Mandrassi, Zollinger

*Limited edition of 500 copies.*Her name was Anna Maria Assunta Andreassi. She composed and arranged the entirety of what would become one of the rarest documents in Italian library music, filed it under the alias Mandrassi, pressed it on the micro-label Ludo Record in 1973, and then watched it disappear almost entirely - so completely that for decades collectors weren't certain the record had ever existed. Sonor Music Editions' reissue of Rhythm And Sound, limited to 500 copies, is the first time this session has been heard in fifty years.

Andreassi belongs to a small and largely unacknowledged generation of women who shaped the sound of 1970s Italian library and soundtrack music - alongside Daniela Casa, Nora Orlandi, and a handful of others working in the margins of a scene dominated by male names. Her collaborator here, working under the pseudonym Zollinger, is believed to be Sergio Pagano, brother of composer and singer Mario Pagano. The studio band, I Beati, remains as shadowy as the label itself. What they recorded together, though, is anything but obscure in character: eleven tracks of locked-in funk grooves, Moog runs, clavinet, sax, and chase-sequence propulsion - uptempo, precise, and built for a purpose that the music long outlived. Tracks like "Clavibeat", "Moog Rock", and the closing "Mysterious" hit with the focused energy of a session where everyone in the room knew exactly what they were doing.

A missing piece, found. Essential for anyone serious about Italian library music of the period.