Super-producer Giorgio Moroder: 'There's a lot of Philadelphia in my sound'

With the recent release of Déjà Vu, his first solo album in 30 years, producer/composer Giorgio Moroder shows that at 75, he's making music as vitally on-point as ever. And this time around, it has a local beat.

Rather than rely on the stammering arpeggios and swirling synthetic string sounds of disco - like the 1970s dance-floor hits Moroder and lyricist Pete Bellotte crafted for the late, great Donna Summer - Déjà Vu does the next best thing. It deals in the currency of EDM - disco's slickly dressed grandson - with a theatrical flourish, pumping four-on-the-floor rhythms and vocal contributions from a murderers' row of femme hit-makers Charlie XCX, Kelis, Kylie Minogue, Sia, and Britney Spears.

The songs of Déjà Vu don't sound anything like any of Moroder's signature legendary hits - not 1970s songs such as Summer's "Love to Love You Baby," "Hot Stuff," or "Last Dance;" not '80s fare like Irene Cara's "Flashdance . . . What a Feeling," Blondie's "Call Me," or Berlin's "Take My Breath Away"; or his revolutionary electronic film scores such as Alan Parker's Midnight Express (1978) or Paul Schrader's American Gigolo (1980) and Cat People (1982). Yet their scintillating syncopation, loving loops, and twitchy rhythms are all part of every strand of Déjà Vu's DNA.

Also integral to that DNA is the classic Sound of Philadelphia.

"When I first talked about a new album with the record company - and it had been quite a while since I had done such - I thought about making this record in a disco style," Moroder says in his thick, baronial Italian accent. "Really, though, I had done that long enough. It's today, you know? So I think I have a good combination of disco stuff - the strings, the guitars - and the EDM on the new album. It's modern dance [music] with some retro."

Moroder did not wish to rehash disco's aged pulse or precious swing, yet he is quick to acknowledge the contributions of Summer ("I loved her, she was an amazing singer and a lovely woman") and the heated romanticism of the music that made him famous and vice versa. Moroder is working on a Broadway musical based on his disco glory days featuring old hits and new music.

"The newness of electronic music and synthesizers, the four-on-the-floor beats, the Philadelphia Sound strings and brass - all these things came to us in the studio when we started," he says. "We just went with the flow."

In his hands, the cream-cheese string sounds and thundering rhythms of Gamble & Huff were like coming home for Moroder.

"The Philly Sound violins really got me. And that brass, oh my. There's a lot of Philadelphia in my sound," Moroder says. He fondly recalled producing and composing songs for Philly's the Three Degrees with albums such as 1978's New Dimensions and 1979's 3D.

Joke with Moroder and tell him he's made an unusually now album for a man who went into semi-retirement in the 1990s - only to be reawakened by Daft Punk for their 2013 album, Random Access Memories, which featured him on the track "Giorgio by Moroder" - and he laughs. "You'd be surprised how much new music I listen to. I can name you most of the tracks on the Billboard Dance Music Hot 100 - U.K. and the U.S. charts - I have to be informed," he says. "I probably like most of them, too."