Music from Italy

 First 200 on Purple Vinyl. Amongst the first bunch of this new label releases, we couldn’t miss a tribute to one of the greatest masters of libraries recordings, Alessandro Alessandroni, born in 1925. In his long career Alessandroni has published lots of soundtracks – and we mean lots of - and for this he’s considered a real star of Italian music. As a friend, and close collaborator of Ennio Morricone, he’s remembered as “the whistle man” for his fundamental contribution to the immortal scores …

Fellini 60’s experimental flick Toby Dammit is a great film by a legendary director. 'Liberally adapted' from Poe's 'Don't Wager Your Head to the Devil', Federico Fellini's Toby Dammit was shot in twenty-six days over the winter of 1967-68, at the experimental film centre near Cinecetta in Rome. It is an extraordinary piece of genuine film psychedelia, and rightly regarded to be amongst the director's finest work. Dammit reveals that he haunted this personal apparition of the devil; a littl…

**CD version** The long and prolific career of Piero Umiliani, also consisting of dozens of collaborations for television and cinema, has given (and is still delivering, given the amount of material that is finally coming back to light) a long series of experimental albums and music libraries that showcase his songwriting skills, as well as a natural curiosity towards avant-garde and more ‘difficult’ sounds. We can attribute to the second category this “Percussioni ed effetti speciali”, a title …

**CD version** A journey into space with a wonderful sound – served up here as a set of cosmic instrumentals from Luciano Michelini, most of which have a pretty groovy vibe! The mix of 60s instrumentation, spacey touches, and light electric moments peppered with cool keyboards or woodwinds, and occasional wordless vocals – all in this way that provides a wonderful 60s fantasy of the moon, and one that's actually a lot more exciting than any of the real moon landing records out there. There is on…

Available for the first time ever on vinyl is the 1974 soundtrack by Alessandro Alessandroni for the Giuliano Carmineo (as Anthony Ascott) directed Di Tresette ce n'è uno, tutti gli altri son nessuno, known in English as The Crazy Bunch. The sequel to Lo chiamavano Tresette... giocava sempre col morto (Man Called Invincible), the film is a goofy, slapstick comedy spaghetti-western, but the Maestro’s soundtrack is anything but goofy. Haunting, sparse, and riveting, the soundtrack is easily t…

From the same vibrant cinematic landscape of '70s studio supergroups as Goblin, The Pawnshop, The Feedback, and The Braen's Machine comes the Magnetic System, the Italian incognito dream-team composed of Milano prog keyboardist Vince Tempera, Cinevox sibling Franco Bixio, and video nasty maestro Fabio Frizzi (whose career it launched). Bridging giallo jazz-bass-driven prog and the arrival of home studios and synthesizers, the film music of the Magnetic System marked a sea change in Italian gen…

Amleto Armando Roelens, also known under the moniker of Puccio, had a musical career almost entirely devoted to jazz; he was one of the first in Italy to play jazz music with his orchestra at the end of World War II, a genre that at the time was regarded as a vulgar import from the states. After some collaborations with RAI, the Italian national public broadcasting company, the fortunate encounter with the composer Armando Sciascia led him to write arrangements for many albums released by Vedett…

The 1966 debut of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, a collective made only of composers, with Ennio Morricone on trumpet, Frederic Rzewski, Franco Evangelisti, Mario Bertoncini, Roland Kayn, John Heineman and Ivan Vandor.

More than a halo of mystery surrounds "Le due stagioni della vita" (The two seasons of life), a film virtually impossible to find in any format, that we hardly know the names of its actors and director. The latter, Samy Pavel, of Belgian nationality but born in Egypt in 1944, debuted in 1972 precisely with this film, which was presented at the Venice International Film Festival in the same year. The author of the soundtrack is Ennio Morricone, who was already a World famous composer in t…

A great little soundtrack from Ennio Morricone with an overall dreamy feel to the best numbers on the set! "Vergogna schifosi" is a 1969 movie directed by Mauro Severino, a "Generation '68" film whose aim is to depict a social protest against the middle-class youth of the time, with the deserted - as empty as the protagonists - city of Milan in the background; everything is tied together by a mysterious murder that occurred years before, resurfaced by a mysterious individual. The soundtr…

