THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,469) Mario Molino – “Shake Psyco”/”Shake Psycho”
The good, the bad, and the groovy! From an “[a]bsolute killer [Italian movie] score based on groovy beat and psychedelic cuts”, here is a number with “obsessive drumming & freaked out sound.” (https://www.popsike.com/Mario-Molino-Gli-Angeli-Del-2000-RARE-PSYCH-BEAT-OST-CAM-LIBRARY-LP-/280926957249.html) It is “[m]ad retro futuristic library music… top stuff” (gotofritz, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/mario-molino/gli-angeli-del-2_000/) that “combines soulful horns and drum breaks with cinematic melodies and an omnipresent Hammond”. (estudiodelsonidoesnob/soundstudiosnob (courtesy of Google Translate), https://estudiodelsonidoesnob-wordpress-com.translate.goog/category/mario-molino/?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc)
I haven’t watched the ‘69 flick Gli Angeli del 2000//The Angels of 2000, but estudiodelsonidoesnob/soundstudiosnob describes it as (courtesy of Google Translate):
[A]nother . . . of the countless examples in which the music that illustrates the images for which it was conceived is infinitely superior to what is illustrated. . . . [The] story [is] of Marco, a drug dealer and addict obsessed with the memory of Valeria, his girlfriend, who died in front of him in a tragic accident. Marco maintains a kind of idyll with Angela , a student who lives in an apartment building near his flat and with whom he intends to replace the painful memory of Valeria. Disgusted with his life and his circumstances, he reluctantly participates in a gang war that seems to open his eyes and redeem him. Once he has achieved the feat, waiting for Angela and partly overcoming his traumas, while crossing the street to meet her, he is now the one who is run over, dying in front of her and thus preventing her from starting over.
As to the soundtrack and the film:
[A] fantastic soundtrack by one of the most underrated Italian musicians. Gli Angeli del 2000 is a 1969 flick directed by Honil Ranieri that has all the drug, sex and counter culture ingredients of the era but which had very small distribution when first released – it was probably better distributed its photonovel version rather than the film itself! . . . The music is amazing. Top class Italian sounds for psych beat club dancers, cocktail easy goers and experimental groovers featuring the fabulous vocal talents of Edda dell’Orso—famous for her work in Alessandro Alessandroni’s Cantori Moderni or in many Morricone soundtracks . . . and also featuring violinist, pianist, singer Nora Orlandi—herself also a composer of many soundtracks from the sixties and the seventies, here providing the backing vocals with her own famous I 2+2 di Nora Orlandi group.
Finn Cohen talks about the resurgence of interest in Italian library music:
“[L]ibrary” music — obscure vinyl records containing songs written directly for radio, television or ad placement, in this case the lush, string-laden, funk- and jazz-informed arrangements of classically trained Italian composers. “There was no interest in this stuff when I started,” [says Lorenzo] Fabrizi[, who has] run the reissue label Sonor Music Editions since 2013. “They had pressed 200, 300, 500, 1,000 copies, but they were not destined for shops or distributors. They were only given to internal circles of music supervisors, journalists and people who worked in television.” Sonor is one of several labels in the last few decades that have resurrected Italian classics from the European library genre . . . . From the 1960s well into the 1980s, there was a lot of money to be made in themes: TV and radio producers needed music to accompany opening credits, action or love scenes, game show sequences or advertising. Well-trained composers had access to large ensembles and budgets, and the Italians in particular swung for the fences. . . . “They had a lot more latitude because they weren’t making this music for a particular audience,” [says producer and composer Adrian Younge]. “So if they needed something dramatic, they could just do the craziest [expletive] and wouldn’t have to deal with somebody saying, ‘It’s not pop enough.’” Because it had no commercial life, the output of many talented composers lay hidden for years. But in the late 1990s, labels like Easy Tempo started reissuing soundtracks and compilations of the Italian works. . . . “Unapologetically Black music came into the forefront for cinema in the late ’50s through the early ’70s; European composers, Italian composers took this sound and synthesized it with their classical teachings,” Younge said. “And that created a palette of music that inspired hip-hop producers generations later that were trying to find the coolest samples. It became a treasure trove for many of us.” For the character-based narratives of hip-hop, a genre built on finding loops from records few had heard, these compositions were practically begging to be mined. . . . Once the word got out about the Italians, a collectors’ arms race was on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/arts/music/italian-library-music-sven-wunder.html
You can watch Gli Angeli del 2000 (in Italian) on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLR-HRKIqfI.
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