Black Box
Dreamland

If there ever was an origin of the house scene in our country, then it is largely attributable to this album. As we all know (especially the detractors of this overly criticized musical genre for no reason) an Italian house scene certainly exists, so much so that it has immediately been classified separately from the well-known musical trend born in Chicago in the early 80s. "Dreamland" manages to be a prophetic, revolutionary, and well-constructed album at the same time.
On one hand, the "pop oriented" sounds of our local clubs were beginning to tire the crowds, and on the other, there was a new sound dimension known as "Chicago sound" knocking on the frontier, ready to enter the country and wreak havoc. House began to be heard in our nation around 1987, offering "made in U.S.A." classics like "House nation" (I didn't start the sentence by chance) by "House master boys & rude boys of house", "Move your body" from guru Marshall Jefferson, "Pump up the volume" by MARRS, "Your love" by Jamie Principle, and other classics. In the following years, this trend would have increasing appeal to the point of altering sales charts and nightclub playlists. But what house music in Italy lacked was consecration, which didn't occur until a trio consisting of keyboardist and "sound wizard" Mirko Limoni, clarinetist and programmer Valerio Semplici, and DJ Daniele Davoli (the Groove Groove Melody team) gathered in 1989 around a table after recruiting a talented singer and conservatory musicians (Sauro Malavasi and Roberto Fontalan on guitars, Raimond Violi on bass, Rudy Trevisi—who had worked with what is considered the father of Italian dance music, producer Mauro Malavasi—on sax).
What emerged was the much-dreamed-of land upon which the foundations of the Italian house dimension were built. And things would change very quickly. While, to the good peace of that year's Raf, much would remain of the 80s, the world on the other side was ready to enter the 2000s and shake off the now ancient pop and all the old and unnecessary musical trinkets of the past decade, above all Italo disco, New Romantic, and Disco music.

The album kicks off with "Everybody everybody" and continues its opening march with "I don't know anybody else", reaching its peak with "Open your eyes", a song very "Disco music style". Song 4 is a well-done cover of the Earth, Wind and Fire classic "Fantasy". The first act closes with track 5, a non-sung new age-style song. So far, a dignified album for the dance floor and sufficiently lively. But from this point on, thanks to encountering song 6, the history of music (at least Italian) will never be the same again. The track in question is the fundamental "Ride on time", which catapults the entire album to the top of the charts and would be used and remixed in all possible ways by DJs. I should point out that, interestingly, the singer on the single version is not the same as the one on the album version, and there's a very specific reason for that.
If there is one thing that exploded the house phenomenon (and above all Hip hop) it was the issue of "sample" music, also known as "sampling". Because this technique, born from New York DJs in the late 70s at the height of disco fever, would soon reach other genres thanks to a powerful vehicle like hip hop, infecting (or inspiring?) a multitude of other musical genres, house music in primis. So, almost by chance, bits of songs that had become classics ended up in new tracks without making much noise. And if you happened to listen to an Eric B & Rakim record that sounded a lot like Bobby Byrd or a nice Ice Cube album that sounded like one of Grandmaster Flash (which sounds like one of Chic or Queen) and knew something about what you were listening to, it was natural that you wouldn't be surprised. The cut-and-paste musical technique in the Hip hop world had been known since the first commercial success of the genre (who doesn't remember "Rapper's delight" with the bass loop stolen from the hit "Good times" by Chic?) and house had learned the lesson, making sampling a true doctrine. And how does this connect to "Ride on time"? It connects indeed, as the entire vocal part of the track (and something else too) was sampled from a 1978 Dan Hartman hit, the track "Love sensation" (sung by Loleatta Holloway), also changing (taking advantage of an American pronunciation defect) the phrase in the chorus from "Right on time" to "Ride on time".
Despite the single's craze in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy, producer Dan Hartman (who, incidentally, died of a brain tumor in 1994) did not hesitate a second to litigate against the team (and he was right) for the brazen plagiarism. The compromise was reached shortly thereafter: the track would be re-recorded and rearranged for the album edition. Despite the controversies, it was precisely "Ride on time" that launched (at least initially) the album "Dreamland" into the charts' Olympus and is also the main reason why it prompted me to purchase it and prefer it to Franco Battiato's "Il vuoto" (which I certainly won’t miss buying on my next downtown visit).

The rest of the album is composed of the funk-oriented "Hold on", "Ghost Box" (a totally instrumental track in the smooth jazz style, featuring a beautiful sax, useful to break the monotony and offer something new) and the last track (a real bomb), the perfectly judged "Strike it up", a track second only to "Ride on time", which ruled in all European clubs, inspiring the winning formula of the not yet born Snap! (those of "Rhythm is a dancer" to be precise) and incorporating, besides a rap part (a truly clever find), also a sample from Gloria Gaynor's 1976 hit "Reach out (I'll be there)".

In the end, what can I say? Obviously, you cannot judge this album for instrumental technique (it is still and will always be a house music album, albeit a well-made one) but it must be judged on the timbral front and also on the socio/cultural impact it had in tangentopoli’s Italy. It has always happened that in a time of crisis, people would seek refuge in dance to escape reality. This album not only had the merit of being the soundtrack for the early nineties in clubs but also of importing and making an alien sound like house its own, blending it with the typical musical characters of Italy (melody serving danceability and carefreeness). A few years later, the sophisticated trend of techno would come and sweep everything away (again) but Black Box’s "Dreamland" will always remain in the hearts of DJs and clubbers of the early nineties, who witnessed live the return of disco music (disguised as house) and of the seventies worldwide.