![Guido & Maurizio De Angelis - Speed Fever [1978]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvuw5riPKi1qaevwpo1_cover.jpg)
Guido & Maurizio De Angelis — Speed Fever
from Formula uno, febbre della velocità (Speed Fever) (1979)
More robotic De Angelis beat magic from the soundtrack to Speed Fever, a Formula 1 documentary.
Guido & Maurizio De Angelis — Black Inferno
from Atlantis Interceptors soundtrack (1983)
What do you get when you combine Rambo-style macho men with machine guns, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, radioactivity, and Italo disco? Why this message in a bottle from 1983, of course! The remarkably prolific De Angelis brothers composed this track for the Italian sci-fi film I Predatori di Atlantide aka Atlantis Interceptors. And it is a doozy. As you listen, imagine this:
Two Vietnam-vets and several scientists face an extraordinary battle for survival against descendants of Atlantis’ original race, when the Lost Continent emerges in the Caribbean following radioactive leakage from a sunken Russian nuclear submarine. Calling themselves “Interceptors”, the murderous Atlanteans set about reclaiming the world by killing everyone and destroying everything in sight. It is up to Mike, Washington and Dr. Cathy Rollins to uncover the secret behind their existence and use it against them in order to stop the interceptors’ apocalyptic rampage.
This post courtesy of a tip the other day from follower Captain Entropy, who says “My favorite Italo disco track from the soundtrack of one of my favorite films.”
Get it at Egg City Radio.
Psychic Ills — Mind Daze
from Hazed Dream (2011, Sacred Bone Records)
video directed by Harrison Owen
Brooklyn’s own Psychic Ills have put down the sensimilla for a second to record this hazy masterpiece of circa-1994 grungy glory, paired here with a psychedelic spectacle of oil-sheen colors. The scene at 2:25 is pure gold, and the ocean looks like lava.
The always-tuned-in Rose Kohl tells us Psychic Ills will be providing the soundtrack to the new film Dragonslayer at Williamsburg’s Public Assembly tonight. (free!) If you can’t make that, stream the new album at Soundcloud.
Ilona Staller — Pane, Marmellata e Me (Bread, Jam and Me)
from Ilona Staller (1979)
Ilona Staller, aka Cicciolina, is truly a Jane of all trades—politician, pornstar and singer—though not necessarily in that order, and each not exclusive to the others. She got her start on the radio show “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” (“Do you want to sleep with me?”) on Radio Luna in 1973, before starring in several soft-core porn films in the 70s. She graduated to hardcore in the 80s with Il Telefono Rosso.
Several years later, she was serving in Italian parliament, backed by 20,000 Roman voters, after a campaign that featured stripteases, live snakes and bare-breasted speeches. Although she wasn’t able to singlehandedly prevent the first Gulf War, she did offer her availability “to make love to Saddam Hussein to achieve peace in the Middle East” and acted in a skin flick while in office.
But let’s rewind a little bit to this 1979 album, something of a masterpiece of slinky disco, though with the requisite breathy vocals of a singer who’s a bit lacking in the pipes department. The more upbeat numbers, like this honking disco-reggae track or the dancefloor-ready ‘I Was Made For Dancin,’ are the best on the album, though they do leave you wishing she’d reserve her sensual coos and sighs for the porno set.
In 1991, she married the artist Jeff Koons, who created the kinky photo/sculpture series Made in Heaven about their sex life. Quite different from his puffy balloon dogs, and quite NSFW.
For more explorations in this vein, the Italian blog ‘Orrore a 33 giri’ gets a perfect 10.
Nahid Akhtar — Society Girl
from The Sound of Wonder! (Finders Keepers, 2009)
Gonna finish out this Lollywood binge with a track from the excellent Finders Keepers comp The Sound of Wonder! The First Wave of Plugged-In Pop at the Pakistani Picture House. Here’s playback fave Nahid Akhtar again, this time on a Nazir Ali-penned tune.
In addition to this set of wonderfully weird South Asian pop, Finders Keepers has a double soundtrack out called Double Lollywood with lots of M Ashraf/Nahid Akhtar stuff, and they’re just about to put out a companion to the Sound of Wonder! set, appropriately called Life is Dance… stay tuned.
In the meantime, feed your dancing fix.
Runa Laila — Aankh mili aur takraya
from Tiger Gang (1971)
Today I’m going to highlight a few Pakistani movie numbers from the terrific blog Hindustani Vinyl. It’s a treasure trove of gems from 1960s and 70s Bollywood and Lollywood (Pakistan’s movie capital, Lahore), but unfortunately the blog serves as an appetizer for a German rare records vendor of the same name, and the tracks are all cut about 2/3rds through. Don’t let that deter you—some great discoveries await!
This one’s a hip number sung by Bangladeshi playback singer Runa Laila for the film Tiger Gang aka Kommissar X jagt die roten Tiger, a story of drug addicts and gangsters. It was a rare collaboration between Austrian film director Harald Reinl and Lollywood producers, but despite (or maybe because of) the subject matter, it was a box office flop (and has only scored 4.5 stars on imdb). Ouch.
Here’s a video clip of this song from the movie.
Summer Fiction — Throw Your Arms Around Me
from Summer Fiction (2010)
New vid by Kevin Chia for Summer Fiction’s ‘Throw Your Arms Around Me,’ crafted with footage from a beautifully shot but not-very-well-liked film about a raging philanderer, Vivre Pour Vivre. Some hallucinatory shots of Times Square circa 1967 and a fantastic dancing scene about halfway through that I really, really wish I could have been a part of.
Bill Ricchini’s perfect album, on the other hand, is neither raging nor hallucinatory. Simple, classic, icy, like each note was plucked from a bowl of melancholy, a love story delivered in a little pill of methaqualone.
Emitt Rhodes — Somebody Made For Me
from Emitt Rhodes (1970)
Sunny pop, perfect for this wintry day. This whole album is like lost gems from Let it Be or the Paul McCartney vault, right down to the guitar tone. And it’s not just me — a 2009 Italian documentary about Rhodes is entitled The One Man Beatles. I’ll have to netflix it.
But Rhodes is such a talented songwriter in his own right, I don’t mind that it sounds so derivative. And apparently Rhodes played every instrument on this album, in a series of obsessive overdubs on a 4-track. That’s impressive.
I wonder if he ever met the Beatles.
