Ennio Morricone Biography

Criminally overshadowed by the moral uproar surrounding Adrian Lyne's film remake of Vladimir Nabokov's groundbreaking novel Lolita was Ennio Morricone's remarkable score, a hauntingly beautiful (and beautifully haunting) effort on par with Il Maestro's finest work. The music possesses a darkly dreamlike sensuality that perfectly communicates the erotic obsession at the material's core. Morricone's elegant melodies are daring yet subtle, shaded by melancholy strings and ethereal electronic textures. Milan's official soundtrack release is something of a misfire, however, interrupting Morricone's reverie with period pop hits like Ella Fitzgerald's "Tain't What You Do" and Louis Prima's "Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)." Great music, without a doubt, but poorly matched to the intimacy of the instrumental score.

This two-disc anthology assembled by Mike Patton is, after the spaghetti Western soundtracks and themes, essential Morricone. Never has his music from the strange films he scored in the 1960s and '70s been showcased in such an original and powerful way. Patton has looked closely into the experimental nature of the maestro and found plenty here to offer as well as to crow about. Many of the scores he chose from would be known only to cineastes of minor and obscure Italian films. Yet, Patton understood that Morricone loved his own process and treated crime and exploitation flicks like L'Anticristo and Forza G with the same delightful sense of adventure that he approached The Godfather and The Mission with. Here, all manner of strangeness is on offer: from psychedelic guitars and tripped-out wordless vocals to sitars, layers and layers of percussion, acid-drenched strings, an Echoplexed celeste, toy pianos, psychotic operatic voices in chorus, and more.

A dark, brooding, and surprisingly restrained work by Ennio Morricone, also more sentimental than his usual standard, and very operatic – parts of it sound like music for a Broadway extravaganza waiting to happen.