I Marc 4

Big Tip! I Marc 4 took their name from the initials of their members: Maurizio Majorana on bass, Antonello Vannucchi on organ, Roberto Podio on drums and Carlo Pes on guitar, with the number marking the four-piece. All four came up through Rome's jazz circuit and the RAI orchestra, first working as a backing band for pop vocalists before becoming the first-call session group for the city's soundtrack composers. From the late 1960s their playing turns up on scores by Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni and Armando Trovajoli, whose films they backed through the first half of the 1970s.

Alongside that session work they recorded a substantial body of library music issued under their own name. Much of it appeared on Nelson Records, the imprint the group set up in 1970, with its run of color-coded military-stencil sleeves, and on the companion labels Silver Music and Silver Men, as well as established library houses. Although the records carry the I Marc 4 name, the compositions were credited to staff writers working under pseudonyms, among them Romolo Grano, who wrote as Santany. The quartet supplied the performances; the writing sat elsewhere, a common arrangement in the Italian library trade.

S.M. 2001, on Silver Music, and S.M. 2002, on Silver Men, both from 1976, are the hardest to find of the sequence. The music moves across a wide range: rare-groove and proto-hip-hop rhythm tracks in Trama Nella Metropoli, Beat Morbido and Candy; cinematic lounge built around the scat vocals of Edda Dell'Orso on Summer In Love and On The Rain; and more composed jazz in Flauti Ensemble, Passeggiata and Atmosfere Dolci. Hammond organ, fuzz guitar, brisk drum breaks and bossa figures run throughout.

This Sonor Music Editions edition gathers the best of both albums onto one LP, keeping the original stencil artwork in a silver finish. It is an engrossing listen from the first sounding to the last, and one not to be missed.