COSMIC DISCO? COSMIC ROCK!

Tracklist: 1. Fra Lippo Lippi - Say Something 2. Richard Bone - Mutant Wisdom 3. The Romantics - A Night Like This 4. Kevin Harrison - Ink Man 5. Translator - Break Down Barriers 6. Martha And The Muffins - Danseparc (Every Day It's Tomorrow) 7. The Dream Syndicate - 50 In A 25 Zone 8. Thompson Twins - Beach Culture 9. Positive Noise - Positive Negative 10. David Jackson - Stonewall Stands With Thomas Davies 11. La Bionda - I Got Your Number 12. Torch Song - Prepare To Energize 13. Ray Parker Junior - The Other Woman 14. Strafe Für Rebellion - Mosche Bildt Njet 15. Spirit - Potatoland Theme 16. Spider - Better Be Good To Me 17. Bronx Irish Catholics - Ulster Defense 18. Alicia Bridges - Body Heat All tracks mixed & edited by Daniele Baldelli & Marco Dionigi Info: From the public dance hall to the disco, from the smooch to the shake, from the orchestra to the deejay. Daniele Baldelli remains one of the first Italian deejays, who started his illustrious career back in the 60s and became one of italo disco™s kings of the dancefloor throughout the 70s and 80s. ˜Cosmic Disco? Cosmic Rock!™ celebrates a turntable odyssey from a man who lived and breathed Italian disco, American RnB and synth pop and pioneered the sound which, with retro chic hindsight, has influenced everyone from I-f, Hell, Felix, Miss Kittin & The Hacker, Marco Passarani, Tiga, Trevor Jackson, Lindstrom, Bochum Welt and Dopplereffekt amongst many more DJs and producers who have mined the golden age of synth pop for inspiration. Featuring rare and hard to find tracks from Fra Lippo Lippi, Positive Noise, The Romantics, La Bionda, Ray Parker Jnr., Thompson Twins, Martha and the Muffins and Richard Bone, ˜Cosmic Disco? Cosmic Rock!™ takes on a dancefloor mission to the shores of Lake Garda where from 1979  1984 ˜Cosmic™ was THE place to be and Daniele Baldelli was the disco king at its epicentre. 1969 saw the professional birth of Daniele Baldelli. He was discovered by a talent scout who was the owner of the TANA CLUB DISCOTEQUE and employed to šput on the records› as the word Disc-Jockey, at least in Italy, hadn™t been coined yet). After earning his dancefloor stripes, in 1970 he moved to the TABU CLUB in Cattolica. The music he played in those days could perhaps be divided into two large categories: white music, mainly from Europe and black music mainly from America. So in that year, there was a mixture of European records, which where almost always cheerful commercial songs, alongside American soul records, rhythm and blues and funk by artists such as Arthur Conley, Joe Tex, Wilson Picket, James Brown, Rufus Thomas, Lyn Collins, etc. Naturally getting hold of this material was not always easy. In 1974-75 BAIA DEGLI ANGELI opened, a club which certainly marked the historical beginning of discos in Italy. Situated on a hill in GABICCE MARE (PS) facing the sea, it was designed on various communicating floor levels. A completely white structure with a panoramic view, having many innovations such as a dee-jay console (which was a lift made of glass, that allowed the dee-jay to move from the first floor to a second-floor while maintaining an overall view of the various internal and external dance floors), it had a mechanical arm with a cage, similar to the type used when repairing high tension wires, full of lighting effects that could even be moved onto the various dance floors. There was also an internal swimming pool (with dance floor) and an external one too, an avant-garde graphic and opening hours that were never seen before: people could dance until 5 or 6 in the morning. The disco was illuminated and there were no slow dances, only beautiful American music that had never been heard before (six months ahead of the other dee-jays on the Adriatic Riviera). Daniele Baldelli learned for the first time, by watching the two American dee-jays Bob Day and Tom Sison, how to execute the perfect mix. In order to mix two records, the 12 inch record (that appeared on the scene as a big single track record which was more practical and suitable) was put on top of a 45 record in its paper cover, instead of laying it