Ron Graham, aka Giallos Flame was a man ahead of his time when he started revisiting obscure vintage soundtracks for inspiration over ten years ago. Everyone's doing it now, but Graham was the original Umberto, and where the likes of Umberto have become critical darlings with a huge blogosphere presence, Giallos Flame has never been given the credit that his forward thinking, not to mention the quality of his compositions warrants.
Enter new label Rotary Tower and their first release which attempts to right this particular wrong.
"Archivio Giallo Volume One" is the first in three planned archival releases of Graham's work and focuses on what is likely to be the most popular facet of his work - synth heavy mood pieces that draw on the likes of John Carpenter, Fabio Frizzi and the likes while adding plenty of his own personality and killer tunes to match.
While most practitioners of the vintage horror synth genre tend to work almost exclusively with synthesizers, Graham integrates live bass, drums and guitars into the mix (all played by himself I believe), and the results often manage the difficult task of blending terrifying dread infused pulses with the extremely funky.
And unlike the original horror scores that inspired Graham (which generally feature at most four or five different themes and variations upon them for each movie, as required), this collection offers fifteen distinct tracks. The influence is often clear, but the execution inspired.
Highly recommended.
"Archivio Giallo Volume One" is a digital only release, available here very soon.
Stream the album here:
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