Till Brönner - Italia

ITALIA was recorded in Bari and Rome, produced by Till Brönner and Nicola Conte – DJ, jazz musician and sound aesthete from Apulia, internationally acclaimed for his elegant, genre-blending musical language that fuses jazz, bossa nova and club culture.

The repertoire of ITALIA draws largely from the 1970s and early 1980s – a golden era of musical exchange across Europe. Italian songs played on French radio, filled German record stores, and shaped a continental cultural mood. ‘Italy created a kind of pan-European sound,’ says Brönner, ‘and an atmosphere that was formative for an entire generation.’

It was also a time when music was reflecting the hope for a bright future, when pop songs were at the same time light, and exploring the complexity and meaning of life. ‘There is a lot of hope today that things might shift toward something more human and more down to earth again – and that’s exactly the kind of feeling you could literally sense in the ’70s and ’80s,’ says Brönner.

Producer Nicola Conte reflects on the cultural self-understanding of that time: ‘We focused on a moment in Italian cultural history that is still, to this day, one of the most engaging, artistically relevant and colourful.’

In addition to classics by Lucio Battisti, Paolo Conte and Tony Renis, ITALIA also features rarities from the Italian pop culture of that era – songs that never gained recognition beyond the country’s borders. Brönner: ‘The album contains many songs that are well-known – at least from a non-Italian perspective. But there are also surprises. Nothing is more boring than a record where you know exactly how it will sound from the first note.’

The musical range spans the work of legendary cantautori to iconic film scores by Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni and Franco Micalizzi – complemented by an original composition by Brönner that blends so naturally into the repertoire, it takes a look at the credits to realize it doesn’t stem from that same golden era of Italian songwriting.