30th Anniversary Reissue Remastered and Pressed on 180g Vinyl LP!

Originally released in 1989, Oro Incenso & Birra established the leather-voiced Zucchero as one of the giants of Italian music, also making him a star on an international scale. Selling over eight million copies to date, the album has taken its rightful place in the history of Italian and international music. To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Oro Incenso & Birra is presented here on remastered 180g vinyl LP.

Produced by Corrado Rustici and recorded at Peter Gabriel‘s Real World Studios in England, Ardent Studios in Memphis, the Power Station in New York and UMBI Studios in Italy, with the collaboration of legendary musicians such as Eric Clapton, Rufus Thomas, Jimmy Smith, Clarence Clemons and David Sancious, Oro Incenso & Birra came off the back of the great success of Zucchero’s previous album, Blue’s, released two years earlier. It established Zucchero as an international artist thanks to a selection of high-impact hits, including “Overdose (d’amore),” “Diavolo in me,” “Nice (Nietzsche) che dice,” “Il mare (impetuoso al tramonto salì sulla luna e dietro una tendina di stelle…), and moments of great intensity such as “Madre dolcissima,” “Diamante,” with lyrics written by Francesco De Gregori, and the closing track “Libera l’amore,” with music by the great Ennio Morricone.

“For me, the album represented a considerable challenge because my previous record was “Blue’s”, which had been very successful, it had broken sales records as well as meeting with the approval of the critics and the general public,” Zucchero explains. “I had started to do stadium shows. So how do you follow up such great success with another album less than two years later? To be honest I didn’t really think about it, I wasn’t stressed and I didn’t feel anxious about it. I preferred action over thought, and that’s because I had accumulated a lot of experience as I’d worked my way up, in various bands, and I had worked through a lot of musical styles. This combination of styles and influences gave rise to a track list which had been conceived and scripted like a film, a kind of personal concept album, a diary in equilibrium between the influences of American blues and childhood memories in the countryside of Emilia.”