Goblin – “Il fantastico Viaggio del ‘Bagarozzo’ Mark” [1978] @256 (Excellent Italian Prog)

Goblin was a high quality prog band from Italy, although they were better know for being the composers and performers of the soundtracks of horror films, notably those directed by the extravagant blood-spilling dilettante Dario Argento.
Their work for bloody masterpieces like “Deep Red” or “Suspiria”, is incredibly effective. No one can doubt that Goblin’s keyboardist Claudio Simonetti achieved with his scores a sense of dread and ominous threat that was enough to create a whole new style that was coined by Spanish psychologist Rafael Llopis as “Horrorrock”
That doesn’t mean that Goblin’s music is pure sonic terrorism or cacophonic noise. On the contrary, it can be extremely harmonic and delicate (which makes things even scarier and weirder).
Goblin’s scores are plagued and parasited with mysterious and arcane music boxes, the tick-tock of the soft and viscous steps of a killer marked with the bass one by one, the muted but horrendous laughs of mechanical clowns, faint beyond the grave whispers…. and the list of suggested fears goes on and on, and on…
The real value of Goblin’s music comes from the fact that they needed to “imagine” the music for the film situation. So they had to create incidental background with a rock ensemble, thus expanding the possibilities of the typical bass, guitar, keyboards & drums combo. Before them film scores in italy belonged to the orchestral spectrum. Argento had the vision to use rock. It worked horrendously well.

One could think that with keyboards those possibilities of sound are limitless but Claudio Simonetti was never a keyboard abuser. (Like Wakeman or Emerson were at some point). For him the keyboards were just another colour in the whole painting. His organ playing would have pleased Vicent Price and Boris Karloff very much.

Due to the need of creating an abstract canvas on which the scenes were drawn, Goblin’s music is quite different from the rest of the Italian prog ensembles. I believe that Goblin sound can stand the flow of time much better than many other bands of the 70’s. They were, thus, ahead of its time.

Beyond the horror scores Goblin released two simple prog rock albums. One is “Roller” another good exercise in the psychology of musical fears. And the other is this one “Il fantastico Viaggio del ‘Bagarozzo’ Mark” which is Goblin’s conceptual album of sorts.
The story told here is the recovery of a drug addict and his painfuil rehabilitation process. It was written by Massimo Morante, singer and guitar player of the band.

It is topld in the form of an initiation trip for the “Bagarozzo” Mark, the guy embarked in a long and painful travel to save his soul and body from the deceptive embrace of chemical pleasure. Isn’t that scary enough?

Save yourself too and…

Keep Listening…!!!

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Goblin - La Danza...