Rondò veneziano: La Serenissima (Baby Records/BMG, 1981)

Rondò veneziano and their fake disco/baroque music mixture aren't usually much regarded among music fans. They're too prog for non-progsters, not prog enough for progsters, too disco or too classical for rock lovers and too few for disco or classical lovers, and so on. But most of all, they're considered just too kitsch for anyone - whatever one's tastes might be.

I don't want to deny this. Rondò veneziano are definitely kitsch: a perfectly conceived form of extreme kitsch. And that's precisely why they deserve your esteem.
Here's their second album and most famous one. The tracks "La serenissima", "Sinfonia per un addio", "Arlecchino" can't be new to your ears if you happened to watch Italian television in the Eighties or Nineties. If you did not... Well, the kind of music involved here is easily explained.
Take Vivaldi, Albinoni or any other notable Venetian composer of the baroque era, make it a bit more sugary, add some drums and bass guitar with a mild disco-music touch, and there you are.
At times the music - entirely instrumental, of course - sounds as cheesy as Il guardiano del faro (which is quite of an appropriate comparison, after all), but the most lively tracks, with all their counterpoints and strings and winds and canons, are something and no cheesiness can obscure that.

Rondò veneziano are a chamber orchestra lead by maestro Gian Piero Reverberi, one of the foremost arrangers of Italian pop music during the Sixties and Seventies. He worked with Gino Paoli, Le Orme, Fabrizio De André, Lucio Battisti, Luigi Tenco, and many more. The group started in 1979 and is still active and touring.

Tracklist:

1. La Serenissima
2. Rialto
3. Canal Grande
4. Aria di festa
5. Sinfonia per un addio
6. Arlecchino
7. Regata dei Dogi
8. Notturno in gondola
9. Capriccio veneziano
10. Magico incontro

Download (192 kbps)


Similar music on the blog:
Giusto Pio: Legione straniera (EMI, 1982)
Luciano Basso: Voci (1975)

VV.AA.: Ref. 907 (Italian Records, 1981)

An early compilation witnessing the earliness and originality of Italian minimal-synth scene. Published by the quintessential new wave label Italian Records, it features a selection of three songs for each of five bands: Eurotunes, Ipnotico Tango, Metal Vox, Absurdo, Kerosene.
Almost no information about the bands can be found on the internet, but Eurotunes have a Myspace page and it says they were based in Rome. The overall sound of the record, anyway, isn't that far in spirit from the one of the mostly Bolognese bands heralded by Italian Records: Gaznevada, Stupid Set, Hi-fi bros, Confusional Quartet. It is, basically, de-evoluted rock based on primitive-sounding synthetizers, with very repetitive beats and skeletal riffing held by the sawtooth register of the keyboards. As for the aforementioned Italian Records bands, the prominent references seem to be the contemporary scene of the American North-East, with two subtler yet distinct influences coming from the alienating synth-pop sounds of Sheffield and post-industrial England, and perhaps more evidently from the New York no wave/mutant disco circuit - the latter fact making many tracks remind of the extraordinary "Great Complotto" scene of Pordenone.
The defining trait differentiating the five bands of Ref. 907 from their labelmates is essentially the darkness and illness of their sound. Though it has almost nothing in common with the growing "darkwave" trend of those years (no abyss and woe, at all) the music shows a taste for bleak and morbid atmospheres, combined with schizoid/spastic vocals and discomforting instrumental intermissions.
The bands are quite different one from the other, but I'll let you discover yourself their particularities. I'll just say everytime I listen to this compilation I have different opinions on what's my favourite!

Tracklist:

1. Eurotunes: European's Progress
2. Eurotunes: I Got the Beak
3. Eurotunes: Osaki Motion
4. Ipnotico Tango: Ipnotico Tango
5. Ipnotico Tango: Spasmodico Rango
6. Ipnotico Tango: Erotico Mango
7. Metal Vox: Future World
8. Metal Vox: T.V. Hero
9. Metal Vox: Infinity
10. Absurdo: O'vel
11. Absurdo: Audio Output
12. Abdurdo: Sex in Ball
13. Kerosene: Meccano
14. Kerosene: Jazz Rock
15. Kerosene: Stivali

Download (256 kbps)
The compilation was already posted on Mutant Sounds, but some tracks were missing.


Similar music on the blog:
Gaznevada: Sick Soundtrack (Italian Records, 1980)
Confusional Quartet: omonimo (1980)

La lionetta: Il gioco del diavolo (Shirak, 1981)

Traditional folk, encompassing the whole heritage of Northern Italy, with a special attention to the folklore of Occitanian valleys. Somehow akin to Planxty's celtic revisitations, "Il gioco del diavolo" merges themes and styles, crafting warm sounds and sophisticated embroideries which astonish with their richness and fullness.

The album probably isn't faithful to traditional patterns, techniques and instrumentation (hurdy-gurdy, French bagbipes, bombardes and dulcimeres are everywhere), but actually reinvents the tradition, enriching it, polishing and casting a (wonderful) counterfeit "ancient times" allure. The starting point is traditional material, but the arrival is surely something that never got so intricate, delicate and refinate for a folk band.

