Each month the good folks at Aquarius Records pick a disc that they think shines above the rest. Read their reviews and listen to a couple of sample tracks.
Francesco de Masi India (Original Soundtrack) Hexacord
India was a documentary produced for Italian TV in 1966, and the music on this disc was that film's soundtrack, written by Italian composer Francesco De Masi. That's the straight-forward explanation of this disc. However, the music itself is not what most of us would expect to hear while watching a documentary on the subject.
I have to give Francesco De Masi some credit for his creative license. After all, it was 1966 and Ravi Shankar was yet to become a household name. I imagine that the director gave De Masi a silent print of the film to view while scoring his compositions. Having never been to India and having no concept of what the music there sounded like, and being encouraged to come up with something as exotic and mysterious as the images on the screen, he did the best he could. The results: freaking brilliant!
De Masi is definitely a skilled composer. He not only has a gift for writing evocative and melodic motifs, but also in re-arranging them for various tempos, instrumentation and even musical genres -- a quality essential to all classic soundtracks. His execution in these areas is superb. And yet, when we listen to this soundtrack today and try to imagine it accompanying a documentary about India, we sense that something is not quite right. Listening to this score with no prior information about the film it supports, one might more likely guess
that it was for a classic Western fused with Cold War intrigue (though there is one giddy fife and drum reel that must have slipped in from another project on the American Revolution!).
Listening to this, I imagine Michael Caine as an English spy in America trying to infiltrate the Navajo nation and falling in love with a beautiful Native American woman along the way. Many of the arrangements are reminiscent of the gems of paranoid cinema while also sounding like the stereotypical Native American war path tune ripped from a John Wayne flick (think The Ipcress File, or The Parallax View meets Mutual of Omaha's Wild World of Animals). Seems like Francesco, like Christopher Columbus before him, got his Indians mixed up.
This soundtrack has it all: tension, suspense, romantic instrumentals, pensive
reflections and jazzy uptempo workouts. It really is an amazing piece of work that, were it to have been attached to a feature-length film, may have become a classic by now. Not only is it fully orchestrated and creatively arranged with vibes, guitars, keyboards, flutes, horns, strings and assorted percussion, but it features sitar playing by Italian guitar and whistle virtuoso (and Ennio Morricone right hand man) Alessandro Alessandroni -- who'd apparantly never
played the instrument before.
Beautifully recorded and excellently remastered, this is an absolute must for all soundtrack buffs!
- the staff of Aquarius Records
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