Description

The Braen’s Machine – Underground (LP) [Schema SCEB Series SCEB913]

During the ’70s, workdays at Umiliani’s Sound Workshop Studios were hectic; thousands of sessions were held to keep up with the very busy Italian movie industry. Hundreds of soundtracks, alongside a music library, were recorded and released on vinyl in very limited quantities for TV and film production use only. Those LPs are now proper collectors’ items, extremely hard to find. Filled with hypnotic bass lines, heavy drums and screaming fuzz guitars “Underground”, the first LP of the fictitious group known as Braen’s Machine, is one of the rarest and the most expensive of them all, always “reaching” sky-high prices throughout the second-hand vinyl market.

A fast-beat jam with Hammond scales and a twin lead guitar theme (“Flying”) opens the A Side, soon followed by “Imphormal”, a classic funk-beats-meets-Fender Rhodes and psychedelic guitar number. The music then switches to “thriller territories” with “Murder” which is based on prepared piano swells and a deeply hypnotic walking bass, reminiscent of Morricone’s best soundtracks for Dario Argento’s movies. Two highly percussive songs complete the A Side: “Gap” is an improvised song with guitar and keyboards dwelling over an infectious drum rhythm, while a marching snare and a vibraslap effect are the special features on “Militar Police”.

The mood relaxes slightly on the opening of the B Side with a lazy jazz groove on “New Experience”, but the rock influences soon return on the following track “, Fall Out”. “Obstinacy” is all about keyboards with syncopated Rhodes themes and distorted Hammond sustained notes, whilst the fuzz guitar is back again, screaming through the left channel on the last song of the album, “Description”.

We could happily say that that was the golden age of the Italian music library. But who’s behind the name “Braen’s Machine”? On the original cover, the songs are credited to the composers Braen and Gisteri. Braen was a pseudonym often used by Alessandro Alessandroni, an extremely skilled and versatile musician, and one of Umiliani’s closest collaborators. He could write, conduct and arrange, he could sing (ever heard “Mah Na Mah Na”?), he could whistle (ever heard Morricone’s “For a fistful of dollars”?) and he could play almost anything: guitar, bass tuba, accordion, sitar and the list grows…..

His first album, “Alessandro Alessandroni e il suo complesso” (Sermi, 1969), had transformed the Italian library music from orchestral sound beds into the psychedelia we all love; the extremely fuzzy guitars are very “present” on “Underground” too. For a long time, Gisteri’s real identity was rather mysterious; often wrongly attributed to Umiliani. Gisteri was the pseudonym of Oronzo De Filippi, the art name of Rino De Filippi, music supervisor to the Italian public broadcast company (RAI) between the ’60s and the ’70s. De Filippi composed other notable pieces such as “Riflessi” (Edipan, 1975) and “Nel mondo del lavoro” (Sermi, 1972).

For all the producers and DJs out there, this album is filled with sample fodder and drum breaks ready to be used and abused.