Another oddball italo song – of which there are more than we can ever know – this time revolving around singer Enrica Maldini’s bizarre Marlene Dietrich impression. With the same charming mixture of lyrical dexterity and utter nonsense that we heard on ‘Check-Out Five’, ‘Sexy Films’ seems to describe a relationship in which Enrica’s man stays up late in bed watching the titular sexy films, to which she merely says:

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Go to sleep!

The backing track is a deceptively simple groove of the kind that Claudio Casanali’s Best Record empire excelled at, lifting-off occasionally with arpeggiated flourishes that enter over the chorus. See 1982’s ‘Feels Good (Carrots & Beets)’ and 1983’s ‘Are You Automatic’, both by Electra, for the archetypal Best Record sound (trivia: the former was sampled on the groundbreaking ‘Your Love’ four years later).

Of course I don’t own the original of this Kroma record, which goes for 100€+. Nor do I have last year’s official Best Record reissue. Back when I wanted to buy it, there was a dodgy version from Archivio Fonografico Moderno, whose short catalogue of high-profile reissues (Decadence, BWH, ‘Lectric Workers etc) was the subject of much heated debate on discogs. I figured if I was going to get a dubious reissue/bootleg, I might as well get this fabulous Argentinian compilation, which had the (then yet to be reissued) ‘Stop/Your Lies’ by Middle Ages on it too. It was worth it for the artwork alone, which you can see at the top of this post.

Kroma - Sexy Films (Jumbo, 1984)

(Discogs, Bandcamp)

Note: this is an entry in the Track-By-Track series for my mix for O/B.

Track-By-Track is a series that looks back at records you will have heard in my mixes, one by one in the order they were played. Who made them, and when? How did I come across them? And what do they make me feel?