This is the first official release of the soundtrack to Pasolini's Infamous Salo Or The 120 Days of Sodom, a film that is still capable of shocking viewers over 50 years since its release. Pasolini himself was murdered three weeks before the films premier, which only added to the films notoriety, with it holding a mirror up to the hypocrisy of Italy's fascists. The unnamed musical pieces include works by JS Bach, Frederic Chopin, Ennio Morricone, Giacomo Puccini, Carl Orff and Arnaldo Graziosi. It has been far too long since I last watched the film.
The soundtrack is almost totally untitled, making the review a touch more interesting, the opening piece is perfect for a slightly jazzy tea party, The second piece is more of a solo piano recital that had no hints of the sleazy going on that are unfolding on screen.
The third piece is an acapella song that sounds like it is most of the cast singing it like a hymn in church, rather than an entre to more debauchery. Then the classical piano comes back with a jaunty motif. The fifth piece is a gentle piano dance piece.
The sixth piece is very familiar classical piano piece to draw the lovers together into a life of dark twisted perversions. Things get darker on the seventh piece with the notes being played singularly and slowly to evoke more passion and pain. The Eighth piece keeps things dark and slow on the piano while all the action unfolds around them, debauchery rarely had as pretty a soundtrack as this.
The Ninth piece is more of a slow jazzy tea dance tune with some wonderfully downbeat trumpet, that is almost perfect for when the film gets a little bit more scat obsessed, before some heels walk across the cobbles.
The perviest accordion player in the world turns up for the tenth piece, somehow slow accordion playing is just right for the most depraved sex scenes you can think of. The Eleventh piece is more slow solo piano to whip your mistress too. The Twelfth piece has more of a jaunty upbeat edge before what sounds like a plane flying overhead, or a thunderstorm about to break.
The thirteenth piece is Gregorian chanting in church in a very calm chilled manner. The Fourteenth tune keeps us in the church, only with strings as well as voices this sounds like a dark ceremonial ritual is taking place, is this music to flay you too. The main theme returns for the fifteenth piece that was the original outro music, it's like they are in an Art Deco cafe with bandstand, all the glamour pusses are strutting with cigarettes on holders.
The album then closes with the Salo Haunted Suite that is the last 12 minutes of the film I guess, it has dark sounds of night, rumbling noises, footsteps, dreamy piano while the final actions of apostasy and degradation unfold on the screen, eventually the sobs emerge from the rumbling sounds before the piano accompanies her departure to reach the room of the laughing guests, phantasms, spectres of a forgotten age, it closes with fighter jets tearing across the speakers
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