Interview by Paul Salfen
Lucio Fulci’s Zombie has maintained status as a cult favorite in the horror world for over forty years, and the score by FABIO FRIZZI undoubtedly holds top-tier status as one of the most iconic and influential horror film soundtracks of all time. Following FABIO FRIZZI’s international live performances for the Cadabra-released The Beyond: Composer’s Cut LP, Covid hit, and Italy shut down. At home with his instruments, the maestro began work on this new opus.
Zombie: Composer’s Cut is not just a re-recorded rendering of the classic score, nor is it a completely re-imagined version. Keeping the vision of the original at the forefront, FRIZZI carefully orchestrates new music to this timeless score, infusing new elements to accent specific scenes in the film in the listener’s mind, while adhering to Fulci’s monstrous film.
The complete uncut score of FABIO FRIZZI’s Zombie: Composer’s Cut is here delivered in a plush vinyl edition, pressed on 150-gram colored vinyl in multiple variants, packaged in a deluxe heavyweight tip-on gatefold jacket, adorned in newly commissioned art by Jeremy Hush that starkly resembles the look of the original film and movie artwork. The inlay features brand new essays by Stephen Thrower and J. Blake Fichera, as well as liner notes from FRIZZI himself.
With Zombie: Composer’s Cut drawing near its release, Decibel Magazine is hosting the LP’s opening movement, “The Boat Can Leave Now, Tell The Crew,” which is joined by an interview with FABIO FRIZZI, reading in part how the revisited score, “…sees the master of auditory suspense carefully orchestrate new music to this timeless score, infusing new elements to accent specific scenes in the film in the listener’s mind, while adhering to Fulci’s monstrous film..”
Zombie: Composer’s Cut is now available for preorder and will be released on July 28th. Find preorders at the Cadabra Records website HERE.
Excerpts from the essay by Stephen Thrower, author of Beyond Terror: The Films Of Lucio Fulci
FABIO FRIZZI’s creative alliance with Lucio Fulci, spanning sixteen years from 1974 to 1990, remains a source of fascination for lovers of the fantastique. Like Badalamenti and Lynch, Rota and Fellini, Goblin and Argento, the teaming of FRIZZI and Fulci is so perfect that it seems almost cosmically ordained. FRIZZI ’s ability to transcend the clichés of horror scoring lent haunting majesty to Fulci’s extravagant and gruesome creations.
The movie that introduced FRIZZI to horror fans around the world was Zombi 2, released in the USA as Zombie, and known to the British as Zombie Flesh-Eaters. The film’s strikingly unusual themes came at the listener from unexpected angles: woozily euphoric, mournful yet exciting, violent yet mysterious. In relation to Fulci’s viscerally shocking images, FRIZZI offered new emotional flavors for the genre. When scoring to the shambling undead, he spurned the usual shock tactics and instead invoked a weird serenity and majesty.
While being careful to respect Fulci’s intentions, FRIZZI has chosen here to expand the length and complexity of his cues, adding more detail and a bigger line-up to deepen and enrich the sound. The result merges old elements with new: tribal percussion, electric guitars, rock drums, synthesizers, bass guitar, and in a break with the original score, cello. Strings were an intrinsic part of the FRIZZIsound on City Of The Living Dead, The Beyond, and Manhattan Baby, so the addition of cello here brings Zombie closer to its illustrious successors. The instrument appears on tracks such as “The Boat Can Leave Now”, “Cemetery for Spanish Conquistadores” and “Blood under a Microscope,” lending color and gravity to scenes that were originally scored purely with tribal drums.
So here we are, in 2023. It won’t be long before we arrive at the fiftieth anniversary of Zombie. Does the film seem dated? Not a bit. Does the music creak with long-ago styles and tropes? Far from it. Instead, they have achieved what is surely the dream of all filmmakers and composers: timelessness.
