Italians Do It Better head honcho Mike Simonetti got his start in the New York City underground House scene in the late 1980's. As a teenager he promoted parties at the legendary dance club Mars. Twenty years, countless edits, mixes & DJ gigs around the world later, Italians Do It Better is pleased to present Mike's first slice of original music. "Capricorn Rising" is songs for the dance floor & the party after the after party. Anyone who's ever been on a trip through Mike's basement knows it's like a visit to a museum of recorded music of the 20th century. In these crates you can easily find the 1st Carl Craig 12" stacked up against a pile of unopened Whitehouse LP's he found in a dumpster somewhere resting beside a Bush Tetras test pressing. If you've caught one of his infamous DJ sets, you know he can keep the dance floor playful, heady & obscure all at the same time. His recordings are equally eclectic. Alternating between pulsating rhythms & atmospheric clouds. He blurs the lines between major, minor, & motorik.
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Solipsism is an archival release of music from Mike Simonetti's tenure as owner of Italians Do It Better Records, spanning from 2006-2013. During that time Mike wrote a lot of music. Some of it was used for films, some for TV commercials, some for fashion shows and he even released a record or two. Influenced by the intersection of 80's arena rock bands like AC/DC and Judas Priest, glam rock/dance bands like Rockets and Supermax, and especially the underground Italian producer Piero Umiliani - the album is chock-full of atmospheric rock-inspired arpeggiated riffs. The mixture of metal and chugging dance music makes for a unique listening experience. Every song has a riff, every song is heavy and dense. Only one song goes above 118 BPM. These are heavy chuggers that make for a tense emotional experience that exceeds your standard, easy-to-write-off "soundtrack" fare, mainly because it was never written with that in mind. It was meant to be a fist-pumping arena rock inspired thumper! You can hear that in the one two punch of "A Prayer For War" into "Illusions", which is an outtake from his "The Magician" sessions. Other songs like "Solipsism" showcase the airy melodies of that were to come with his other project Pale Blue, but that is not typical on this album. If you listen closely, you can hear how Simonetti's music and dark vibes inspired his then label partner Johnny Jewel to take his own bands Chromatics and Glass Candy in a different, more cinematic direction. This was written and recorded years before the Drive soundtrack and all the hoopla around the sudden soundtrack resurgence. In 2011 Mike was asked to submit some songs for a soon to be released Hollywood remake. He submitted most of the songs from this album, and they were slated for release on the soundtrack, but the project fell apart, and the film went in a different direction and changed producers. Soon after, because of all the drama and foolishness, he left Italians Do It Better to start over with 2MR and Pale Blue. This is the nail in the coffin. Godspeed.
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Kill for Love, Chromatics' first album since Night Drive, finally gives this loosely associated, prematurely decayed musical aesthetic its magnum opus-- and brilliantly transcends it. The moonlit vibe of previous highlights like street-skulking stunner "In the City" or haunting Kate Bush cover "Running Up That Hill" recurs, and various tracks still crackle and pop with the all-too-mortal degradation of vinyl. And despite the unfinished-seeming recording quality of the music videos that preceded the album's release, the completed product also boasts some of the most engrossing synth-pop songs so far this year.
The 90-minute Kill for Love signals its tour-de-force ambitions from the opening track, a synth-draped cover of Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)". As with their past brooding renditions of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire" or Dark Day's "Hands in the Dark", it's a thoroughly rewarding pop deconstruction, setting one of singer Ruth Radelet's most affecting performances against an evocatively restrained backdrop. "There's more to the picture than meets the eye," Radelet coos, in what emerges here as a key lyric. There's more to Kill for Love than the sum of its best songs.
