detto mariano: amore tossico

1983's Amore tossico (Toxic Love) is a legendary cult film, a stark and unflinching look at Italy's "junkie generation." Director Claudio Caligari approached the film more like a documentary than a work of fiction, casting recovering junkies as his actors; Caligari "imagined it more as a straight-up visual ethnography, hyperreal, replete with humor in the most grotesque situations -- like life." Accompanying Caligari's stark imagery and story is the soundtrack by Detto Mariano -- a prolific composer, arranger, and pianist -- who wrote the entirety of the score on his Fairlight Series IIx, a now-revered synthesizer that had just been released in 1983. The sound is therefore scary and up-to-date, a true companion to the vivid and rough imagery of the movie. This led the composer to a brand-new level of engagement; the machine is the tool, hence the music becomes something like the Italian answer to the industrial revolution. Coming from an academic background, Detto Mariano knew little of industrial music, but in fact Amore tossico can easily be associated with such pioneers of the genre as Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. The soundtrack is dark, angular, harsh, and -- just at times -- funky, rivalling the intensity of Carpenter's The Thing (1982) or Throbbing Gristle's Heathen Earth (IRL 004CD/LP, 1980). Never before available on any format, this soundtrack has been mastered from the original tapes and is now available as a deluxe 140-gram LP in a gatefold sleeve with a bonus CD of the entire album plus a reproduction of the original film poster.