“Lost Italian Library Music Of The 1970s/80s”

Preview → bit.ly/2Npqk8k

DJ and label owner Lorenzo digs out more lost Italian soundtrack recordings from the 1970s and ‘80s.

The first volume of Musica Per L’Immagine (rough translation: Music For The Motion Picture) came out of left-field in 2017 and, appropriately, left a lot of music fans stunned. Stunned both because the music gathered across the 2 LPs was very fine (and obscure – even hardcore crate diggers had not heard the likes of the Flip Flop Group or The Space Craft's Men) and stunned due to the music sounding almost nothing like that which we consider to be “Italian soundtrack”. No eerie Morricone-style electric guitars and harmonicas, no Rota-era baroque strings and folk melodies. Instead, what Musica Per L’Immagine gathered was a grab bag of recordings from the late-1970s and early-1980s that displayed a distinctly Italian tendency to create spacey funk, disco, jazz, easy listening and such. Library music with a soft Latin groove.

Lorenzo, founder of Fly By Night Music and a DJ, crate digger and Peckham record shop owner, found the LPs that provided the basis for Musica Per L’Immagine Volume I during his last trip to Buenos Aires. The resulting compilation received much praise from DJs and aficionados of soundtracks and library music – here was lush Italian jazz-funk possessing a unique, spacey character.

Demand was such Lorenzo set about looking for records for Volume II. This time Lorenzo didn’t head to Argentina hoping for more lost gold. Instead, having tracked down the licensees of the original records when compiling Volume I he returned to his native Italy and renewed his contacts with the publishers he found the most pro-active to deal with. While this meant dealing with publishers in Milan and Rome – the capital has long been the epicentre of the Italian film industry while the northern city is where much TV and advertising is produced – Lorenzo also decided to go to Genoa. Here he found buried treasure that had been unavailable for decades.

With Volume II Fly By Night Music is releasing a double album far more than simply a reprise of what made Volume I work.

“Last time I drew largely from my own record collection – this time I’ve gone and dug from the archives that have been opened for me. Also, for Volume I I put the emphasis on the jazz-funk recordings because they were both so strong and so unknown. This time I’ve decided to ensure the compilation sounds very cinematic – perhaps a bit closer to what people think Italian soundtrack music sounds like!”