HFU HF Underground
Loggings => North American Shortwave Pirate => Topic started by: JoeFLIPS on July 10, 2017, 0142 UTC
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0142- weak signal with spacey music S1 at best
0148- electronica music
0155- more electronica music S1-2 signal now
0202- electronica, spacey sounding music
0204- CW ID
Thanks for the broadcast! :)
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Pee Wee 6950 LSB S3 in NY
0143: Instrumental music
0148: Electronic song with bleeps
0156: Romano Musumarra & Claudio Gizzi "Droid"
0204: Pee Wee CW I.D. over an electronic song
0208: Another CW I.D. over a new electronic song
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S5 peaks, but mostly a noisy S3 with mellow ethereal music.
0150 - hearing music again, some long fades to nothing.
0204 - CW ID over the music
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Very good music with stuttering at times. Otherwise, sounds great. Thanks for the show. Signal is bumping +20 with local storm noise.
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0150 Hearing music with about S3 in Southwest, VA.
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Tuned in at 0151utc, very weak but low noise, spacey music, R-2000 & dipole.
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Romano Musumarra (keyboards)
Claudio Gizzi (keyboards)
Rather unusual choice for an Italian 70's band, Automat were a studio group from Rome, featuring two keyboardists and a third member, Mario Maggi, helping on keyboard programming. Maggi was also the builder of the MCS70 synth used on this record, and the new instrument's sounds and capabilities were the main source of inspiration behind this album.
During their short life Romano Musumarra also had a very different musical career being a member of the well known pop group La Bottega dell'Arte, that was active between 1975 and 1984 with many chart hits. The other musician, Claudio Gizzi, had a classical background.
Their 1978 album is a rather unique example of instrumental electronic music from Italy, totally built on synthesized sounds and rhythms, it's in the same rank as contemporary works by Kraftwerk and Jean Michel Jarre, whose Oxygene was recorded in the same period and released just a few months before this, so it can be an interesting surprise for fans of this musical style.
Side A is totally taken by the long Automat suite by Claudio Gizzi, while the B side contains three shorter tracks by Musumarra. One of these, Droid, was a leading theme on the brazilian Globo TV.
Musumarra has kept composing keyboard music in the 80's, with soundtracks (he's particularly active in France) and production works.
Claudio Gizzi appeared with a single track, as arranger and conductor in the My favourite tones LP, issued in 1973 by the legendary Picci label.
Not particularly rare and expensive, the Automat LP has never been reissued in any form in Italy nor counterfeited.
With cover notes totally written in English the album was probably aimed at foreign markets, but as far as we know it was only released in 1978 by EMI in France and Argentina (the latter had no. 6926) and Harvest in Brazil (no. 31C064-18323, this was also re-released in 1985 as part of an EMI Odeon/Harvest reissues series).
Also in Brasil, a 7" single with picture sleeve containing Droid and Automat was released on Harvest (no.31C006-18469).
A 12" promo single with three tracks, Rise, Advance and Genus was released in Canada by Capitol (no.75031).
A 7" single containing Androide (Droid) and Mecadence was also released in Argentina (EMI DIF 127).
A CD reissue exists on Barclay (141.5.341) from Germany (though it's sold by russian dealers). This has been released in 2003 and has a lighter cover than the original, its cover having probably been scanned from an LP.
A russian CD reissue also exists (cat.no DG056Z), on unknown label.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_brY_9ME8iE