Goblin

In the trajectory of Claudio Simonetti & co.'s band, but also considering, more broadly, the evolution that Italian music would undergo through the Seventies, "Suspiria" (1977) represents, in its own way, a nul plus ultra and a breaking point. A kind of delta into whose dense, murky waters some of the decade's most significant sonic currents flowed together, just in time, before they moved on to become something else. Not so much, or not only, because, more than thirty years after it was made, it still stands as one of the highest and most spectacular peaks ever reached in the great era of Italian film scores (a cinema of genres that, within a few years, in the eighties, would inexorably become an endangered species, along with many of the musicians who had built their fortunes on it). But because in the eight "sequences" that make up the soundtrack to Dario Argento's eponymous masterpiece (and of supernatural horror as a whole), there take root, in a state of grace and astonishing harmony, prog roots both Italian and international, echoes of Nordic and Central European folklore, minimalism, electronic inserts and manipulations that look, more or less knowingly, to kraut and to Kraftwerk, ethno and world-music suggestions, and hints of synth and dark-ambient textures. In practice, a significant slice of the Seventies and one of the Eighties intersecting in a decidedly unique and original subset.

But let's take it in order: after the commercial breakthrough of "Profondo Rosso" (the film, of course, but also the eponymous album, which went platinum and stayed atop the singles charts for about a year), Argento — who already had his mind set on abandoning the thriller for horror tout court, with neo-gothic, esoteric and paranormal implications — again chose Goblin to musically redefine the traits of its successor. The band had released their first "self-directed" album the year before, "Roller" (1976), also inspired by film music. A passionate "non-musician" and a great experimenter in the field of film scores — which, in his view, shouldn't merely comment on a film by suggesting its atmosphere and moods, but should function as a genuine "sonic agent" capable of matching the visual style chosen — the director acted as the band's official advisor and was one of the main architects of the musical evolution that took place between "Profondo Rosso" and "Suspiria" (it's no coincidence that the opening credits read "music by Goblin with the collaboration of Dario Argento").

Since this was a work that reinvented, in fantastical and fairy-tale terms, the most classic elements of his previous cinema (spasmodic suspense, the surprise entrances of the mysterious killer, the brutality of the murders, the protagonist's "visual" memory that makes her both the destined victim and heroine), Argento asked Goblin for a score that was less tight and aggressive, not built around nerve-wracking rhythms and progressive crescendos, but more atmospheric and ambient. He encouraged them to use then-cutting-edge technology like the sequencer, while at the same time suggesting they draw inspiration from ancient medieval songs (such as the 14th/15th-century lament "Le tre streghe sull'albero", which would become the basis of the main theme). He pushed them to dig out old instruments like the celesta and the bouzouki (a unique specimen owned by Argento himself), but also to make demos that would programmatically sound "like Kraftwerk".

Even so, the band (at the peak of its classic line-up: Simonetti on keyboards, Pignatelli on bass, guitar and occasional vocals, Morante on electric and acoustic guitar, and Marangolo on drums, aided for the occasion by Guarini on keyboards and by Marangolo's brother, Antonio, on sax) put a great deal of themselves into the recording sessions, improvising more or less freely and reworking almost every composition. The result — excellent — is what we can all still listen to today. "Suspiria", the album's opener and the film's central theme, is a masterpiece of dreamlike, esoteric suspension divided into three parts: in the first, the sharp guitar picking and the music-box counterpoint of the vibraphone weave an obsessive, minimal melody in the "Profondo Rosso" vein, but — only seemingly — softer, more regressive and ritualistic, accompanied by acid, cutting gusts of mellotron, muffled bouzouki rumbles and malevolent witch-like whispers that will become a leitmotif of the score; the second section brings a clearly prog-inflected crescendo break, triggered by black-mass organ, electric guitar and the polyrhythmic entrance of the percussion, with the synth keyboards taking over the central theme; in the third, after a brief electronic fade, the harmonic, ritual circle closes by repeating the first part with lethal variations.

The ethnic and tribal elements woven into the new Goblin sound stand out with devastating clarity starting with the second track, "Witch": an almost pow wow-like opening of drum rolls and piercing, propitiatory screams, followed by other intoned voices that, as in a satanic chorale, blend with spectral synths, sound effects simulating the stormy darkness of Walpurgis Night, tolling bells, and a glassy, hollow bass that holds the same mesmeric note throughout. "Opening To The Sighs" is a drone fragment that cuts off abruptly in an analogue edit into the following "Sighs": we're still deep in the sabbath here — demonic hisses, sighs, avant-garde vocalisms, kept in rhythm by the sustained, insistent arpeggio of the acoustic guitar doubled by the celesta.

"Markos" contains and exemplifies all the originality of the sonic patchwork unfolded by Simonetti and his bandmates: traditional Greek sounds (almost sirtaki-like) graft themselves onto an electronic weave with a Kraftwerk-ian flavor, while a heavily effected, reverberated bass fuels robotic funk phrasing, and jazzy percussion drifts in and out of the mix in alternating waves. In the wonderful "Black Forest", by contrast, it's Goblin's folk-prog soul that regains the spotlight, this time in a gothic, medieval-tinged key: insistent acoustic guitar phrasing and arabesques of organ and mellotron intertwine with Pignatelli's bass, liquid and hypnotic to the point of dub, and with a jazz-derived sax line that, around the midpoint, takes over, giving rise to a genuine jam, with Morante's electric guitar solos alternating with the sax and synth, while the closing section, as in "Suspiria", loops back to the incipit.

"Blind Concert" briefly revisits the "Suspiria" lament, mixing it over a disco-funk bassline and dressing it up with electronic flourishes that sound like glitch avant la lettre; the discreet touches of electric guitar and keyboards, along with the drums' counter-breaks, heighten the track's unprecedented black-music tonality.

Closing the album is "Death Valzer", which refers to the classical dance academy where the entire film is set, and which, beneath its apparent Central European lightheartedness, hints, by contrast, at an even more terrifying suspicion: what putrid horrors lurk behind the elegance of Art Deco? What foul beast waits to give birth to death in the attic or in the cellars of the old building?

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04/10/2009