Saturday, 28 February 2009

Melltoron / Vocoder / whatever

So, I am watching The Beyond for the howeverthmany time, and thinking about the soundtrack, with the and "you will live in" chorus, which predates the vocoder-ed paura theme in Tenebre, but are there any instances of this treatment which are before both of them in the Italian cinema?

2 comments:

Seamaster said...

Fabio Frizzi loved the mellotron - other notable examples include the main theme from Zombi 2 and the track Apoteosi del mistero from Paura nella città dei morti viventi.

Douglas Payne said...

Please forgive me if this does not exactly answer your question, but I've always been fascinated that David Zed's fantastic 1980 electronic dance hit "R.O.B.O.T. (Erreobioti)" repeats the English word "Power" through the vocoder similarly to the way Simonetti-Morante-Pignatelli's 1982 theme to "Tenebre" repeats the similar-sounding Italian word "Paura" through the vocoder. Simonetti co-wrote Zed's goofy follow-up single "I'm A Robot" ("not a rabbit" - in Bugs Bunny voice) in 1980...so he must have been aware of how to vocoderize "Power" into "Paura" - it was brilliant too, like the echo-whispered use of "Witch" in "Suspiria" and "Mother" in "Mother of Tears."