ITALO HOUSE (PART 1) by JOEY NEGRO

Joey Negro steps up to the plate with his new collection of Italo House. A personal selection of the deeper side of Italian house music.Following on from the recent “Remixed With Love” compilation plus more Joey Negro compiled albums including “GoGo Get Down”, “Backstreet Brit Funk”, “Destination Boogie” and the ever-popular Soul of Disco series Z Records continues to release high quality compilations filled with lesser known disco, funk and boogie. Now it’s the turn of “Italo House” to get the JN selection treatment with over 20 tracks hand picked from the late 80’s and early 90’s covering a lot of the deeper classics and some lesser known releases from a golden era of Italian dance music. The late 80s were undoubtedly a golden era for dance music. A time which saw the birth of many genres and sub genres - from acid house to hardcore to Balearic - and of course Italo house. If you ask Jo Raver to name an Italo house track, they'd probably come back with Blackbox, Jinny, Fiddlefatti or one of many big piano tune. At the same time there was another equally distinctive sound coming out of Italy- a warmer, deeper, more emotional style which didn't yield any commercial hits. The sound was more jazzy and soulful with syncopated percussion, dreamy pads and, though piano was often used, it wasn't in the obviously programmed, big breakdown style which became a cliché of the Italo house genre. This more underground side of Italo was closer to the original American house sound- but still retained a very European flavour. In common with other Z compilations which have featured Britfunk and GoGo, this album was an important release for me. Important because I love a lot of the records, many of which have been largely forgotten about, but also because there really was a unique sound coming out of Italy, spread across many labels and involving numerous producers. As a result, it has never really been fully showcased like this before. I'm glad this album exists for other people to discover or re-discover the deeper side of Italo house. Joey Negro – Feb 2014