There are so many good releases around at the moment one of these being music for an imagined movie, yes that’s right an imagined storyline, imagined screenplay and imagined characters. No, I have not been at the egg-nog early, cast your mind back a few months to the German label All Score release Vega 5 Avventure Nel Cosmo, by Mondo Sangue, and prior to that No Place for a Man also by Mondo Sangue, well they are back, and this time with a vengeance and a homage to the Italian Giallo, with the release Rosso Come La Notte, I say it’s a homage to the Italian Giallo, but it is in effect a mix of the sounds and styles of that genre with some of those groovy and funky sounds that we heard within the scores of the late Peter Thomas also. It’s a score and I will call it that because for all intent and purposes it is a movie soundtrack, but one that is imagined and whilst listening to it I think that you too will be able to conjure up scenarios, it even includes some pretty authentic sounding vocals, as in To Hell, which has a stylistic persona that is not that different from some of the vocals on Italian westerns and also crime thrillers from the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Lets put it this way I think if you were told that this was a score from a movie that had been lost and re-discovered in some dusty vault in Rome it would sound convincing. The opening cue, Somethings Wrong with Barbara, sets the scene perfectly and it could easily be the work of Bruno Nicolai or other composers such as Stelvio Cipriani and Nico Fidenco, it has that vintage sound to it and the ambience created is suitably retro, with a kind of off kilter music box effect fashioning an uneasy but at the same time alluring piece which too could be Goblin, Claudio Simonetti or Fabio Frizzi.
There are a number of cues that contain like a voice over which occasionally breaks into the music, but they add to the effect and also create a more atmospheric and affecting mood. The third track on the album Woman on a Night Train, is a homage to the vocal talent of Edda Dell Orso, with the female solo voice performance dominating proceedings the composers adding a mid-tempo backing track, which comprises of percussion and strings, again this could be Luchiano Michelini or Nora Orlandi. We then go to track number four, which contains elements of the core theme for the score, but is given a Morricone treatment, with jangling harpsichord, guitar, piano and female solo voice. As it develops the theme becomes steadily more driving and urgent, the composers adding more instrumentation, until it finally subsides but never actually relents, the entire release is impressive, the songs included are more like conversations between the vocalists, all sung in Italian which makes them even more attractive. If you are a fan of Italian movie scores this is an album that you should own, it will be issued on vinyl and on a digital download on November 26th, there is effective use of voices here, and combine these with an array of inventive orchestration such as strings, harpsichord, harmonica, and percussive elements and we have an entertaining release which is a tribute to the sounds of the Italian Giallo. Recommended.
Other albums from Mondo Sangue on All Score.
MOVIE MUSIC INTERNATIONAL. (MMI) . 