A kiss of death

 

Bruno Nicolai (1926, Rome - 1991, Rome) was an Italian composer, conductor and keyboardist (organ, piano). Notably the composer and director of numerous film and television scores. He also served as musical director for other composers' film scores, prevalently those of Ennio Morricone, Carlo Rustichelli and Luis Enriquez Bacalov. 

 

Nicolai studied piano, organ and composition at Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, studying piano under Aldo Mantia, and composition and organ under Goffredo Petrassi. Whilst at the conservatory, he met fellow student Ennio Morricone who also studied under Petrassi. A friendship began that would last many years

Throughout the 60's and 70's, Nicolai scored a number of films, working several times with directors such as Jess Franco, Tinto Brass and Alberto De Martino for their giallo and exploitation films. During this time, he also composed library music, primarily for his own labels Gemelli and Edi-Pan, but also for other labels like RCA. His big break came in 1965, when he was musical supervisor for the Sergio Leone film "For a Few Dollars More", scored by Ennio Morricone. In 1966, he reprised this role for "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". Nicolai's last score was for the 1988 TV series "La coscienza di Zeno", directed by Sandro Bolchi.

Bruno Nicolai - Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

A castle for souls

 

Simon Boswell is a British musician and producer from London, England. He's specialized in composing music for movies, where he is well known for combining electronic elements with orchestral instruments and his music has ranged vastly in style and tone since the mid 1980s. 

His work for horror and fantasy cinema is key, especially the Italian Giallo films, where he unusually combined acoustic, slide guitar with resonant, doomy synths to create a hugely popular, apocalyptic score for which he was nominated for BAFTA’s prestigious Anthony Asquith Award. 

Along the way he has garnered many international awards and nominations including 2 BAFTAs and 1 Classical Brit. In the last years he toured extensively worldwide with his band, The And, performing his music live with an immersive, video backdrop.

 

Simon Boswell - Santa Sangre

Friction light flashes

 

Remi Gassmann is an american classical avant-garde composer, best known for his work in pioneering early electronics. He studied with Paul Hindemith at Berlin’s Musik Hochschule, where he met fellow student Oskar Sala. Along with Oskar Sala he conceived the score for George Balanchine’s ballet "Electronics" in 1961, he also assisted Oskar Sala with the sound effects for Alfred Hitchcock’s "The Birds" in 1963. 

 

Oskar Sala (1910 - 2002) was one of the most innovative German composers in the history of electronic music. His unique instrument, the Mixtur-Trautonium, was first introduced to the public in 1952 and soon received international licenses. Its massive architecture remains so unique that no one can reproduce the instrument nor interpret any of his compositions. Sala had been a pupil of Friedrich Trautwein, the inventor of the Trautonium. But physicist Sala studied music with Paul Hindemith in 1930 at the Berlin conservatory and played his compositions for Trautonium. Early on with Trautwein, he composed pieces for Trautonium and performed them with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Carl Schuricht in 1940.

From the 1940s, Sala dedicated himself to film scoring and refined numerous classics. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was unsuccessfully searching for an acoustic environment for eerie scenes in The Birds (1963) until Sala convinced him to use his Trautonium-generated sound-effects.

 

 

Remi Gassmann & Oskar Sala - Electronics • Five Improvisations On Magnetic Tape

Dancing on milky way

 

Bernard Fèvre is a self-taught french composer, now over 60 years old. In his early life, his day job was in precision mechanics; on saturday nights he played piano in a R' n B' band, Frankie Presle and the G.men. He then spent ten years as part of Les Francs Garçons, a singing group in the "Don Camillo" night-club in Paris. He now works for a French radio station, providing its 'sound environment'.

His first solo record is "The Strange World of Bernard Fèvre", followed some months after by "Black Devil Disco Club 78" which had a new and pioneering electronic sound. The records met with limited success and Bernard Fèvre remained in obscurity for more than twenty years. He released at least 3 albums of electronic library music during the 70s.

In 2006, Bernard Fèvre returned to recording, writing and releasing music as Black Devil Disco Club.

Bernard Fevre - Cosmos 2043

Diving into the maelström

 

William Sheller (1946) is a French classical composer and singer-songwriter. A prominent artist of French popular music since the 1970s, William Sheller has the particularity of being one of the few singers of French chanson who has benefited from a solid background in classical music. This has influenced his repertoire with a sophisticated musical style, combining elements of classical music with chanson and symphonic rock.

 

William Sheller - Lux Aeterna

A shiny bright over Siberia

 

Босса Нова: Самая Красивая Музыка В СССР is a Russian Bossa Nova Tribute compilation made by Мелодия Label.

Босса Нова Самая Красивая Музыка В СССР

Killing into athmospheric LSD

 

Gianni Ferrio (1924 - 2013) was an Italian composer, arranger, and conductor; co-composer of the famous song "Parole, Parole". As an experienced television conductor; he was the musical director of the 1959 and 1962 editions of the San Remo Song Festival as well as the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest, held in Naples. 

Gianni Ferrio - Perversion Story