That said, Kill for Love's clearest improvement over Night Drive comes in its impressive clutch of left-field synth-pop standouts. The pill-dropping insomniac rush of the title track is the most likely to propel Chromatics onto the kinds of late-night TV stages and festival billings lately seized by M83, but the existential ache of "Back From the Grave" is no less gorgeously catchy. The bleakly yearning "Lady" returns to the group's signature Italo glide but wisely ditches the robotic vocal effects of a previously released late-2005 recording. When Jewel suggested in a recent Pitchfork interview that he was more influenced by Madonna than by crate-digging Eurodisco rarities, it was logical to wonder if he was being falsely modest. That is, until hearing "These Streets Will Never Look the Same", which stretches "Eye of the Tiger"-like guitar tension into an eight-minute treatise on loneliness and includes the album's first male lead vocal, rendered cyborg-like by a vocal harmonizer. Or take the vampire-pallid lament "Running From the Sun", another male-led track, based on piano chords reminiscent of those found on Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time". Fans who discovered Chromatics through Drive will find plenty of easy entry points here.
Still, just as the pop songs on Kill for Love are more direct than on Night Drive, the interstitial tracks are also more expansive and abstract. "Time is stretching on/ And it keeps repeating/ As the beat goes on," Radelet sings, on the deceptively uptempo last-ditch plea "At Your Door", and those words could just as easily apply to the album's instrumentals (and near-instrumentals). Nevertheless, even the record's most ephemeral moments are more deeply engaging than their equivalents on the last album, livened up by disembodied vocals and orchestral touches. Though there appear to be as many references to walking and riding trains as to driving, the album is at least as cinematic as Themes for an Imaginary Film. In fact, the languorous "There's a Light Out on the Horizon" goes so far as to revive Night Drive's phone-call conceit, though with results that are more beautifully agonizing.
TRACKLISTING
01 INTO THE BLACK
02 KILL FOR LOVE
03 BACK FROM THE GRAVE
04 THE PAGE
05 LADY
06 THESE STREETS WILL NEVER LOOK THE SAME
07 BROKEN MIRRORS
08 CANDY
09 THE ELEVENTH HOUR
10 RUNNING FROM THE SUN
11 DUST TO DUST
12 BIRDS OF PARADISE
13 A MATTER OF TIME
14 AT YOUR DOOR
15 THERE'S A LIGHT OUT ON THE HORIZON
16 THE RIVER
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The 90-minute Kill for Love signals its tour-de-force ambitions from the opening track, a synth-draped cover of Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)". As with their past brooding renditions of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire" or Dark Day's "Hands in the Dark", it's a thoroughly rewarding pop deconstruction, setting one of singer Ruth Radelet's most affecting performances against an evocatively restrained backdrop. "There's more to the picture than meets the eye," Radelet coos, in what emerges here as a key lyric. There's more to Kill for Love than the sum of its best songs.
That said, Kill for Love's clearest improvement over Night Drive comes in its impressive clutch of left-field synth-pop standouts. The pill-dropping insomniac rush of the title track is the most likely to propel Chromatics onto the kinds of late-night TV stages and festival billings lately seized by M83, but the existential ache of "Back From the Grave" is no less gorgeously catchy. The bleakly yearning "Lady" returns to the group's signature Italo glide but wisely ditches the robotic vocal effects of a previously released late-2005 recording. When Jewel suggested in a recent Pitchfork interview that he was more influenced by Madonna than by crate-digging Eurodisco rarities, it was logical to wonder if he was being falsely modest. That is, until hearing "These Streets Will Never Look the Same", which stretches "Eye of the Tiger"-like guitar tension into an eight-minute treatise on loneliness and includes the album's first male lead vocal, rendered cyborg-like by a vocal harmonizer. Or take the vampire-pallid lament "Running From the Sun", another male-led track, based on piano chords reminiscent of those found on Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time". Fans who discovered Chromatics through Drive will find plenty of easy entry points here.
Still, just as the pop songs on Kill for Love are more direct than on Night Drive, the interstitial tracks are also more expansive and abstract. "Time is stretching on/ And it keeps repeating/ As the beat goes on," Radelet sings, on the deceptively uptempo last-ditch plea "At Your Door", and those words could just as easily apply to the album's instrumentals (and near-instrumentals). Nevertheless, even the record's most ephemeral moments are more deeply engaging than their equivalents on the last album, livened up by disembodied vocals and orchestral touches. Though there appear to be as many references to walking and riding trains as to driving, the album is at least as cinematic as Themes for an Imaginary Film. In fact, the languorous "There's a Light Out on the Horizon" goes so far as to revive Night Drive's phone-call conceit, though with results that are more beautifully agonizing.
