Moody Umiliani, with tasty Hammond and plenty of breaks. Set between Egypt and Ferrara, tackling racial integration in 1973, this is the second of Scattini’s films featuring Zeudi Araya. (That’s her singing on the spaced-out Cantata Per Miriam, over proto-Headz funk-drumming. Pretty great.)
Last of PU’s cheeky threesome of early-seventies soundtracks for the noirish erotica of Luigi Scattini, with lots of electric piano, wah wah and vocalese, drama, melancholia and sleaze, shot through with spaced-out jazz, true Umiliani style.
This soundtrack to Romano Ferrara’s 1964 spy movie is one of PU’s best and most celebrated. Featuring Nini Rosso, Chet Baker, Bill Gilmore, Marcello Boschi and many others. Excellent sound, from the original analogue masters, with lots of bonus material; in a beautiful sleeve, with a reproduction of the original movie poster on the inside gatefold.
Perhaps his best-known soundtrack, for Luigi Scattini in 1968.
Dark, spooked, early-seventies worries from PU — disguised as M. Zalla, in the throes of his fascination with psychedelia and electronics — with titles like Mondo in Crisi, Problemi Sociali, Azione Sindacale and Mafia Oggi.
Drum-machines, Moog and EMS Synthi.
Still acutely germane; musically and temperamentally.
Demdike Stare has called it the first techno record.
The 1994 return of pioneering electronic guru Richard ‘Heldon’ Pinhas to the forefront of the French underground scene. The fruits of a two-year collaboration with John Livengood from Red Noise and Spacecraft, inspired by Norman Spinrad’s novel Rock Machine. First vinyl issue.
Previously unissued underground rock from 1969, Rockford, Illinois.
Absorbing new music from Ecuador, named after a street in the historic centre of Quito.
A poignant, trippy, astute, bass-heavy blend of a range of styles including juke, reggaeton and UK garage, flavoured by their to and fro between Latin America and Europe.
Quixosis’ grandad was a key, controversial player in the explosion of musica nacional in the city in the early sixties, and the mix is studded with evocative samples of Italian chanson and South American folk from his record collection, in a kind of reverie about national and self identity, Beat Konducted at the centre of the world.
Check it out.
The CD is from Important.