Tarzan Boy

Before the voice arrives there is the yell — that primal, jungle-broadcast call that functions less as a musical element and more as a declaration that the ordinary rules of pop construction are suspended. The production is Italo disco at its most uninhibited: massive synthesizer arpeggios cycling upward with infectious mechanical energy, a four-on-the-floor kick delivering its message with evangelical commitment, handclaps that feel both human and architectural. Baltimora constructed a track in 1985 that operates almost as pure atmosphere — the "narrative," such as it is, concerns freedom and wildness and a kind of ecstatic release from civilization, themes that the production embodies rather than merely describes. The vocal performance is exuberant to the point of absurdity, which is entirely the point — this is music that locates joy in excess, in the refusal to be tasteful. It became a monument of European disco partly because it understood that the dancefloor is a space where logic temporarily yields to feeling. The song resurfaces reliably in films and television whenever a director needs shorthand for a specific kind of eighties abandon, but experienced fresh it still carries a charge. Best encountered at volume, in motion, in a space where self-consciousness has somewhere else to be.