Profondo Rosso Live Score
21 February, Barbican Hall, London Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin are coming back to the UK to perform their classic soundtracks
Acore member of Italian prog band Goblin, keyboardist Claudio Simonetti worked with horror director Dario Argento on many soundtracks – most famously operatic shocker Suspiria. Recently, live- score screenings around Britain treated audiences to the sight of Simonetti recreating the score’s weird, guttural “witch” vocals. “I break my throat!” Simonetti laughs. “It’s not easy to be a witch!” Strepsils won’t be required on the rider when Simonetti’s band return though; this time they’ll be playing along to Argento’s 1975 thriller Profondo Rosso ( aka Deep Red). As his first soundtrack, it holds a special place in the musician’s heart.
“Dario [ wanted] a rock sound,” he explains. “He asked the producer, ‘ I’d like to call Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, ELP…,’ but he said, ‘ Before you go there I’d like you to meet these young guys I’m producing ’. So we were very lucky.”
Goblin fans can expect a faithful recreation. But don’t expect exactly the same instrumentation – it’d be tricky to transport…
“I used a real church organ with 15,000 pipes. We recorded the soundtrack in one of the biggest studios in Rome [ Ortophonic]. It’s under this big church, so they had the chance to record the organ from the church to the studio. When I learned this I said, ‘ Wow, we have to use it!’”
The results were phenomenally successful. “We sold a million albums in 10 months, and were top of the chart for 15 weeks. We couldn’t believe it, cos though we had a lot of prog bands in Italy, it was underground.”
That was four decades ago now, and in the intervening years, Goblin’s renown has grown and grown. “If you’d told me in 1975 that in 40 years it’d be more famous than now I’d have laughed! It’s incredible.” http:// bit. ly/ BarbicanGoblin 15 March
Game Of Thrones, Red Dwarf, Atlantis and Doctor Who are among the shows represented at the Nottingham con.