on the rubber cover of the turntable: in this way the speed of the playing 12 inch record could be corrected with the simple pressure of a finger without affecting the turntable speed. The deejay was finally able to slow down or accelerate the beat by hand, overlapping the same rhythms between two different songs. On the Americans™ recommendation Baldelli took over when they left and cemented himself into DJ folklore. COSMIC opened in 1979 in Lazise on Lake Garda. The logo of this new disco was composed by the word COSMIC that would advance at high speed towards the viewer, crashing a glass that symbolically had terrestrial landscapes painted on it . Everything started with the idea that the music had to be the main element of the project and the discotheque that was made for 1,200 people and had a dance floor for 700, also had a lighting and sound system that was certainly something never seen before. The excitement around the opening night was so huge and so over subscribed that it ran for 4 nights in a row. Very soon the fame of šCOSMIC› spread and within a few months reached the provinces of Verona, Brescia and Mantua. The disco within a year, became the meeting point for all štrends› and remained so from 1979 to 1984. In the discoteque parking lot it was possible to see cars coming from Palermo, Udine, Naples, Turin, Innsbruck, Florence etc.. All of the trend setters of the Peninsula booked a Saturday evening at šCOSMIC›, anxious to participate and listen to that musical phenomenon labelled šAFRO›. Naturally, even if it is still used today, this term was inappropriate, unless one considers Afro as the only root which influenced the various musical styles of Daniele Baldelli. In fact, even if various periods in the history of šCosmic› can be distinguished (that of Funky - Disco in the first year to that of Electronic in 1980-82, followed by moments more influenced by Reggae, Fusion, Jazz and Brazil), Daniele Baldelli™s Afro style was expressed when he played Ravel™s Bolero overlapping it with a track by Africa Djola, or an experimental piece by Steve Reich on which he would mix a Malinke chant from New Guinea. Mixing T-Connection with Moebious and Rodelius, discovering in the album Izitso the only hypnotic-tribal track by Cat Stevens, extracting Africa from Depeche Mode by playing them at 33 rpm or vice-versa by creating music using a Reggae voice played at 45 rpm. Mixing 20 or so African tracks on the same electronic drum pattern or by playing them together in batucada with Kraftwerk, using the same electronic effects of a synthesiser to overlap pieces by Miram Makeba, Jorge Ben or Fela Kuti and also by uniting the Indian melodies of Hofra Haza or Sheila Chandra with the German electronic sounds of SKY RECORD. Without doubt, one can say that Daniele Baldelli was the precursor, to what is known as today, as the dee-jay. Starting in 1969 when neither mixer nor headphones for pre-listening existed, up to the invention and use of electronic drums, synthetizers and the first sampling systems in discos, which only had four seconds of memory. In 1980, Daniele Baldelli even invented the šDee Jay concert›. Consisting of four turntables, two mixers and electronic drums or live percussion, 80 to 100 tracks were mixed in not much more than half an hour: a supermegamix was born, everything being carried out live. Another novelty of šCosmic› was the equalizer, which was used as a musical instrument, intervening rhythmically on the keys and cursors, where various frequencies could be manipulated, creating accentuation on the šCymbal› or on a voice or base. The mix was another characteristic or almost an obsession of Daniele Baldelli, who literally spent his time by listening to his records (today almost 60.000) in order to find the ideal moment where two pieces could overlap and create a third one. Sadly šCosmic› closed its doors in 1984 but in ˜Cosmic Disco? Cosmic Rock!™ you can transport yourself back to those halcyon and hedonistic days by Lake Garda where Daniele Baldelli really was the king of the cosmic sound. www.danielebaldelli.com / www.myspace.com/djdanielebaldelli / www.eskimorecordings.com