By: James Derek Sapienza Category: MUSIC Date: 18.Dec.2013

Sound/Style is an exploration of records “Legendary” or otherwise that not only changed music, but style, fashion, and our perception of what is cool forever.

Giorgio Moroder has the distinction of being the producer that made Brian Eno go running into a recording studio crying “I’ve just heard the future!” It was 1977, and as he and David Bowie were in Berlin recording “Heroes”, Eno had been blindsided by Moroder and Donna Summer’s explosive masterpiece “I Feel Love.” As the single dominated the disco charts that year, and Summer rose to stardom, Giorgio retreated back to the studio and single-handedly laid the foundations for Italo-disco, house music, and a band named Daft Punk.

First off, From Here to Eternity is an exceptionally ugly looking record. To its credit, it does look ten years ahead of its time, but that says a lot about the state of cover art in 1987. Yet it stands as the incredible missing link in the evolution of electronic dance music. With the back cover announcing, “Only electric keyboards were used on this recording,” Moroder’s Eternity was and is a radical departure from even the most outré dance music of the time.

From the distance of a few decades, the 30 minutes of music on Eternity seems not far off from what Kraftwerk was doing at the time. But there is a major difference: unlike Kraftwerk, Giorgio lets the man-machine keep his soul. There is a mess of love, humor, and a palpable sense of loss and insecurity that runs the entire length of the record. It’s lyrically more akin to Arthur Russell than Gary Neuman, and no electro-pop would be quite as emotionally candid until New Order came along nearly five years later.

And that is where Eternity’s power lies. Shimmering and bright, it tows the line between the futuristic and the arcane, serious and self-deprecating in equal measure, and is just the right blend of lyrical naval-gazing and ass-shaking fun; a perfect artifact to dig through for 2013.

This year has been good to Giorgio. He made a notable, high-profile cameo in Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, telling by his life story against a very Giorgio-esque soundscape. Despite the recent accolades and celebrity status in Europe, why is he not revered outside the music circles while Kraftwerk is feted by the MoMA?

Well, for one, Kraftwerk didn’t spend the 80‘s unleashing things like the Top Gun soundtrack on the world. But still, From Here to Eternity has been unfairly buried. Like any important artifact, it resides deep in the cultural sediment, and waits to be dug up by the right people every few years. I found my copy in a rural thrift store in upstate New York, near the Canadian border. Where did it come from? Who left it here? I couldn’t help but hope that it once belonged to the misfit child of some cabbage farmer; feeling, dancing, naval gazing, and ogling this beautifully timely record wrapped in a hideous sleeve.