Cosmic Disco: A DJ and Dancer Reflect on the Genre-Blending Dance Music of Italy
From the DJ History archives: Louise Oldfield and Liam J. Nabb discuss the Afro-Cosmic wave of the late ’80s and early ’90s
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“There are a lot of foggy memories, but everyone agrees it all started at a club called the Baia degli Angeli with two New Yorkers, Bob and Tom,” wrote Louise Oldfield in a 2002 article for 7 Magazine. In the 1990s, Oldfield was a dancer who moved from England to Italy. There, she met her husband, DJ and producer Liam J. Nabb, who was a resident at the famous Florence club Tenax. Together, they were engrossed in the Afro-Cosmic scene that exploded in the late ’80s and early ’90s in the Italian countryside, helmed by Daniele Baldelli.
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Nabb and Oldfield returned to the UK in the late ’90s, and now the pair run a boutique bed and breakfast called The Reading Rooms in Margate. But they’re still full of memories from that time. In this 2004 interview with DJ History’s Bill Brewster, Oldfield and Nabb shed light on the transition from Italo disco to the outset of early house and Cosmic Club, the “genius” mixing of DJ Mozart, and the mystery of Bob and Tom.
How did the club scene in Italy start?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nThe scene was between ’78 and ’82. Really pushing to ’84. It was a really massive scene that expanded around Rimini and to Venice which is really quite a country area. There aren’t any cities there. Loads of clubs there. Baia degli Angeli was one of the biggest clubs back then, it had a 4,000 capacity. Big club, had stars like Grace Jones performing. So you’re talking about the disco period. And then they had their own totally maverick interpretation of this.
\n\nThey did bring American DJs over, though, didn’t they?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nYeah. Bob and Tom were the ones that originated that whole thing and taught everyone to mix.
All the DJs at Baia degli Angeli played in a glass booth which went up and down to the different dancefloors. It was totally full-on, disco, druggy.
Who are Bob and Tom?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nNo one knows really. No one’s really investigated. They came and they left. The thing about them was that they could mix. They said they came from New York and that they were DJs, but no one can really trace them back to being DJs there. But they had big collections. They had all the disco and funk records that were really hard to get hold of.
\n\nLouise Oldfield
\n\nThe guy that imported the records was friends with [designer Elio] Fiorucci, so it all came from that Fiorucci’s shop in New York where they’d all hang out, like Bianca Jagger, Grace Jones, that whole jet set. At that time, he was a really massively influential designer and there was this little crew and this entrepreneur was over in New York and he said he was going to come back to Rimini and build a super club on the cliff front.
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nIt’s about five miles outside, round the bay, he built a massive villa there, swimming pool, dancefloor. One sound system. All the DJs played in a glass booth which went up and down to the different dancefloors. It was totally full-on, disco, druggy.
\n\nWho were the first DJs there?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nBob and Tom. They taught a load of DJs to mix. [Giorgio] Armani and Fiorucci were both part of that scene. It was very crossover, people travelled there, very glitzy. At the point where it was quite elitist, it started to get “contaminated” with lots of younger kids going and starting to travel to it. Instead of it being about new clothes, it started to become about the second hand thing. So there was this slow change.
Mozart was actually living in the club and hanging out on yachts with Grace Jones. He was about 16. And he was a bit of a genius.
It got closed loads and loads of times. What happened was Bob and Tom left the place. They taught these other DJs to mix and they were Mozart and Baldelli. Mozart was actually living in the club and hanging out on yachts with Grace Jones. He was about 16. And he was a bit of a genius, he just totally improvised these things. Then you have this other guy, Baldelli, who’d already been DJing. He learnt from Bob and Tom. They weren’t friends, though, Mozart and Baldelli. They hated each other.
\n\nIn a personaility way or rivalry way or what?
