“The Italian thing, there’s something about it.”

The summer of 1981 was a legendary one on the eastern side of Lago di Garda. Daniele Baldelli was creating a new sound at a club called Cosmic, in a DJ booth designed to look like a space helmet. The dance floor was unpredictable, the future was still wide open; drugs coming in from the North hadn’t taken over the scene yet. People arrived sunsoaked, expecting a journey.

The summer of 2020 was a memorable one too. Duane Island - real name Dan Komanoff - was in Manhattan, back in his childhood bedroom. Days were long but he was mostly inside. The view from the room’s window was just another brick wall, although for a few moments a day, a bit of light would hit the portable studio where he would jam after work. His brother was around, too, so Dan enlisted him on keys. When their parents left for a weeklong vacation, the party began: they could jam louder and smoke inside.

The result of these sessions is Solar Effect, three enormous and heartfelt club excursions that combine elements of trance, italo and disco to pack as much life as possible into a single track. The title track, “Solar Effect”, twists in on itself like a trip peaking at noon, pairing squelching FM synth lines with airy piano chords to get hands in the air, feet off the ground, and heads in the clouds. “Figo Dream” is an afternoon bike ride through a lifted and euphoric dreamscape, anchored by a pulsing bass line that changes course at just the right moment. “Olio” cruises back to earth by sunset, with cheeky keys and voices from dancefloors past beckoning for another go round.