Pink Project

Pink Project is the name of an Italo disco production created, like its contemporary Kano, by Italian composer/keyboardist/producer Stefano Pulga, together with his colleagues Luciano Ninzatti (also guitarist/programmer), Matteo Bonsanto (keyboardist) and sound engineer Massimo Noè. Their biggest hit, which also provided them with their name, was a mashup - one of the very first such creations, actually - entitled "Disco Project".

"Disco Project": the idea and the recording

"Disco Project" was born out of the mixes that Pulga used to create during his club nights. In early 1982, he and Ninzatti had realized that Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall (Part II), which was a big hit in Italy in that period, and The Alan Parsons Project's equally popular "Mammagamma" had the same tempo and, in some sections, the same key. Plus, APP's instrumentals were often mistaken for Pink Floyd by Italian club goers and 'dance' fans in general.

Pulga and Ninzatti made a mix which started with APP's "Sirius" (another popular track from their 1982 album Eye in the Sky), then went straight into "Mammagamma" (avoiding Parson's transition to his album's title track), over which an a cappella version of the kids' choir from Another Brick was superimposed, with the octave bass and steady drums from "Mammagamma" running all the way through.

The vocals from Pink Floyd's song fitted perfectly on the Parsons piece, so Pulga and Ninzatti decided to officially release the mix as "Disco Project". [ [http://www.discogs.com/release/481665 Pink Project - Disco Project ] ] However, the final recording was not a mix, in that it did not feature any actual samples from the Parsons or Floyd records; instead, everything (i.e. the whole instrumentation) was very carefully re-played by Pulga, Ninzatti and Bonsanto - in particular, Ninzatti played a nice rendition of David Gilmour's famous guitar solo - while the choir was performed by a group of schoolkids from an international school in Rimini. [All of this was mainly done because Pink Project had no authorization at all from the any of the songwriters - indeed, they never asked for any - so the only way for them to release "Disco Project" was to actually make cover versions of the three pieces featured in it.] The choir also followed the key shift in the music of "Mammagamma", which was not present in the original mix by Pulga & Ninzatti.

"Disco Project" was a major hit in Italy during the summer of 1982, and this implicitly obliged Pulga & Co. to put up a fictional band for TV performances. Indeed they did - the song was mimed various times on Italian TV by five masked guys dressed in black monk-like robes and black pointed hoods. Although there were rumors at the time about three of the guys being actually Pulga, Ninzatti and Bonsanto themselves, their identity was never really discovered; they were probably session musicians hired on the spot by the various TV producers.

Subsequent career and demise

After the big hit with "Disco Project", the three producers used the Pink Project moniker for two compilation albums, mainly made up of more mashups in the same style as "Disco Project", borrowing from Jean Michel Jarre, The Police, Falco, Vangelis and Deep Purple (among others) while continuing their APP association. Two further singles, 'B-Project' [ [http://www.discogs.com/release/180950 Pink Project - B-Project ] ] [Michael Jackson's Billie Jean + Greg Kihn Band's Jeopardy] and "Hyper-Gamma-Oxygéne" [combining APP's "Hyper-Gamma-Spaces" and Jarre's "Oxygène" Part II] , respectively taken from Pink Project's first and second albums "Domino" [ [http://www.discogs.com/release/356075 Pink Project - Domino ] ] and "Split" [ [http://www.discogs.com/release/201767 Pink Project - Split ] ] , were minor hits in 1983, like their follow-up (a Pulga/Ninzatti Jarre-styled original, entitled "Magic Flight"). Despite a substantial amount of radio promotion none of Pink Project's albums were hits, and Pulga's creation rapidly died out.

The albums and the singles, released by the Italian pop/dance label Baby Records, have gone out of print since then, but "Disco Project" and "Hyper-Gamma-Oxygéne" can still be found as mp3s on the various Peer-to-peer networks.