Library Music sounds like a contradiction in terms, but rather than being music to soundtrack your favourite library visits, Library Music is music composed for unknown projects; music stored away in an archive until someone needs to inject a certain mood into their upcoming movie, television show, TV-documentary, exc. That's exactly what we have here from the Italian library composer, Puccio Roelens.
Library Music happened (and maybe still happens, although I'm not entirely sure whether in the same way as it did in the '60s and '70s) across different countries and was often commissioned by television broadcasters, for example by the BBC in the UK and RAI in Italy. The composer would often be given a vague theme; exotic, erotic, energetic, enthusiastic, and they would be required to create a sound that could fit a TV sequence of such an emotion. These compositions would then be filed away until found by a producer or a director. Many compositions would stay hidden away for ever, gathering dust and being forgotten.
Italy seems to have an incredibly rich heritage of composing Library Music, probably due to the surge of popularity and creation of film in and around Italy after the Second World War. Music by composers such as Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota, Piero Umiliani and Puccio Roelens, who wrote soundtracks to specific films alongside Library Music and other projects, has been gaining attention recently with reissues of some gems, up until now being the reserve of dodgy Youtube videos and wealthy record collectors.
So is the case with Musica per commenti sonori by Puccio Roelens. Original vinyl copies from 1979 go for around £300 so thankfully the guys and gals at Schema, a fantastic reissue label who have recently reissued much of Morricone and Umiliani's work, are releasing a reissue of Roelens' funky groover.
The tracks are 3 minute grooves, each with its own '70s funk feeling. A favourite of mine is Cobwebs, a dusty, sultry track with a killer moog bassline that surges and dissipates, as if the breathing of some electro-giant. The middle of the track surges with blissful strings before being reigned in again with that infectious bassline and percussion.
Effuse is a slow, moog drifter, with some scratchy guitar fading in and out behind some floating moog that sounds like it has a life of its own, drifting along in the wind. Lipstick gets things moving, with some pure funk that could easily have a dance floor grooving. Its piano notes jump in and out before a beautiful sleazy saxophone breakdown, classic move.
One of the reasons I find Library Music so enthralling is that across a 30 minute vinyl LP there are so many different moods and feelings and musical techniques, yet all have a distinct feel of the composer and of the time the recording was made. As each track has such an identity, having been written around a concept or a theme, the tracks have so much narrative within them, giving them such a rich visual feeling. So allow Puccio Roelens to provide the soundtracks to the films he conjures in your mind and get down with the groove.
Puccio Roelens
Musica per commenti sonori
Schema
Vinyl LP out: 14/10/2016 at Norman Records
