Archive for the ‘Claudio Simonetti’ Category

Easy Going – Claudio Simonetti’s Inappropriate Disco

Wednesday, May 16th, 2018

Easy Going
Fear
I Strip You
To Simonetti
Put Me In The Deal
Easy Going was an Italian Disco act that featured horror rock icon Claudio Simonetti. While Simonetti’s involvement with such a project might be surprising for fans of his work with Goblin, it wasn’t the only time that he was involved with dance music. Around the same time of Fear, Simonetti was working as Capricorn, pumping out a few singles from 1980 to 1982. There was also Kasso, probably the best known of his disco aliases. He released three albums as Kasso in the 80s, with the first two being very widely acclaimed by fans of electronic disco. Like Kasso and Capricorn, Easy Going was more or less a Simonetti solo project. The album has a multitude of performers, but Simonetti composed, arranged, conducted and produced the album, with lyrics by Giancarlo Meo.

Also like Kasso and Capricorn, Easy Going is a good example of Italo-Disco. For those not familiar with the genre, it is disco from Italy (duh) that blends the disco sound of the 70s with the Hi-NRG and synthpop sounds of the 80s. The best cuts from this album, the first two tracks, are both very Italo-Disco, very Moroderesque, while the latter two are decent examples of more traditional disco.

“Fear,” sounds like a horror remix of “I Feel Love,” with a pulsing sequencer rhythm wonderfully punctuated by some ominous-sounding strings and intense vocoder-aided vocals (along with some random screaming). And then there’s “I Strip You.” It’s halfway between traditional disco and electronic music, with just as much strings as keyboards and sequencers. It’s a really powerful, funky song with a fantastic groove…that seems to be from the point-of-view of a potential rapist, maybe?

You made a mistake
Don’t play games with me, girl
You made a big mistake
And now you’re staying here

Furthermore, he seems to be willing to commit this crime just because he wants to disprove rumors that he’s gay?

This way you won’t say
That you think I am gay
To the people you won’t say
That you think I am gay

But wait, maybe he is gay! Because as the song ends…

Now that you’re turned on
I don’t want you now, girl
So now you’re free to say
The truth that I am gay
It’s better that I go
I don’t want you no more
You’ve got the reason to say
To say that I am gay

So he was gay all the time and he was just fucking with her? Or he was gay and he was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t? Or he can only be with women when they’re not interested? This is a weird track. It sounds like a treatment to an unmade Argento film that was turned into a club track.

It should be mentioned that Easy Going was named after a gay night club. The cover of their first album is an explicit piece of art that was part of the club’s dance floor. It has a song called “Little Fairy.” Their third album has a cover of “Gay Time Latin Lover.” I have no idea if anyone involved with Easy Going was actually gay, but they were certainly playing with the idea that people must’ve thought they were. I’m sure there’s something icky about the politics of that, but I don’t want to bother going there.

Regardless of all of this, these tracks are certainly better than the Capricorn disco cuts I’ve heard, and actually make me interested in tracking down those first two Kasso records. I assume they have less songs about potential sexual assault and ambiguous sexual orientations.

I mean, I don’t know for sure, but it’s a safe bet.

Posted in Claudio Simonetti, Complete Albums | 3 Comments »

Brazilian IDM and Italian Disco

Friday, May 27th, 2016

Tonight I’m seeing New Order so I’m pretty damn stoked about that. Last time I saw New Order it was in NYC and the audience was filled with a bunch of shit-eating hipsters and investment bankers who were all clearly more interested in saying they were at a New Order concert than actually paying attention to the music. Concerts in Japan are so great, no one talks and everyone listens to the music.

And I’m a foot taller than everyone else so that’s great too.

Amon Tobin
Verbal (Prefuse 73 Dipped Escalade Mix)
Verbal (Kid 606 Dancehall Devastation Mix)
Verbal (Topo Gigio Remix)
Verbal (Boom Bip Remix)
A few years back I bought the ridiculous Amon Tobin box set. That box, with its crazy screw-top packaging and industrial design, was so over the top I did an “unboxing” post of sorts which you can find here.

Anyways, that box sat proudly on my record shelves for years until I decided to move to Japan. When the time came to back up all my records I started at the top of my shelves, which was where I kept my unusually shaped items. In may haste to shovel it all off into storage, I sadly bumped that box set off my shelves and tumbling to the floor, permanently damaging it with a major dent.

T’was a sad day in the Lost Turntable house, I’ll tell you that much. Will be a sadder one when I finally come to grips with the realization that it’s entirely impractical for me to mail crazy box sets like that to Japan and that I would just be better off selling them.

But until that day, I’ll live in denial and fantasize about getting all my 3,000+ records into my Tokyo apartment and listen to dope remixes like these, which I ripped off of a 12″ single.

Capricorn (aka Claudio Simonetti)
Capricorn (Vocal)
Capricorn (Instrumental)
Claudio Simonetti is best known as the former frontman of Goblin, the Italian prog-rock outfit that served as the composer for some of the greatest genre films of the 70s and 80s, including Dawn Of The Dead and Suspiria.

But in addition to the dude’s prolific contributions in the worlds of film soundtracks, prog rock, and creepy sound effects, apparently he’s also attempted several dalliances with dance music under the name Capricorn (among others). This shouldn’t be too surprising, a lot of Goblin’s best work with Simonetti was electronic in nature, featuring vocoder effects and drum synthesizers abound. It’s their more electronic work that no doubt paved the way for acts like Umberto and Zombi, bands who combine a love for electronica with a desire to make eerie and etheral music.

So when I stumbled upon this 12″ release by Capricorn, an early-80s alias for Simonetti, I was pretty stoked. I expected more of what I loved about Simonetti’s best work, an amazing combination of pipe organs and rad guitar work mixed over a steady dance beat and some arching synths.

What I got, was italo disco.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I dig italo disco. I just didn’t expect italo disco.

For those who may not be aware, italo disco is a sub-genre of disco (duh) from Italy (double-duh) which was kind of like an amalgamation of late-era disco, Hi-NRG house music, and electronic rock. If there’s any italo disco track you know, it’s probably “Boys Boys Boys (Summertime Love)” by Sabrina, which was a big hit in 1987 in every country on Earth except America.

Anyways, Simonetti’s “Capricorn” has a lot of elements of italo disco, heavy use of vocoder and electronic beats abound here, but it also embraces a lot of classic disco elements. The song’s heavy use of strings make it sound almost like a distant cousin of “The Hustle,” which I cannot say is a good thing. The vocals are also atrocious, and since the 12″ single has no performing credits I don’t know who to blame for them. The instrumental version is better by far.

Simonetti released a few singles under the Capricorn name in the early 80s, but sadly none of them have gotten properly re-released on CD save for a few on the occasionally oddball disco compilation. Too bad, if this track is any indication there could be some good stuff there. Hope to discover more in my record hunting.

Posted in Amon Tobin, Claudio Simonetti, remixes | 3 Comments »