Audiodrome #21: Mayhem, Murder & Morricone - Part I

"Death Serenades Me" *
Italian composer Ennio Morricone is responsible for creating some of cinema’s most evocative and powerful scores. Widely regarded as one of the most influential and significant film composers of all time, his work spans decades and he has scored films for the likes of Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mario Bava, Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento, Brian De Palma, Roman Polanski, Adrian Lyne, Oliver Stone, Pedro Almodovar and Roland Joffè, to name but a few.

While particularly renowned for his scores for Sergio Leone-directed Spaghetti Westerns, such as Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Morricone has written film music for almost every conceivable genre. Though they are not as renowned as some of his other scores, his soundtracks for various horror films, psychological thrillers and Italian gialli are amongst some of the most dazzling, unusual and nerve shredding scores ever composed.

Head over to Paracinema to check out the first in a two part series in which I examine some of Ennio Morricone's musical contributions to the darker side of cinema...

*Some artwork I put together for the cover of a giallo soundtrack mix CD I made for a friend.

Comments

JP Mulvanetti said…
I got first acquainted with some of Morricone's more obscure work on the 'Crimes and Dissonance' CD set that came out in 2005, and it is filled with some really disturbing sounds, some with horror, some with distorted erotic shrieking... it was definitely an eye opener, especially as I was a lot more familiar with his well-known stuff. What I found surprising was that I had seen quite a few of the films from which the music was taken from, but when listened to on their own, they really conjured up some dark images.

Incidentally, his score on The Thing is one of my all-time favorites, and it never comes off my MP3 player.
8 May 2014 at 17:26
JP Mulvanetti said…
P.S, that's a great collection of tracks you put together, there. Will save the link on that for sure. Good work!
8 May 2014 at 17:37
James Gracey said…
Stay tuned JP - more to come! :)
11 May 2014 at 17:48
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