[pullquote author="Flemming Dalum"]“I hope you enjoy this short trip back in time to some of my favorite sleeves”[/pullquote]

By now I hope you’ve all checked out the unbelievable Flemming Dalum Italo Cosmic Mix on the site. It’s a real education and is, far and away, the most downloaded mix in our site’s short history.

I originally approached Flemming to ask if he’d be interested in sending across a sleeve cover or two for our ‘Heart on Sleeve’ feature and the mix was a bonus.

Not content with providing us with an awesome mix though he promised to send across his favourite covers and, true to his word, here is the result. As is typical of Mr Dalum it’s a real education, there’s loads in there and I didn’t know most of them.

Once again Flemming, thanks.

Heart On Sleeve: Flemming Dalum

I visited Italy many times in the early 80′s to buy records and, on those trips, we also visited many great, different clubs. Here’s a picture of me and my friends outside of Altro Mondo Studios in Rimini…

Please note the spaceship on the building – it’s the same spaceship as on the backsleeve of ‘The Creatures – Japan’

Almost all sleeves by The Creatures mean a lot to me, after experiencing their AMAZING show I was totally blown away – one night we were even invited up into the Spacefly (normally not possible for the audience).

To capture a bit of the atmosphere of their performance check out this clip.

So the sleeves of course, remind me, and kind of illustrate my out of this world experience.

We also visited the Cellophane club, again, in Rimini

[largeimage description="Flemming & friends outside the Cellophane club..."][/largeimage]

So the Cellophane records mean a lot to me – check out the legendary sleeves here

Many new records have found inspiration in those.

The last club I’d like to mention here is the Xenon disco in Firenze – here’s a picture taken by my good friend Morten on our trip to Firenze.

The resident DJ was Marzio Dance DJ – he also released some great records.

Even presented the ‘Future/Years to Come’… (check the CD)

Fulltime Records released many other artists – for example ‘Stage’ (a great sleeve by Franco Storchi)

Another great Italo disco label I must mention is Memory Records. The Koto release was very popular back in the 1980′s.

I remember when I brought Japanese Wargames back home with me. I took it to the local DJ who was so fascinated by this very electronic style that he played the record at least 5 times that night!

Many artists made sleeves with focus on the ‘new synth sound’ for example France’s ‘J.S.R.’

And

Even the backside of the sleeves became legendary amongst Italo collectors – you could always check on the backside to see if you’d got all the releases.