Welcome to A Space Love Adventure
When it comes to recreating and paying homage to the 80's let's just say the Italians over at Sunlover Records do it best. One of which is A Space Love Adventure who also happens to be one of the founders of the independently run label. His latest release, Limit Break, carries the key element to any successful album, diversity in sound. From his modern sounding Italo collab with sax powerhouse, Highway Superstar, to the soundtrack elements of Lone Wolf, Vietnam R.E.S.C.U.E. and Forest Chase, ending with an experimental VHS redux of one of his signature songs, Nightride II, Limit Break has all the elements of a killer album. It's a pleasure and an honor to present an interview with one of the founders of Sunlover Records, live from the year 1985, this is A Space Love Advenure.
The Electric Touch: Space, love, adventure , is there really anything else In life?
A Space Love Adventure: Of course there is, it’s just that we don’t have much time to go on the quest of finding it and share it. At the end of the day we get stuck with twenty percent of knowledge of what life really is.
The Electric Touch: Many of your tracks are tagged as italo disco, where does your love for this stem from?
A Space Love Adventure: First of all, I’m italian so that explains the inner love for italo disco. It's a genre we all indirectly used to listen to because of commercials, movie soundtracks etc. Over here, it’s that kind of music you know even if you’re not a fan. When synthwave came out, it was easy for me to revalue all those classics I used to know and dig deep into the genre, finding less popular gems.
The Electric Touch: In your opinion, who is a classic 80s italo artist one should speak of when talking about the genre?
A Space Love Adventure: If I should pick one artist to represent the 80s authentic italo disco era, it would probably be Den Harrow. He released many killer tracks (with the help of his producer, Miki Chierigato, the man behind many italo-disco hits) but the real thing that makes him relevant to the history of italo disco is what was going on behind the scenes of the project. The entire project was set up only to make money, like many other italo-disco projects, but in this case they took it to the next level. Den didn’t know how to sing or to play, and didn’t speak english. But he did have “the look”, so basically he was only the “image” for the project , which I think perfectly depicts the music industry at that time in that genre. Miki Chierigato and Tom Hooker were actually the musicians behind the original vocals and lyrics. He just had to dance and lip-sync the music during live shows. Also the name, Den Harrow, was picked because it sounded like the italian “denaro”, meaning “money”. When the truth behind the project came out, especially because he was extremely successful in Italy, it was considered kind of scandalous. But italo disco was like that, music made as quick as possible to make money. From a more legitimate standpoint as an artist, I would probably go for Koto. Pick any random song by them and you’ll know what italo disco is. Also they had the raddest artwork around!
The Electric Touch: How did you link up with Sunlover records, you've done a few releases with them?
A Space Love Adventure: Well, together with Vincenzo, Pat (Shio-Z) and Alex (Apollo Zapp) I am one of the original co-founders of this label. We started Sunlover in 2013 mostly because we wanted to have more control over our releases. At the time I didn’t release anything other than single songs on SoundCloud, while the other guys already had something out with other labels, that’s why all my releases are on Sunlover Records :)
The Electric Touch: Your latest release was a single called Let's Go off of the Sunlover Records Compilation Volume 3, Italowave. One of the best songs of 2017 so far in my opinion, give some background on that track?
A Space Love Adventure: All of us decided it was time for a new chapter in the Sunlover compilation series and it was summertime so we wanted to feature something fun, fresh and cheerful with an Italo-synthwave feel. Immediately I had an idea for this song to be inspired by a cult movie called Troppo Forte. This is a very funny movie with Italians portraying American biker stereotypes- anyway there is a song that plays in the background often in the movie called Go Go by Antonello Venditti. It's an 80s rock song that has guitar, synthesizers and orch hits and I've always wanted to use it as inspiration for a song. With my latest album Limit Break it wouldn't have fit well with that album, so this was the chance to do it. So I finished the song much faster than typical as I normally have a slow process of creating music, but I think I had the urge to create this song for some time now so I already knew where I wanted to go go. I put a Space Love Adventure twist on it and that was that.
The Electric Touch: Lastly, I've watched plenty of your demos on YouTube and poured over your graphic design, how the hell did you get so good!?
A Space Love Adventure: Well, I’m a graphic designer in real life. It’s my job. That’s why! :D When I discovered synth wave I gave life to Overglow (my graphic project) and to A Space Love Adventure simultaneously. The first one turned out to be more of a freelance job, the second one is still just a hobby.
Check out the artwork of Over Glow here and listen or purchase his latest below!
