Ettore Ballotta

condition (record/cover): EX+ / VG+ (minimal creasing and edges wear)

A promotional LP commissioned by Volvo Italia, arranged by Ettore Ballotta, a Bologna conservatory man who had scored Fenoglio adaptations and then spent the seventies doing library work under the alias Ector Davis. The brief was presumably "make our estate cars sound sexy," and Ballotta took it literally: Fender Rhodes, a horn section with four trumpets and three trombones, the Music Center strings, a choir, and a lead singer credited only as Angiola. The result is Italian jazz-funk of the kind that gets sampled now, recorded with a budget that only a Swedish car company would have signed off on in 1979.

The same recordings later surfaced under Ballotta's own alias as Evolution Now, so this is the first and only edition in its original corporate livery. Pathos was a Bologna operation; the catalogue number LTH 2000 hints at how few of these they expected to press. Not a record you will find in the Volvo dealership anymore.