\n\nLouise Oldfield
\n\nBaldelli doesn’t do drugs. And his wife, who he’s still with, he’s got pictures of her doing the cash desk ever since he’s been DJing. He’s a family man. He’s a bit geeky.
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nHe’d research turntables. He’d research mixers. He got these Technics digital turntables, 1300s. He was mixing lots of disco with German electronic and African, because they were really hard to mix with. Before that they were using these turntables that had these little knobs. Mozart was improvising. He’d just do it. Whereas, Baldelli would write down – score – his set completely: what bar it comes in, what bar it goes out, first drum machine comes out, second drum machine comes in, etc. Totally anal about it. He’s got this database of his 50,000, immense collection. Whereas Mozart is the complete opposite. “Why would you need to write anything down?” So they did Baia degli Angeli and BDA.
\n\nWhen it opened the second year they were there, it was like Woodstock. The whole hill in Rimini was full of people, they’d come with these Citroën Dyane customized cars, and they’d just fill the whole hill. So you’d have the club full to capacity and the whole hill. You could hear the music outside. People’d trade tapes, this was a big thing. They’d have these cars with tape machines and there was this big trade in tapes. If you speak to anyone over 35 in Italy who was into music, you can bet they’d have some Afro tapes. They all have them. And if you play one they can tell you the number of the tape, “Oh yeah, that’s number 41,” and so on.
We went to interview this guy who runs Slam Jam and distributes Stussy, and he’s got 200 Cosmic tapes. It’s kind of a religious thing, for him. They influenced the whole scene in Italy. And the thing is this music was not accessible any other way. There was no radio. They’d write to Paris, to a record shop there, and buy in bulk all the African records, go through them try them at 33rpm – “Yeah, that’ll fit” – and they’d play them at the wrong speed. Like reggae played at 45. A lot of the German electronic stuff they played at 33.
\n\nThe tape I heard had Frequency played at 33.
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nA lot of the British electronic stuff was played at 33. No one would know those songs any other way. If you know Peter Gabriel at 33 you’re not gonna dig it at 45, but if you don’t it sounds like some weird Eskimo tune.
\n\nWhich Gabriel tune?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\n“Biko.” They transformed the whole sound from disco. From then, these two DJs, everybody learned to mix incredibly well. I remember coming to England in the early ‘80s, ‘83 and ‘84, and no one could mix. Even when house started the mixes were still pretty dodgy. I couldn’t understand it, because everyone in Italy could mix really well.
The beginning of Cosmic might have been the golden period.
Louise Oldfield
\n\nThere were a lot of police raids on the club because it was so massive and also there’d been this switch from cocaine to heroin and the heroin thing took off massively…
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nWhich also contributed to this slowing down of stuff…
\n\nLouise Oldfield
\n\nIt was like the antithesis of disco. Lots of raids, loads of people got beaten up and the scene got fragmented. Baldelli went to do a club in Garda, called The Cosmic, which is where the name comes from. The difficulty you have in talking about this scene, the names of the clubs have become mixed up in the music. The beginning of Cosmic might have been the golden period.
Liam J. Nabb
\n\nA lot of these guys just sold their records to buy heroin. There were these pairs… I think Mozart and TVC and Baldelli and Rubens, and each one took it off into their own direction. The intention was to try and mix every style of music up. I think they called it Afro, but no one can be certain. After that, Baldelli was really on the electronic tip and he developed that at Cosmic. And Mozart was really into funk and jazz fusion, and Rubens was into disco. They were also into Brazilian.
What sort of stuff?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nThey’d play anything from Airto [Moreira]. I’ve got a tape of Baldelli’s where he goes from disco into electronic and then into some sort of folk thing and then a samba played at 33, then he mixes in another three samba tracks and it just gets bigger and bigger and then goes “Woo!” Sound effect, and then kicks into Liquid Liquid. It’s like this big mindfuck journey. The atmosphere was so intense in that place that you can imagine back then to being so incredible. The mixes are so good, you can’t even hear them.
