Italian Girls Like Ear Catching M Ost Italian Girls Like Ear Catching Melodies Soundtrack CD

(ITALIAN GIRLS LIKE) EAR CATCHING MUSIC features film music by composers including Piero Piccioni, Riz Ortolani, Roberto Predagio, Armando Trovajoli and Francesco De Masi.

This intriguingly-titled compilation from Italian lounge and soundtrack music specialists DagoRed compiles a series of lounge-oriented tracks from a series of soundtracks put out by the Beat Record label during the 1960s and 1970s. As one might expect, it features plenty of tracks with an easy listening bent: "La Bella Signora" starts the album nicely by layering elegant strings and horns over a light jazz beat, and "Susan and Jane" highlights a luscious solo saxophone line against a gentle cushion of yearning strings. At the other end of the spectrum, there are some fast-paced pop cuts that pursue soul and jazz elements: "Beat Trombone" contrasts soulful organ lines and a percolating horn section over a frenetic double-time beat, while "Teresa L'Illusa" allows a fuzz-guitar line over a rhythm section that deftly shifts back and forth between jazz and funk rhythms. Most of the music on Italian Girls Like Ear-Catching Melodies is engaging, but the disc has a few problems. For instance, the disc lacks any liner notes, and cuts like "Planning the Snatch" are too short to make a lasting impression. However, the biggest problem with Italian Girls Like Ear-Catching Melodies is that it lacks the careful programming that would make it a comfortable listen: despite the generally high quality of its contents, this disc's abrupt shifts between gentle easy listening to frenetic jazz make it too challenging of a listen. In the end, Italian Girls Like Ear-Catching Melodies contains enough solid tracks to make it worthwhile for devotees of Italian lounge, but is likely to leave the casual listener cold. ~ Donald A. Guarisco

This is a definitive 16 track collection of Italian "easy" tunes...funny & cool cuts from some of the best Italian composers of film scores, including Piero Piccioni, Riz Ortolani, Roberto Pregadio, Armando Trovajoli, Francesco De Masi & others. (Previou

Contains 16 tracks.The Wire (5/00, p.60) - "...Goes more for the wink-wink, nudge-nudge, EZ Listening side of things..."