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Italian soundtracks from the late 60s to mid 70s are practically a genre to themselves and have long been a treasure trove for those who seek unique jazzy psychedelic beats. In the early 90s, both the retro-exotica crowd and the rare groove DJs re-discovered Italian soundtrack music thus giving it a big boost in popularity. The Black Cat label responded to this renewed interest with its Loungissima series that re-packaged a variety of Italian soundtracks in attractive vinyl LP collections. “The Psych Jazzy Beat of I Marc 4”, features the music of one of the top recording quartets of Italian soundtracks, I Marc 4. The members of this quartet all came from a jazz background and originally grouped together in the mid-60s with the purpose of supporting various high profile vocalists. In the late 60s they moved on to being soundtrack composers whose instrumental works would then be collected and released on LPs.
There is a wide variety of music on here, psychedelic rock, soul jazz, brassy Herb Alpert style numbers, spacey exotic lounge music, goofy country funk, proto-progressive rock and much more. For the seeker of musical kitsch, this album is pure gold, but for someone seeking something a little more substantial, this record is a mixed bag. Many numbers on here are visionary and futuristic, “Asfalto in Agguato” features a fast bongo driven beat topped with a repeating dissonant sound on the keyboard. Such experiments in static music would eventually show up on Miles Davis’ “Get Up With It” a few years later than Marc 4’s efforts. On the more negative side, there are more than a few goofy campy numbers that can get annoying after a while. Seeing as how much of this music was supposed to set a mood, I suppose on some of these numbers the suggested scenario was “simpletons frolicking in the country”.
This isn’t the best collection of Italian soundtrack music available, but it rates fairly high, plus this is one of the few collections I know of that features the same group of musicians throughout the whole album. The musicianship and creativity on here are outstanding, but it would have been nice if there had been fewer of the more silly numbers.