serious synth fetish

I-F's Mixed Up in the Hague is one of the most important discs I have ever encountered. It is a mix of electro and disco of the Italo variety. It very neatly sums up why I find synthesizers and vocoders so sexy and gorgeous. When people speak of Italo disco, they often refer to its space-like quality, and this is entirely accurate. This idea is succinctly summed in Peter Richard's song from the I-Robots italo disco comp: "walking in the neon, the lonely galaxy".

When I was a teenager, I had an inkling that I liked a certain kind of dance music that would be perfect for traversing a highway at night, lights glowing intermittently within the darkness. Certain techno music on the Seattle dance station was suggestive of what I would come to love, or 80's synth-pop such as Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys would also allude to it. It would take a while until I discovered just the right ingredients to make the perfect synth-pop concoction.

The music with Mixed Up in the Hague is suggestive of romance and danger, but mostly of the loneliness of space. At this moment in my life, this disc makes me sublimely happy. I can think of nothing that is as perfect. The transition between Alexander Robotnick and Mr. Flagio is especially tops. For some good reading on the essentials of Italo disco-kind of music, see an article from Woebot.