just builds and then it just drops that crystaly sounding part. Any connoisseur of what I would call the “dance musics” worth their salt should know this track. If you do not, then I hope at this moment I have implanted in you a certain soupcon of shame. Kano also inspired the character in Mortal Kombat. I mean it.

Exhibit A: Kano’s “I’m Ready”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYVA6GWHT4w

And Exhibit B because no blog on music is complete without it: Tag Team’s “Whoomp! There It is”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnrLloO7nFQ

Indochine – L’Aventurier

In my continued bid to represent the music of my peoples, I have decided to include another work of extreme 80’s awesomality. This song has surf guitar, orientalish synth and lyrics that parody the white male adventurer (thus the name) among many other things. I played this song once at an art gallery opening and they went crazy over this (after I had sadly cleared out most of the room with my dancehall/electro style). This song has high energy and will be a welcome when it surprises you on your I-pod when you set it to shuffle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJK8aVOUm9o

O K-rrascos ft Vanessinha do Picatchu – Bochecha Ardendo

More baile funk = more Portuguese yelling + more sick hooks. This song is no exception. It’s really hard to describe it like all baile funk. The beat is pretty routine for the genre but then there is the 80’s (dare I say Eurythmics-like) synth on the chorus with this whining, pleading (dare I say sexually hungry) female vocal. Needs to be heard to be understood basically. The video I could get is some home made thing apparently the product of a Brazilian “girls night in”. Some of them are hot though.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=AxQWV_Hd4h4

Cut Copy – Hearts on Fire

When I first saw the name of this song this is what I thought : “Fucking right! Cut Copy did a version of the song that plays during the awesome montage sequence in Rocky 4 where he runs up a mountain and yells ‘Drago!’”. That song is also called “Hearts on Fire” or “Heart on Fire” or whatever. Luckily, Cut Copy did not do a cover of that song. This song is part electro, 80’s, daft punk, trance and awesome. I’m gonna play this song when people are fuckin’ high as fuck. One drawback of the album version is they add a saxophone (i guess to up the 80’s ante, you know what I mean) and saxophone always sucks and makes everthing it touches cheezy. Been trying mixes of this and dancehall. Trying to make it work. Could this go well with Movado? Cop it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5BvK-HzO9Y

Rita Mitsouko-Marcia Baila

As a young french boy in the decade called the “the 80’s” I remember an era when this song was just everywhere and you couldn’t escape it unless you went and decided to rip your eardrums and quit the business of hearing altogether. If you play this song and even one french person is present over the age of 25 they will immediately go nuts (be aware though that this works outside of France best since nostalgia and longing for the homeland is engaged). What is best about this song is that 1. it is good and 2. non-french speakers will likely not know of it and will thus enter a state of delightitude. I mean it mixes 80’s sounding music with bossa nova. Come on. That rocks on paper already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ56pOwgR6E