Killer! Born at the outset of the 1930s, Sandro Brugnolini started his career as a jazz saxophonist during the early 1950s, leading his membership within the famed Modern Jazz Gang, alongside Amedeo Tommasi, Cicci Santucci and Enzo Scoppa, whose debut LP, 1960’s Miles Before and After, retains cult status among Italian jazz fans. Like many of the most ambitious artists of his generation, Brugnolini found both creative and financial freedom in the contexts of library music and soundtracks over the length of his long career, recording and working on dozens of albums, beginning with the soundtrack to Enzo Battaglia's film, Gli Arcangeli, alongside the Modern Jazz Gang, before branching out on his own solo career during the mid-60s, and subsequently recording many of the genre’s most highly regarded release including, with Stefano Torossi, Giancarlo Gazzani and Puccio Roelens (originally credited to Jay Richford and Gary Stevan), 1974’s legendary LP, Feelings, as well as 1969's Musica per Commenti Sonori - encountering Brugnolini venturing into psychedelia and prog, with killer fuzz guitar work - and the iconic pair of 1970 albums Underground and Overground.
L’Uomo dagli Occhiali a Specchio is a 1975 two-part thriller movie directed for Rai Television by Mariano Foglietti, former collaborator of Dario Argento in Quattro Mosche di Velluto Grigio (Four Flies on Grey Velvet). The music composed by Sandro Brugnolini for the occasion are exceptional, an unbeatable mix of dark psychedelic themes with heavy jazz drums, exotic percussions, obsessive piano bits, creepy harpsichord, free jazz to wah-drenched psychedelia, stiff funk, and abstract avant-gardism with atonal sounds and tonal passages. Brugnolini’s taste and skill in dealing with these different elements are still astounding today, starting from the four versions of the main theme La Notte Muore included in this record.
Recordings for the soundtrack to L'Uomo dagli Occhiali a Specchio took place in December 1973 at the historic Fonorama Studios and include several components of the Modern Jazz Gang and trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini (of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza fame). This is an album that combines all the qualities for which Brugnolini is well known both as a musician and composer: the melodies, the ability to sonorize, the grooves and the jazz music that accompanied him since the '50s.
The original LP released on the Vroommm label by Edizioni Leonardi in 1975 is extremely rare and precious, and is now exclusively repressed by Redi Edizioni on clear transparent vinyl for Record Store Day 2022. This new edition is about as essential as they come and an absolute must for any fan of the Library / Soundtrack world. Needless to say, the few copies we have aren’t going to sit around for long.