Never before commercially released library breaks monster recorded in 1975. A really must-have for any Library Breaks DJ vinyl collector. This is Silvano  Chimenti and Romano Rizzati (alias Walter Rizzati) and a loose assemblage of primo Italian library session-players, I Gres recorded three blistering albums of funky library music. A sublime selection of work from this legendary sound library ensemble – an Italian group who were so cool, so groovy, they were virtually a genre unto themselves…

First ever issue in its entirety for this indispensable score by Italian cinematic jazz- father Piero Umiliani, obtained by having access to the original reels with the complete soundtrack's recording. Top class Italian crime jazz composed for a 1959's comedy directed by Nanni Loy (sequel of "I Soliti Ignoti", realized by Mario Monicelli just the year before, with almost the same artistic cast of "Audace"). Chet Baker, who was at that time in Italy, joined Umiliani's octet with his unmistakable …

Sonor is glad and proud to announce the reissue of a very underrated Piero Umiliani's masterpiece. "Switched On Naples", originally released in 1972 on ‎OmiCron LP 0023, is an outstanding ‪‎library with pure touch of genius: Maestro Umiliani revisits Naples popular songs in an electronic way with the use of synthesizer. The record is entirely carried out with electronic sounds. Edition of 500 copies.

**blue vinyl** A beautifully jazzy soundtrack from the great Piero Umiliani – one that features solo work by some of the key members of the Basso Valdambrini sextet! The style here is very much in the mode of the best jazz soundtracks used during the French new wave years – simple themes that burst out boldly, and allow plenty of space for jazz improvisation – often along highly rhythmic lines! The music would be very much at home in a Roger Vadim film – and includes plenty of trumpet and tenor …

La Ragazzina is an Italian sex comedy film from 1974, and you know what they say about Italian sex comedies from the 70’s right? They always have cool kitschy soundtracks! La Ragazzina is no exception, with Nico Fidenco providing bright, loungey accompaniments to the on-screen sexy antics. This is arguably one of Fidenco’s finest works, and it's a pleasure to see this vinyl reissue with remastered audio on Contempo. "The soundtrack composed by Maestro Nico Fidenco for the 1974 movie directed …

The first ever official LP reissue of a classic 1974 score! Spiritual cousin to the psyche-liturgy of The Electric Prunes' 1968 'Mass In F Minor' and William Sheller's 1972 masterwork 'Lux Aeterna', 'Il Sorriso Del Grande Tentatore' is a vital, beautiful, frightening and yet essentially forgotten chapter in the storied discography of lauded composer Ennio Morricone. This LP, with remastered sound, includes two previously unreleased tracks. Morricone's favourite Morricone! Included …

Many words were spent on the long and fruitful collaboration between Piero Umiliani and the director Luigi Scattini: new light has been shed recently on some of their works, in lieu of the reissue of soundtracks such as “Angeli bianchi... angeli neri”, “Questo sporco mondo meraviglioso” along with “La ragazza fuoristrada”, “Il corpo” and “La ragazza dalla pelle di luna” (the famous trilogy starring Zeudi Araya as a main character).In 1977 Scattini, a world famous Mondo Movie author, directed “Bl…

Closed Exit is published by Nail Releases in 1997 on double cassette limited to 80 numbered copies. The four tracks on the tape are based on sick mono-tone synth drones with aberration voice. The smell of death is soaked in every sound produced by the brilliant and twisted mind of Marco Corbelli. Anxiety, alienation and hypochondria turn into a deep paranoia in pain. Without hesitation, the bodies are emptied, leaving the field to an electronics purulence of rare power disconcerting. This…

La Vergine Di Norimberga is a great horror movie directed by Antonio Margheriti (aka Anthony Dawson) in 1963, starring Rossana Podestà and Georges Riviere. The great soundtrack, composed orchestrated and directed by the late Maestro Riz Ortolani, will give you the intense pathos of the movie through a series of songs that could be only described as “orchestral horror music”. Do not expect the classic Ortolani’s orchestration or “jazzy” tunes here. "This is Ortolani as you’ve never or rarely hear…

MILESTONE!!!!Fantastic space themed music from the great Piero Umiliani, released in 1972 on his own Omicron record label and finelly reissued in a limited edition of 500 copies on transparent clear blue vinyl. These tracks, which utilise a range of electronic instruments are generally claustrophobic and tense and experimental. "I have dedicated these compositions to the spaceman, this new, modern Ulysses going adrift on the galaxian oceans..." ~ P. Umiliani, 1972. The words of the great Pi…