9. Ennio MorriconeColori
This is an album of Morricone’s soundtrack work from films like Veruschka. One of my favourite films is Lizard In A Woman’s Skin and this album contains ‘La Lucertola’ from the movie. Edda dell’Orso sings on that song and she is one of my favourite vocalists. This album features Morricone, [Alessandro] Alessandroni and [Bruno] Nicolai – as well as dell’Orso – which is why it is so good.
The first time I was in a band, we did some recording in the Pink Museum studio with Geoff [Davies] from Probe Records in Liverpool. When we went into the Pink Museum, Geoff lent me a load of Morricone records. That was when I first discovered Morricone’s music. It was more of his Spaghetti Western stuff, which is massively inspirational. However, it wasn’t until about 15 years ago that I began to discover the other aspects of his soundtrack work.
The story goes that Geoff had lent me these records in the studio and I went home and another artist used the studio and the records got stolen. So, for years, I couldn’t listen to Morricone without the experience being tainted with guilt that I had allowed Geoff’s records to be nicked.
However, this album makes the list as it contains some of my favourite film soundtracks and also one of my favourite singers. A lot of my choices are quite expansive in their sound. While I have always loved pop music and will still listen to chart music, for me to draw energy for creating music I prefer expansive or soundtrack-like music. That’s why I like space rock. And on this album, there is a lot to listen to – it’s a very big sound picture. As an artist, there is a lot on it to take and learn from, whether you are borrowing it or trying to emulate it.
