Franco Bixio

* Edition of 300 * Quartet Records in collaboration with Cinevox Records presents a collection of renowned Italian composer Franco Bixio that showcases four premiere scores on a 2-CD set. Directed by Italian actor Renzo Merusi, Deserto Di Fuoco (1971) is a heist adventure film set in the Sahara Desert as outlaw El Marish (George Wang), smuggler Jean (Giuseppe Addobbati) and tagalong girlfriend Juana (Edwige Fenech) get mixed up in an illegal weapons deal.  Bixio’s music relies heavily on exotic percussion to represent the African setting and tops it off with a memorable main theme and several cues sprinkled with Edda dell’Orso’s voice. The killer main title has been included in several compilations, but this is the first official presentation of the surviving score, arranged and conducted by Roberto Pregadio.

Istantanea per un Delitto (1975), directed by Arthur Saxon (aka Mario Imperoli), is an erotic thriller about a down-on-his-luck gigolo whose obsession with taking S&M-inspired photographs gets him into trouble and leads to him being charged with a crime he has no recollection of committing. The unique soundtrack features a collection of songs composed by Franco Bixio (two of them in collaboration with Franco Micalizzi) and recorded by the British-Italian band Motowns for a rare LP released in 1971. For this film, the composer reused these songs and augmented them with a handful of cues—previously unreleased—written specifically for the film.

Rino Di Silvestro’s Diario Segreto Da un Carcere Femminile (1974) (aka Women in Cell Block 7) is one of the cornerstones of women-in-prison movies, featuring cult actress Anita Strindberg going undercover in a jail in order to clear her father’s name in a heroin deal gone wrong. Bixio’s catchy and bloomy score has been released on LP before, but this first CD edition is expanded to include previously unreleased bonus tracks.

Finally, Claudio Racca’s Il Tuo Piacere È il Mio (1973), starring Ewa Aulin, Barbara Bouchet, Sylva Koscina and Lionel Stander, is a ribald sex comedy inspired on the one hand by Honoré de Balzac’s short stories and on the other hand by Pasolini’s way of retelling classic tales of folk culture with a strong erotic bend. In this, the score’s premiere release, we hear Bixio’s personal interpretation of Baroque court music with a tuneful comedic twist, plus a special song performed by the composer himself.

These four scores are presented on two discs produced and mastered by Claudio Fuiano from original master tapes courtesy of Cinevox. The richly illustrated 16-page booklet contains liner notes by Gergely Hubai discussing each film and score in detail.