1977. Two releases, one genre. Meco - "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band," platinum status in the US. Space - "Magic Fly," top 10 in the UK and France. Two different continents, two different industries, one name: space disco. A genre born at the intersection of science fiction, disco beats and synthesiser electronics, lived three years at the peak and another ten in the shadows. But Space and Rockets were not the only ones who built it.
Space disco bands: a map of projects and aliases
Space disco is a disco subgenre that emerged in Europe in 1976-1977 on the wave of the science fiction boom sparked by Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The genre combined a dance beat, synth pads and space themes. Peak - 1977-1979. By 1980 space disco had dissolved into Italo disco and spacesynth. But in those three years the genre was built by fifteen projects that are less known than Space and Rockets.
United States: Meco
Meco (Domenico Monardo) - an American producer who released Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk (1977). The album went platinum in the US. Meco was not a band - it was a studio project that recorded cosmic disco versions of film soundtracks: "Star Wars," "Superman," "Music from Star Trek and The Black Hole." Meco created the commercial template for space disco: known melody + disco beat + synth pads. After 1979 Meco switched to other themes, but his contribution to the genre was structural.
France: Cerrone and Massiera
Cerrone (Jean-Marc Cerrone) - a French drummer and producer. "Supernature" (1977) - a cosmic disco suite about the dangers of genetic experiments. Cerrone followed Giorgio Moroder's path: synthesiser electronics instead of orchestral arrangements. "Supernature" - #1 in France, #8 in the UK, #1 on the Billboard Disco Chart. Cerrone is not typical space disco (his material is more diverse), but "Supernature" is a canonical track of the genre.
Jean-Pierre Massiera - a French surrealist producer. His projects: Venus Gang ("Love to Fly" - space disco in pure form), Herman's Rocket, Human Egg. Massiera worked in the range of 1976-1981, and his output was experimental, theatrical, with pulp science fiction aesthetics. Venus Gang and Herman's Rocket are niche releases, but they show that space disco was not only a commercial phenomenon but an artistic one.
Italy: Automat, I Signori Della Galassia, Charlie
Automat - an Italian studio group: Romano Musumarra and Claudio Gizzi, with Mario Maggi on a custom MCS70 synthesiser. The self-titled album Automat (1978) is a seminal Italian space disco record, made a year after Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene. "Droid" - a track that sounds like a robot rapping two years before rap existed.
I Signori Della Galassia ("The Lords of the Galaxy") - an Italian group from the late 1970s, mixing space progressive rock, Italian pop and Moog electronics. The group released singles on Italian indie labels and remained in the shadow of more commercial projects.
Charlie - an Italian project that released "Spacer Woman" in 1983 on Memory Records. The track is borderline: space disco already transitioning into Italo disco, with female vocals and a synth hook. "Spacer Woman" - one of the last tracks that can be classified both as space disco and as Italo disco.
United Kingdom: Dee D. Jackson
Dee D. Jackson - an English singer who worked with Giorgio Moroder. "Automatic Lover" (1978) - a hit with a cosmic image: Jackson in a silver suit, synth pads, disco beat. The album Cosmic Curves (1978) - a conceptual space disco record. Jackson was neither Italian nor German - she was British, working in Moroder's Munich studio, which made her part of the international space disco scene.
Latvia: Zodiac
Zodiac (Zodiaks) - a Latvian electronic/space disco group active from 1980 to 1992. Critics described them as "the Soviet answer to the French group Space." Zodiac recorded instrumental synthesiser albums at the Melodiya studio in Riga, using Soviet synthesisers and electronic equipment. Their album Diskometeorit (1982) - a rare example of space disco on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain. Zodiac had no Western release, but their melodic material is close to European space disco.
Germany: Ganymed and Harald Grosskopf
Ganymed - an Austrian-German space disco group formed in 1977 on the Bellaphon label. Albums: Takes You Higher (1978), Future World (1979). Ganymed combined space disco with elements of prog rock and early Italo disco.
Harald Grosskopf - a German drummer (Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze) who released the solo album Synthesist (1980). Grosskopf is not space disco in the strict sense but cosmic electronics bordering on Berlin School. But his tracks with a dance beat are part of the cosmic electronic continuum to which space disco also belongs.