TRACKLISTING
01 INTO THE BLACK
02 KILL FOR LOVE
03 BACK FROM THE GRAVE
04 THE PAGE
05 LADY
06 THESE STREETS WILL NEVER LOOK THE SAME
07 BROKEN MIRRORS
08 CANDY
09 THE ELEVENTH HOUR
10 RUNNING FROM THE SUN
11 DUST TO DUST
12 BIRDS OF PARADISE
13 A MATTER OF TIME
14 AT YOUR DOOR
15 THERE'S A LIGHT OUT ON THE HORIZON
16 THE RIVER
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Hot off the presses. We just got these in last nite from Portland. This is our first real peak at "BODY WORK", Glass Candy's much anticipated third album. Johnny & Ida have been destroying clubs with both of these tracks for almost two years now. Forever pushing forward into new ground from where "B/E/A/T/B/O/X" & 2010's "FEELING WITHOUT TOUCHING" left off, they candy coated this slice of analog glamour & sprinkled it with some stardust on top. Lazer driven melodies bounce off electro primitive drums that would make Moe Tucker proud. Ida's crazy like a monkey & happy like a new year as she sings a call & response to the crowd. "Warm In The Winter" continues to unfold for seven plus minutes of shimmering percussive synth. The proto boogie B side "Beautiful Object" is so grimey it makes us think of bbbb's production on the first Madonna album. The rhythms keep turning while future & past collide. Johnny gives us the usual dosage of heavy bass & crisp handclaps. Written & Recorded in the icey Montreal winter. Mixed for all seasons
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Tiedye was formed during nights of bikemoshing, slowdancing & wierdsailing. Two guys form the heart of this obscure and obvious formation of what we call the band Tiedye. From the rocks & waves of the west coast of Sweden, Tiedye explores the sounds of dreaming disco, windblowing pop & gruyèresmelling rock. The gritty Italians Do It Better Records got a nose for the smell of saltwater drained boogierock & adopted Tiedye to the dramatic Italians-family. Their first two releases gathered much attention in the underground. Their now infamous cover version of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" catapulted them into the worldwide spotlight. They soon followed up with a remix for Feist, another instant early Italians Do It Better classic that solidified them as a force to be reckoned with. This 12" showcases their first original composition, along with remixes from Studio's Dan Lissvik & A Mountain Of One
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We met Fred Ventura in 2006 over emails sent to Italians Do It Better headquarters. He was one of the first people from Europe to start writing the label prior to After Dark’s release. It took us a few months to realize that this was Fred Ventura, the cult Italo legend from Milan. Like a true gentleman, he had never bothered to mention it. Since the early 1980’s Fred Ventura has released numerous singles in Europe & toured the world extensively as a solo artist. Last year, Johnny was in Bologna on tour with Desire & Fred came out to the show to drink Champagne & bring us some copies of the reissued tapes of Fred’s early Post Punk group State Of Art. The lightbulb lit up & we asked him if he had any home recordings of his solo work. Months later, he sent us 83 tracks of cassette recordings between 1982 & 1987. They had been sitting upstairs in a dusty box at his parents house in Italy for the last 25 years. These tracks have only been heard by a handful of his closest friends. We were completely floored & honored! Finding a beautiful treasure completely untouched & preserved is so rare. The songs are raw & honest written by a romantic with a love for an anthemic chorus & a drum machine running through his veins. Think early minimal Depeche Mode with an Italian heart. OrNew Order covering Madonna produced Moroder. Yes, it’s that good. Here we have the first official Italians Do It Better release of these songs on a 4 song 12? ep. This vinyl only release is a teaser for the “Don’t Give Up” 18 track lp out in a couple of months. So in the meantime, slip on those Gucci loafers, rev up the Alfa Romeo and head down to the discotheque because life is too short…
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