\n\nAre there many acknowledged classic tracks?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nThe thing is it went through quite a long time, but Will Powers “Adventures In Success (In Dub).”
Louise Oldfield
\n\nIf you look at [Claudio] Coccoluto’s hit, he chose that because it was a massive Cosmic hit.
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\n“The Belo Horizonti,” it samples Airto. When we interviewed Coccolutto, I knew he had this influence; he got into DJing after hearing the Cosmic tapes. Nearly every known DJ from Alex Neri, all the Rimini ones…
\n\nWho are they?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nMassimino, who did “Sueño Latino,” which samples Manuel Gottsching. Massive Cosmic record.
Louise Oldfield
\n\nFlavio Vecchi was taught by Bob and Tom. Ricky Montanari.
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nGemolotto made “Sueño Latino” with Massimino.
\n\nLouise Oldfield
\n\nGianluca Tantini. The guy behind [the club] Echoes, who was into Cosmic.
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nLuca did the first after hours in ‘88 and really made the names of Montanari. I remember playing at a really hard techno after hours club, and Leo Mas came on and he plays “Treehouse” by Indian Ocean! I was like, “How can you play that here?” And it’s because they’d been doing it for so long, they knew what worked and he could mix that with an R&S record and make it work. It’s about capturing the atmosphere, that’s why you could play Manuel Gottsching at Sunrise or the Bolero. Baldelli’d do these mixes with no beats for 20 minutes. This really influenced the early house scene.
Louise Oldfield
\n\nWhen we interviewed all the famous Italian DJs of today about whether they’d ever been asked by any journalist about why they started, or the Cosmic, they all said no. Because of the Italian characteristic of being very competitive and rivals, they’d not talked about it. The problem is that because Baldelli never made records, which would travel internationally, there was no way of finding out about it.
\n\nWhat does he do for a living now?
\n\nLouise Oldfield
\n\nHe DJs. He’s got a camper van which he travels with about 15 boxes and his synth and samplers and drum machines.
It sounds like Jimmy Savile!
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nThere were about ten clubs, each with their own residents, playing this kind of music. I remember when I started DJing I was taught by Stefan Rossellini. He invited me to a club one night and what would happen is they’d all wait outside the club until the DJ arrived, because they wouldn’t trust the club owners that it really was Mozart who was playing. There were loads of towns where he couldn’t play because of this whole entourage of people who would turn up. Because of the closure of these clubs, promoters would hire different places.
\n\nThe one thing all Italians agree on is that this is the only national scene they’ve ever produced, all the others have been imported.
The one thing all Italians agree on is that this is the only national scene they’ve ever produced, all the others have been imported.
Did any of the DJs in the scene ever produce records that tried to replicate the sound?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nThe music industry in Italy is very static, very classical, very bureaucratic. If you wanted to make a record you had to be a member of the Italian PRS, which meant going to Rome and sitting an exam, doing an interview in front of the commissioner and a panel of musicians and paying one million lire, which would’ve been more than a month’s wages. Posh people made music.
\n\nWhat about groups like Goblin, then? Were they playing domestic records?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nThere weren’t many domestic records at all in that time. There were a lot of bootlegs. So they’d press up the records getting played at the speed they were played at, like Loft classics.
\n\nAny examples of wrong speed records?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nYellowman, “Strong Me Strong.” I used to play the instrumental of that at the wrong speed. Bill Laswell did an album with Yellowman of dubs from about ‘84 that got played.
How did people in Switzerland and Austria find out about it?
\n\nLiam J. Nabb
\n\nGoing on holiday. Then they’d tell their friends and it spread like that. By 1984 the whole scene was dead, but promoters would hire a stadium or field and they’d have 20 DJs playing over two days. That scene carried on as a sort of “Remember Cosmic” and it remained playing those same records, without progressing.
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\n This interview was conducted in 2004. © DJ History