‘Giallo’, noun. A genre of Italian cinema of murder mystery fiction that often contains slasher, thriller, psychological horror, sexploitation, and less frequently, supernatural horror elements with a heyday from the late nineteen sixties to mid nineteen seventies. As starts to reviews go, this is the first time I’ve felt the need to paraphrase and condense a dictionary definition, but in the case of this long awaited studio album from occult rockers Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats, it is a necessity. If you’re familiar with Uncle Acid and the work of enigmatic founder/writer/singer/guitarist Kevin Starrs, and have their prior albums you’d likely be expecting a massive slab of Sabbath worshipping psychedelic riffing, with songs to fill venues with stamping feet and banging heads to an accompanying light show that kept the musicians in the shadows, and with an entire six years since ‘Wasteland’ I can only imagine that’s what folks were wanting too.
However, said Mr Starrs has gone in a rather different direction with ‘Nell’ Ora Blu’, ‘Of The Blue Hour’ if you prefer, a heartfelt homage to the aforementioned ‘Giallo’. Yes, there were undoubtedly clues that this was a passion of his in his stories of ‘Blood Lust’ and ‘Mind Control’, recurring themes of the films lacing prior offerings, but with this new release an entire movie has been created, not recreated as this is all original work, not stolen sound bites, including brand new and original dialogue by genre stalwarts Franco Nero and Edwige Fenech, actors who practically encapsulate the very mysterious coolness of the films they starred in.
Opening the show is ‘Il Sole Sorge Sempre’, heavy with a primitive synth sound, dragging with an undercurrent of menace, and anybody with even the most passing acquaintance with Giallo will be sucked back in time and imagining sharply dressed Mediterranean men in massive sunglasses, a glass of J&B Scotch in hand, and an impossibly stylish woman on his arm. Next up comes dialogue that I wish I could understand better, my Italian being negligible, played out over jazzy drum licks and a church organ, before Mr Starrs ethereal singing further enhances the images created by the album. ‘La Vipera’ follows, the twanging guitars and beaten bongos evoking not just a film of the seventies, but the sound track to the cheesy ‘Pearl & Dean’ adverts that played in the cinema at the time extolling the virtues of a restaurant “just 200 yards from this very theatre” care of stock footage and a flashed up sign. This is followed by a Goblin like menace which is created in the Prog styling of the appropriately named ‘Vendetta (Tema)’, a perfect accompaniment to a hero or heroine being stalked through darkened alleyways where every shadow could contain a knife wielding threat.
It is pretty much impossible to think of ‘Nell’ Ora Blu’ in anything but cinematic terms, each track being a score to a scene that moves the narrative forward, so much of which revolves around mysterious telephone calls. ‘Cocktail Party’ has an unknown stalker phoning a gathering where doubtless much of the ubiquitous J&B whisky was being drunk, whilst ‘Il Tesoro Di Sardegna’ starts with a phone call before evolving into what must surely be the love theme in which our protagonists entwine, a common feature of the films of the era, sometimes in soft focus if the territory demanded it, sometimes not, with a sax solo painting a vivid picture that would have censors in the UK reaching for the ‘X’ stamp. If you’ve managed to keep reading up to this point, allow me to offer a massive thanks. So far I’ve only covered the first six of the nineteen tracks on the album, and as this isn’t an early Napalm Death offering, it stretches over a mammoth 78 minutes, a time span which would match the running time of many films of the era, an age where there would be a single special effects supervisor listed rather than a crawl of hundreds of computer animators. Were I to try and review and describe each track, then frankly this article would take longer to read than it would take to listen to the album, and I don’t want to put you off trying ‘Nell’ Ora Blu’ for yourself by boring you with my words.
‘Nell’ Ora Blu’ is a bold and ambitious album, and one that is clearly a passion project for Kevin Starrs, his love and respect for, and knowledge of Giallo coming through in each number. It may disappoint those who just want thumping rock tracks that they can play on shuffle, as this album deserves, indeed, demands to be played through uninterrupted and in order, and in the modern world of disposable streamed music that is consumed and discarded like cheap chewing gum, it could be a big ask. It is unlikely to attract the casual listener, and will doubtless offer so much more to fans of the movies, such as myself and the esteemed editor of Ave Noctum, where each chord fired up celluloid memories, memories that are sustained by the many classic releases of the films of the era through labels such as 88, Arrow, or Indicator, many of which fill the shelves in the home of your humble scribe. This album is a massive artistic achievement for which I have a whole pile of praise, and one that I would love to see performed live with the film playing in the background. However, as I said, this is not from a movie, but an original story that pays respectful homage to its influences, so the imagination of the listener will just have to create the visuals, guided by the expert hand of Mr Starrs. Whether this album will garner the band a wider audience is debatable, but frankly I found it a magnificent piece of work, and can only encourage you if you’ve read this far to invest your money in buying the album, and your time in listening to it in a single play.
(9/10 Spenny)
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