Four Flies Records say their remit is to release “Italian golden age soundtracks rescued from oblivion as well as brand-new music with a cinematic feel.” This means that you can delve into a weird and wonderful collection of compositions by wonderfully named individuals such as Piero Umiliani, Giancarlo Barigozzi, and Gianfranco Reverberi who wrote soundtracks and standalone music with titles like Rivelazioni, MATALO!, Il Corpo, and Orgasmo.
As well as Four Flies rescuing the kinds of nearly lost gems that keep crate diggers and library music aficionados salivating they have created the ‘Reloved’ series, an ongoing project where they open their vaults to musicians and producers and get them to reimagine these classics for a modern audience. This release features musician and DJ Nicola Conte collaborating with house producer Nico Lahs who have produced four reworkings of ‘Nel Villaggio’ from the 1975 library album Continente Nero, ‘Orgiastic Ritual’, which reimagines Gianfranco Reverberi’s main theme for Black Magic Rites (Renato Polselli’s 1973 erotic-horror film), ‘Oasi nella Giungla’ from Giuliano Sorgini’s Africa Oscura (1974) and finally Romolo Grano and Gianni Oddi’s ‘Kilimangiaro’, from the 1974 documentary Le Montagne della Luce.
If you were in a club and you heard the percussive intro to ‘Nel Villaggio’ kick in, an invisible force would propel you onto the dance floor for 7-minutes and 12-seconds of wild abandon. This speeds up Umiliani’s composition and brings in a lorry load of extra percussion to flip the introspective original into an extroverted dancefloor filler. The same goes for ‘Oasi nella giungla’ which mines the same Afrobeat inspiration to bring some trance to your dance.
‘Orgiastic Ritual’ also speeds up the source track – which feels like stumbling across a ritual orgy in a forest – and throws in a four-on-the-floor beat that is so intoxicating it could bring the orgy to a premature climax. Keeping the original’s orgasmic moans also gave me a glorious flashback to my 90s trip hop-loving days and the excellent compilation Suck It And See which wove adult film samples into each track.
Nicola Conte and Nico Lahs have done wonders dialling up the club vibes while retaining the authenticity of the source material. Given how much enthusiasts love the library music* genre, particularly albums from Italian studios in the 1970s, it might seem like remixing these would be a kind of heresy. But not here. ‘Reloved’ is the perfect description for what Conte and Lahs have achieved on these four reworkings. They have respected the originals and shone new light on them, particular the light from nightclub lasers speckled with the glint of a mirrorball.
Nicola Conte: Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook / Nico Lahs: Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook |
Four Flies Records: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook
*If you are a fan of library music or want to learn more about it then I can highly recommend The Library Music Film which can be rented on Prime Video.
Review by Paul F Cook
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