Francesco De Masi

Beat Records brings back one of the crown jewels of Italian genre scoring with the first standalone LP release of Francesco De Masi’s music for Lucio Fulci’s cult shocker Lo squartatore di New York. Long treasured on CD, this is widely regarded as one of De Masi’s most astonishing works: a score that captures the film’s grimy, anxiety‑ridden New York while still giving room to melodies of disarming beauty. De Masi answers Fulci’s brutal vision with a modern, muscular soundworld, pitting jagged, rock‑driven cues against richly orchestrated themes to chart the city as both hunting ground and wounded heart.

At the centre of the score stand two emblematic pieces. “New York One More Day” is a vibrant rock‑action theme that surges forward on insistent rhythm section, electric guitar and urgent brass, perfectly attuned to the film’s breathless set‑pieces and nocturnal chases. In stark, moving contrast, “Fay” reveals De Masi’s gift for pure melody: a melancholy, exquisitely tender orchestral theme in which Oscar Valdambrini’s trumpet and Franco De Gemini’s harmonica alternate as solo voices, trading phrases like fragments of a half‑remembered love song. Around these poles, the composer builds an intense, solid architecture of suspense writing and mood pieces, always melodic even at his most hard‑edged, always attentive to the human tremor inside the horror.

Now, for the first time, this music arrives on vinyl in a dedicated monographic edition, a focused tribute to De Masi’s mastery. Newly mastered by Enrico De Gemini and housed in a striking layout by Daniele De Gemini, the crystal‑white limited‑edition LP underlines the soundtrack’s status as a cornerstone of both Fulci’s filmography and Beat Records’ own history. Lo squartatore di New York on vinyl is not just an object for collectors; it’s the ideal way to experience a score where sleaze‑city tension and ravishing melodicism coexist, confirming Francesco De Masi as one of the great, still‑underrated architects of Italian cinema sound.