PAURA NELLA CITTÀ DEI MORTI VIVENTI (CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD) O.S.T.

You don't have to like Zombies to enjoy this

I hate zombie movies and the whole zombie pop culture thing, I think it's a load of rubbish. But zombie music is another matter when the Italians are involved. Fabio Frizzi is a well known Italian composer born in Bologna in 1951. In the 1970s he became involved with creating the soundtracks of horror films, forging a successful alliance with director Lucio Fulci. He also became interested in the experimental music of the time and befriended musicians of the band Goblin among others. This led to a few of his soundtracks crossing into RPI territory, blending symphonic prog, dramatic choir vocals, keyboard experimentation, and dark-sounding rock. Some of this work could be described as a mix of Goblin with a more refined, subtler Jacula.

"There was a crop of new keyboards made by a lot of different manufacturers. The true revolution was the Yamaha line, with an incredible electric piano like CP80 and an extraordinary synthesizer, the CS80." Frizzi worked exhaustively with ex Goblin keyboard player Maurizio Guarini to find new, unique sounds; "we actually tried and used every new instrument of that time, included vocoders, the Prophet 5, Arp 2600, Oberheims, Roland Jupiter 8 (Frizzi says he still has his), etc. But I already had a passion for vintage sound, so I brought with me things like Mellotron, Mini Moog, ARP Solina, Fender Rhodes, etc, etc, etc!" -from Tim Fife's Cinema Suicide interview with Frizzi

It begins with eerie yet traditional strings welling up around you. Soon the drums commence with a very simple, plodding beat...very much like the deliberate drumming of Albert Goodman on the Antonius Rex debut. And when the choir vocals come in the music feels much like the Rex. What makes the music excel for me is a sense of loss, a great sadness, beauty and yet emptiness, which is captured by repeating motifs of traditional piano and lovely flute passages. If you enjoy piano and flute you will want to hear this. These sections are contrasted with dissonant, often difficult-to-enjoy passages of noise and keyboard screech...used to build tension and fear. Occasionally there will be a tasteful, almost Gilmour-like guitar lead over the slow moving atmospheric darkness, or a cool lone flute dancing along to a bass guitar solo. If you enjoy instrumental, atmospheric soundtrack music with the feel of the darker RPI bands, selected albums from the late 70s/early 80s will be of interest. Further, if you already know you love Frizzi, you should check out an active band called RanestRane, who put their own original progressive rock to classic horror film presentation. Good stuff!

A stepping stone on the way to the superb soundtrack to L'Aldila (The Beyond), Fabio Frizzi's soundtrack for City of the Living Dead isn't quite as developed on the prog side of things, and indeed has a mildly greater proportion of more standard orchestral pieces, but when it does dip into the realms of RPI it offers up enjoyable sketches along the way to the more developed works Frizzi would subsequently present. Somewhat less consistent than L'Aldila, I'd say it's still worth a listen if you are very keen on the strange partnership of RPI and horror movies from the 1970s since it continues the tradition of Goblin competently.