‘Make Love talks about how hard it is to maintain feelings of desire in
long-term relationships, infidelity and the guilt that follows, and the pain of detaching from the
past and embracing the new.’
‘Make Love’ is the second recreation pulled from a collection of unreleased 1980s Italo Disco
demos that Mela was given while living in Northern Italy. It is produced with the help of Steve
Pringle and Miles James (Little Simz, Foals, Plan B).
Franco Nanni, a member of the band who originally recorded the demos, provides:
‘I am really happy that our pieces have found a new life in Emilia's (Mela) project, because they
are not covers or represses, she's given them a completely new life, with new lyrics, something
that stands by itself. I feel like our 20-year-old-selves from the 80s have been reborn and found
new meaning too, through this project.’
Mela Femmina - real name Emilia Estall - is a vocalist and keyboard player from South East
London. The idea for Hello Chic was born whilst Emilia was living in the rich musical context of
Bologna in Northern Italy in 2018. Whilst there, she was given a cassette by an eccentric older
friend - Marco Cigarini - filled with unreleased demos by a band he was part of in the early 80s
called The Audiocompany. When listening to this music, and discussing with the original
members how it was made, she was inspired to remake the band’s demos that had had such a
profound effect on her, and lay vocals over the top to mark the conjunction of her two worlds,
Bologna and London.
The result was a research-based project into the synthesisers and drum machines used on the
record at the time, mainly Prophets, Moogs, Jupiters, Junos and many more, dialling up the
sounds by ear to recreate this cosmic journey into Italo Disco, whilst contemporarily veering off
into other realms.
She was helped by two friends and producers - initially Miles James, who helped her start the
project, and Steve Pringle, who helped her finish it. The EP contains five tracks that go from
upbeat to melancholy, with comedic and atmospheric skits in between, taking influence from a
mix of worlds loved by both Emilia and the producers, from Gaznevada to Weather Report, from
Herbie Hancock to Isao Tomita.
Lyrics-wise, the project is about Emilia’s emancipation from a 6-year relationship she was in at
the time she lived in Bologna and her longing for independence and emotional stability.
Franco Nanni bio:
Franco Nanni has a classical background in organ and piano, but he began his personal
musical journey at the end of the 70s in the forge of the Electronic Music course at the Bologna
Conservatory with Gianfelice Fugazza. After various experiences on the Bologna’s scene, he
published Lost Time, an example (unusual, but not too much) of an 80s "Italian disco" that came
out with the "VideoClub" brand. With the brand elicoide he made his debut with his first solo
album in 1987 flanked by Paolo Grandi on double bass. A meditative and mystical record,
almost ignored in Italy but appreciated in the USA, Japan and Canada, which a couple of
decades later will become a cult, "one of the holy grails of music collecting" (writes D'Antoni in
the Giornale della Musica) up to reissue on double vinyl with the original recordings of '87 and
other unreleased records of the time (Affordable Inner Space 2017). In 1990, L’Angelo dei
Numeri was released with an extended line-up (ElicoidEnsemble) which combined electronics
with a suite of entirely acoustic pieces. In 1995 Vita was released, an almost entirely electronic
work sung by Silvia Testoni, distributed by BMG-Ricordi.
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