N.O.I.A.’s Long Strange Groove

I’m an outlander, but I think you can probably trace a brief history of Italian alternative music through the 10 year career path of N.O.I.A. Starting out as punkish provocateurs prone to riling audiences to riot, by 1984 they were holed up in a studio and releasing a series of legendary records that people called “Italo” for lack of anything else to call them. (Today, people – or stores anyway – are calling it “nu disco,” which is much less forgivable.)

N.O.I.A. is currently ventilating their back catalog; while the package of remixes from Kirk Degiorgio, The Orb & Prins Thomas for “The Rule to Survive” is hard to beat, I’ll throw down for the quasi-Dance Dada of “Stranger In A Strange Land” every time. Side A of the reissue from Italian Records features the original mixes, which will make you feel like you’re having a drink in a 1980s remake of Casablanca shot entirely in the kitsch palaces of Branson, Missouri. Side B is a new dub version (similar to the original club mix) and a brilliant I-Robots reconstruction from Italian archivist Gianluca Pandullo, which is the rare “Insert Year Here Remix” that challenges to become more beloved and more charming than the original.