Tobias Bernstrup - Sing My Body Electric

Why this old stuff keeps coming into the promo pool eludes me. This album is about two years old now, but only now a review copy winds up at the Brutal Resonance headquarters, and since i am the only one with a musical taste which also includes camp, i get to do this one. Italo disco!

The funny thing about Italo is that it is mostly a singles game. The 80's are the period in which Italo flourished, but i have never heard a good italo album in my life. There are good tracks, there are fantastic tracks, but when an Italo act is tasked with making an album, you will get the one or two good singles, and the rest is filler. This 4th album of Tobias Bernstrup does a little better in that regard. But it is no high point by far. We get 10 very decent filler tracks, but unfortunately that one crazy dance track which makes it all right seems to miss.

Well, apart from "Videodrome" which features original Disco legends Trans-X. But this is mostly a rehash/rework of Trans-X original hit single "Living on video", and that one was much better.

Problem on this album is that Tobias knows his classics, and constructs a sympathetic and reasonable good Italo album. But while the songs will make you happy and the album is pleasant to listen to, things never get crazy like on the original Italo tracks which got to rule the dance floors in the 80's. Part of the problem might be that Tobias Bernstrup is more like a visual artist according to his biography, so the music probably takes second place in his career.

If you are an hardcore 80's Italo fan, you get a very decent album here which is on average better than the majority of the Italo albums produced in the 80's. But that one stand out track which makes a dance floor go wild sadly misses. The only thing this album makes me do is seeking up the video's from their countrymen ItaLove which do everything Italo right. Let that be a tip to lovers of Italo reading this. May 06 2013