Some Italo disco acts had one name and one record. Martinelli had a dozen names and a catalog deep enough to fill a whole night of dancing. Behind every one of them sat the same three people: producer Aldo Martinelli, his childhood friend and engineer Fabrizio Gatto, and Italian American singer Simona Zanini. This is the story of how a Milan neighborhood friendship and a single audition turned into one of the genre's most prolific production teams.
Two Friends from the Same Neighborhood
Aldo Martinelli and Fabrizio Gatto grew up in the same part of Milan and knew each other since childhood. Martinelli, a trained musician and a music teacher in middle schools, had the equipment to build demos at home well before either of them had access to a real studio. Gatto later described those early years plainly: they did not own a recording studio, so they built rough versions of their songs at Aldo's place before booking time anywhere proper.
The pair's first credited success came in 1982 with "Take a Chance" by Bizzy & Co., produced with Claudio Cecchetto and used as the theme for the Italian television program Premiatissima. It was a strong start, but the project that defined their sound came a year later.
Doctor's Cat: Where It Started
In 1983, Martinelli and Gatto set out to build something more ambitious, and they needed an English speaking voice to front it. That search led them to Simona Zanini, an Italian American singer born in Ashland, Kentucky. The track they wrote together, "Feel the Drive," became the debut single of Doctor's Cat and one of the defining records of early Italo disco, built around a synthesizer intro that DJs across Europe picked up within months.
Aldo and Simona started working on the creation of Feel the Drive, and what came out was something spectacular. That synthesizer intro would echo through clubs across half of Europe in no time.
"Watch Out!" followed the same year, and "Gee Wiz" arrived in 1984, cementing Doctor's Cat as the project where the Martinelli, Gatto and Zanini partnership found its footing. Zanini did not just sing. She co-wrote several of the tracks, shaping the project from inside the booth rather than simply delivering vocals handed to her.
Aldo Martinelli
Wrote and arranged the bulk of the catalog credited to Doctor's Cat, Martinelli, Moon Ray and Topo & Roby. Built early demos on home equipment before studio sessions, working alongside Fabrizio Gatto on production and mixing across the decade.
Martinelli: The Duo Takes a Name
By 1985, Martinelli and Zanini stepped forward as a credited duo under the simple name Martinelli, releasing music through Il Discotto Records. Their breakthrough was "Cenerentola," known internationally as "Cinderella," a song built around a fairy tale atmosphere and a saxophone line played by Giancarlo Porro over Martinelli's electronic arrangement. The single became a genuine European hit, reaching number 8 in West Germany, number 5 in Austria, number 6 in Switzerland and number 5 in France.
More singles followed under the same name, including "O. Express," "Revolution," "Victoria," and "Voice (In the Night)," nearly all of them carrying Zanini's vocal. Decades later, Martinelli still introduces her at live shows with a nickname that has stuck: the Cinderella of the 80s, the woman who sang in the studio by day and vanished into the night, while her voice kept echoing through clubs around the world.
Moon Ray and the Comanchero Trick
The same team's biggest international hit did not even carry the Martinelli name. Released in 1984 as Raggio Di Luna, known abroad as Moon Ray, "Comanchero" was written by Aldo Martinelli and Simona Zanini and produced by Martinelli and Fabrizio Gatto. On stage and on camera, the project was represented by dancer Mandy Ligios, while the actual vocal on record belonged to Zanini. It was the same sleight of hand that ran through so much of Italo disco: one face for the cameras, a different voice on the tape.
"Comanchero" turned into the trio's biggest chart success, reaching number 2 in Austria, number 3 in West Germany, number 4 in Switzerland and number 5 in France, with further singles "Viva" and "Tornado Shout" following under the same Moon Ray name.
Simona Zanini
The vocal thread running through nearly every project credited to Martinelli and Gatto. Sang as Doctor's Cat, Martinelli, the uncredited voice behind Moon Ray's Comanchero, and as half of Topo & Roby, while also appearing on other Italo disco projects of the era including Valerie Dore and Radiorama.
Topo & Roby: A Singer and a Robot
If Moon Ray hid Zanini behind a dancer, Topo & Roby hid her behind a robot. The 1984 project paired Roby, Zanini's stage persona, with Topo, a robot character rather than a human performer. Zanini sang every vocal part on the record, including the processed, robotic lines voiced as Topo, while Martinelli handled the writing, performance and production with Gatto. The single "Under the Ice" became a club favorite across European discos and radio, reaching number 20 in France, and remains one of the stranger and more memorable footnotes in a catalog already built on disguises.
Simona Zanini, the absolute queen of Italo disco. During that period, she lent her voice to so many projects and so much of Italian dance music.
One Team, Many Names
What ties Doctor's Cat, Martinelli, Moon Ray and Topo & Roby together is not a shared sound so much as a shared workflow. Aldo Martinelli wrote and arranged. Fabrizio Gatto produced, engineered and mixed alongside him. Simona Zanini sang almost everything, regardless of which name appeared on the record sleeve or which face appeared in the videos. It was an efficient, almost factory-like way of working that let three people compete with much larger label rosters, simply by releasing under whichever name best suited the song.
That approach also meant the trio rarely got credited as a single, recognizable group in the way Den Harrow or Righeira did. Fans bought Doctor's Cat records without necessarily realizing Martinelli made them too, and danced to Comanchero without knowing the same voice had already topped charts under another name entirely months earlier.
Decades on, the records still hold up on their own, and the story behind them adds another layer to how Italo disco actually got made: not by isolated stars, but by small, tightly knit teams who treated each new single as a chance to try on a different name.
