What a time it must have been back in 1974, when even the smallest documentary film was provided with the most beautiful song gems. For example »Il Dio Sotto La Pelle« by Folco Quilici and Carlo Alberto Pinelli, which follows the trail of people who reject civilization in order to retreat into nature and peace. The soundtrack is, alongside Piero Umiliani, the other great Piero of Italian film music. It was first released on vinyl in 2000, Musica Per Immagini is now reissuing it again with a new design. It begins with »It’s Possible«, one of these gems, in which the then 24-year-old Catherine Howe sings about the original pleasure of roaming through nature and feeling the pure feeling of love in this experience. The lyrics are, of course, pure moonlight romanticism, but Piero Piccioni intersperses this with a variation of hot buttered soul, whose breaks make the supposed statement “It’s Possible” only a option, whose reverberation makes it sound like a dream. And so it goes on: Piero Piccioni skilfully scrapes past kitsch, which can certainly be heard as an ironic commentary on the daydreamers. Otherwise, he could let the kitsch go, couldn’t he? If the listening experience becomes too easy, he intersperses jazz chords, you are in danger of sinking into the lounge cushion, it becomes either atonal or funky. Sometimes the dosage is too perfect. And in the end of the record, it becomes redundant. But what the heck, I’m taking off my socks and I’m running barefoot across the green grass.
Eiko Ishibashi
Evil Does Not Exist
Drag City