Bottin makes music only an Italian can make... probably.
Take a youth spent against a background of old Italian Giallo soundtracks, add in late 70s Italian disco influences, a touch of free and easy west-coast vibe and a smattering of kitsch. That just about half describes Bottin.

Here at the Bearfunk cave we are thriller-ed by the tasty four-track EP from the upcoming album that is Horror Disco.

As a taster for the main event we open things up with Disco For The Devil.
If Vincent Price & Giorgio Moroder had made Italo then this may have been the result.
This italo disco thriller features the perfectly sculptured vocals by UK-born and Italian-based session master Douglas Meakin – who back in the day was lead vocalist in Simonetti's Easy Going and Crazy Gang cult disco projects.

Next up with is Sciarando El Scuro, a unique blend of lazy disco and poliziesco, slasher b-movie soundtracks. Just in case you were wondering Sciarando El Scuro (pronounced "tscha-rando el scooroh") is Venetian dialect and means "throwing light into the darkness"

Side B opens up with an exclusive track, Cosmic Pizza. This layers choppy guitars and meandering juno style synth-lines over a space-disco tarantella (the traditional Italian triplet-based rhythm, don’t you know).

Things round of with Bianca, which mixes deep space pads and tasteful slapped bass and the track is already heavily supported by cosmic sound originators Beppe Loda and Daniele Baldelli.

The Horror Disco concept all started with the chance encounter with a noisy, old, incontrollable, 70s Farfisa Syntochestra synthesizer. This proved to be the weapon of choice for several of the tracks on the album (Mary Lewis, Magnetic Cat) with Bottin building up hand-played layers old school style. A few tweaks of the Farfisa led our man to the world of sounds he grew up to: the soundtracks to Italian slasher B-movies (like those by Lucio Fulci, Bava, Argento & Alberto Martino), but also futuristic horror scenarios, cosmic travels and close encounters with space vampires... The die was set.

Horror Disco melds these soundtrack and aural ideas with a pure contemporary disco album. One that drifts away from most of the soulful elements of disco and one that is dirtier, warmer and less polished than Scandinavian nu-disco. The album is wide and varied; Slashdance gives us a Goblin-esque robo-vocoder-disco, Roger Bacon is pure cosmic groove, ". The film influence is ever present too, "Horror Disco" is the Giallo intro opener, Theme From St. Mark 30124 and Venezia Violenta are the imaginary soundtracks to retro-futuristic flicks set in the Venetian Lagoon, while the closing track Endless Mother is pure John Carpenter 1982 vibe, rejuvinated by a screaming synth ostinato. The well-received, anthemic, Italo chunker No Static (so far only available in a 12" limited edition of 750 copies on cult US label Italians Do It Better) is also included.

Horror Disco is an impressive work with a rare attention to detail and after some seriously impressive listening, you'll know you have just found your favorite new Venetian.

The 14-track album drops in July 2009.