MOMO (SOUNDTRACK)

While Tangerine Dream were suffering on their soundtrack works because of the limitations given to their creativity by the soundtrack constraints, in the same year the soundtrack work gave to Angelo Branduardi the possibility to recover from his bad musical adventures of the period.

In the mid 80s Angelo, probably under the pressure of his label, attempted a country-blues excursion that was miles away from his familiar landscape, and even with the collaborations of names like Jorma Kaukkonen, just to mention one, the results were almost poor. In making soundtracks, Angelo was probably more free to dig into his usual medieval sources so in this period his soundtracks are better than his studio albums.

I haven't seen this movie, but this is one of the many movies taken from a Michael Ende's novel. The author was disappointed by what the Cinema has done of his most famous "Neverending Story", but in this case he made a cameo and is also author of some lyrics together with Angelo's wife Luisa Zappa (no relations with Frank).

So what we have is a good Branduardi's album on which even with the constraints imposed by a soundtrack he can do what he makes better. I think it's significant that in the same year he has released the first great album after a series of country-blues failures that's the one dedicated to Yeats.

Momo is the beginning of Angelo's recovery. Non-essential but very important.

About the movie, it didn't have success but few years later the novel was proposed again, still in Italy, in cartoon format with the soundtrack made by the pop star Gianna Nannini. Not a blockbuster also that.