Netherlands: Laserdance
Laserdance - a Dutch studio project by Erik van Vliet and Michiel van der Kuy, popular in the mid-1980s. Laserdance is a direct heir to space disco, transitioning into spacesynth: analogue synthesisers, drum machines, vocoders, no vocals. Laserdance carried cosmic electronics into the 80s, when space disco had already dissolved into Italo disco. More on Laserdance - in a separate breakdown.
Others: Asha Puthli, Manzel, Droids, Tantra
Several projects are single releases that define the boundaries of the genre:
- Asha Puthli - "Space Talk" (1976): Indian-American singer, cosmic disco psychedelia. One of the early space disco tracks - before Star Wars.
- Manzel - "Space Funk" (1977): instrumental cosmic funk, whose sample was later used in hip-hop.
- The Droids - "Star Peace" (1978): French project, "the first robot musicians." Synth-pop + disco on the science fiction wave.
- Tantra - "Hills of Katmandu" (1979): Italian space disco with Eastern motifs. A track that foreshadowed the ethno-electronica of the 90s.
Moroder and the roots of the genre
Giorgio Moroder - a figure at the origins of both space disco and Italo disco and Eurodisco. From Here to Eternity (1977) - the album that defined the synthesiser disco sound. "Chase" (1978) - an instrumental cosmic track with a Grammy nomination, included in the Midnight Express soundtrack. Moroder was not a space disco artist in the strict sense - he was a producer who created the technological base of the genre: Moog Modular, metronomic beat, machine bass. Without Moroder there would have been no Dee D. Jackson, no Sparks "No. 1 In Heaven," no Italian space disco projects.
Moroder worked in Munich, at Musicland studio. His production method - recording bass and rhythm on a Moog Modular, vocals on top, minimal melody - became the template for all European electronic dance music of 1977-1983. Space disco was the first genre to take this template and add cosmic themes to it.
Visual aesthetics
Space disco was not only a sonic but a visual genre. Album covers: silver suits, helmets, cosmic landscapes, starry skies, robots. Rockets performed in silver makeup and helmets. Dee D. Jackson - in a silver jumpsuit. Cerrone on the cover of Supernature - in a cosmic landscape with monsters. Meco - with the Death Star on the cover of Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk.
The visual aesthetics of space disco grew out of the science fiction boom of 1977: Star Wars in May, Close Encounters in November. Space was in the air - and on the dancefloor. The disco ball, spinning, created the effect of a starry sky. Silver suits reflected the light. The cosmic theme was not a marketing trick - it was the cultural context in which the genre existed.
Why the genre ended in 1979
Space disco lived three years at the peak - 1977, 1978, 1979. By 1980 it had dissolved. Reasons:
- The disco boom ended: Disco Demolition Night in Chicago, July 1979 - the public destruction of disco records. Disco became a toxic brand in the US.
- Italo disco rose: By 1980 Italian producers took synthesiser electronics and made a more melodic, commercial product. Space disco was too cosmic; Italo disco was more human.
- Synth-pop went mainstream: Gary Numan, Human League, Depeche Mode took synthesiser electronics from the dancefloor and carried it to the radio.
By 1981 space disco survived only in the Netherlands - Laserdance and Koto continued the tradition, but under a new name: spacesynth. Cosmic electronics did not die - it changed its name, tempo and market. Koto - the Italian project that in 1983 took the space disco formula and moved it into Italo disco: "Jabberjaw" (1983), "Visitors" (1985). Koto and Laserdance are the two heirs of space disco, each with a different approach: Koto more melodic, Laserdance more rhythmic. Both prove that cosmic electronics survived the death of disco.
The space disco map
Space disco was not a national genre. It was international - from American Meco to Latvian Zodiac, from Italian Automat to British Dee D. Jackson. Fifteen projects, six countries, three years of peak. Each of them took the synthesiser and space as material - and each did it differently. Space and Rockets were the most famous, but not the only ones who built the genre. Without Meco, Cerrone, Automat, Dee D. Jackson, Zodiac, Ganymed, I Signori Della Galassia, Charlie, Asha Puthli, Manzel, Droids, Tantra, Harald Grosskopf and Jean-Pierre Massiera the genre would not have existed. Fifteen projects, six countries, three years - and a sound that forty years later still works. From Space's "Magic Fly" to Charlie's "Spacer Woman" - cosmic electronics paved the way that Italo disco, spacesynth, synthwave and modern retrowave later followed. The genre ended in 1979, but its DNA is alive.