Though well-mannered and studied, the album never sounds austere: its breeziness and light-paced folk-dance rhythms are actually the elements that really make it stand out.

La lionetta are a traditional folk ensemble from Piedmont, born in 1977 around reed/pipe player Roberto Aversa, a longtime collaborator of Dario Fo's theatre company. This is their second record, and last one for a long time.

Tracklist:

1. Il matto, il diavolo e il bagatto/La fiera
2. Cecilia/Il sogno fi Cecilia
3. Rocastalda
4. La lionetta
5. Muran dell'Inghilterra/Canzone della bella
6. La monferrina di Napoleone
7. Leandra
8. Bourrée d'Auvergne/Valzer della montagna
9. Povra mi/Tema della madre

Download (192 kbps) [re-up]

Similar albums on the blog:

Calicanto: Venexia (Compagnia Nuove Indye, 1997)

Musicanova: omonimo (Philips, 1978)

Ensemble Havadià: '81-'82 (Warner Italia, 2006)

Irriverent, jocose and dynamic, this music is one of the highest peaks of the Italian "R.I.O." scene. The songs are exuberant chamber-rock divertissements, full of mockeries, calembours and sharp eccentricities. Nevertheless, the structures are extremely lucid and complicated: ubiquitous North-Italian folklore and fanfare elements clash with flabbergasting tempo shifts and early 900 classical references - daring layerings which unexpectably manage to keep light and funny; miles away from any self-indulgent prog-rock bluster.

Ensemble Havadià was a short-lived project captained by Milanese "jew atheist" Moni Ovadia, now a well-known stage actor and comedian, and closely related to "Gruppo Folk Internazionale" and Stormy Six's label "L'orchestra". "'81-'82" collects the only two records issued by the band: the eponymous 1981 LP and the 1982 EP "Specchi".

Tracklist:

1. Finale
2. I benandanti
3. Aria del serpente
4. Il serpente burocratico
5. Aria del serpente
6. Gocce amare
7. Konik
8. Fuma el camin
9. Sigla
10. Apertoure
11. L'eternità
12. Straziato assai
13. Rumba "An den Leser"
14. Treno

Download (160 kbps)

Similar albums on Il golpe e l'uva:

Gramigna: Gran disordine sotto il cielo

Stormy Six: Macchina maccheronica

Musicanova: Festa Festa (Fonit Cetra, 1981)

Eugenio Bennato and Carlo D'Angiò created Musicanova in 1976 after leaving Nuova Compagnia Di Canto Popolare, the Neapolitan band which settled the trend of folklore revival which would lately give rise to Il Canzoniere Del Lazio, Carnascialia and so on.
The purpose of Musicanova was to step aside from pure revisitation and move towards a (slightly) more rock direction and new compositions, faithful to the traditional style, which would enrich and make revive the local repertoire. Their style could be compared to the one of contemporary English and French "electric folk" bands such as Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Malicorne. Musicanova have a distinct Southern-Italian feeling and strong Mediterranean inflections which are reflected by Arabian-influenced minor harmonic scales and Teresa Di Sio extraordinary vocals. Their music focused much on the use of mixed compound meters but never fails to be tuneful and lively, thus confirming its refinement.
"Festa festa" is their last album and surely not their best. It's still good and pleasurable, though the absence of Teresa Di Sio is a notable defect. Its sound is more up-to-date than the one of their previous albums: atmospheric synths give many songs a rather "rainy" feeling and the overall mood's much more melancholic and minimal than usual. Some production elements foreshadow the stereotypical "Eighties" sound (sluggish basslines, reverberations, saxophone).
Their two masterpieces, the self-titled 1978 album and "Quando turnammo a nascere" (1979), can be download from the blog Italian Folk Music.



Tracklist:

1. Vento del sud
2. Canzone della fortuna
3. Ex voto
4. Canzone per Iuzzella
5. Te saluto Milano
6. L'acqua e la rosa
7. M'è venuta 'na voglia
8. A la festa
9. Nannaré

Download (320 kbps)

Giuni Russo: Energie (CGD/Warner Music Italia, 1981)

First album as "Giuni Russo" by Palermitan singer Giuseppa Romeo, Energie was quite rare until the CD reprint in 2005 (to the point that Italian rapper CapaRezza has publicly asked to lend him a copy of it). Most of the songs are written by Italian most-reknown pop experimentator Franco Battiato and the arrengements feature some of his longtime collaborators such as Giusto Pio and Alberto Radius.
The album mixes tuneful, lighthearted pop with vocal experimentation based on Giuni's incredible range and timbre shifting ability. The CD edition contains three bonus tracks, among which is the hyper-hit "Un'estate al mare", with its chimeric lyrics.

Tracklist:

1. Lettera al governatore della Libia
2. Il sole di Austerlitz
3. Crisi metropolitana
4. Atmosfera
5. L'addio
6. Una vipera sarò
7. L'attesa
8. Tappeto volante
9. Un'estate al mare
10. Bing Bang Being
11. Adeste fideles

Download