Lucio Fulci's Zombie Composer Cut LP

For those who enjoyed the release of Fabio Frizzi's first Composer's Cut, in which he expanded and re-envisioned his score for Lucio Fulci's 1981 film, The Beyond, his sophomore outing will bring levels of delight and excitement previously thought unimaginable. In tackling Zombie (also known as Zombi 2 or Zombie Flesh Eaters), composer Frizzi has crafted something which feels familiar and new simultaneously.

The story of how it came to be is truly necessary to really grasp just what Frizzi – as well as the members of his Frizzi 2 Fulci band, drummer Federico Tacchia, bassist Roberto Fasciani, guitarists Riccardo Rocchi and Francesco Saguto, and keyboardist Alessio Contorni – has done here. Whereas the Composer's Cut of The Beyond was crafted to be part of a version of the film wherein the original score had been completely removed, for Zombie, there was no such ver-sion. Thus, as the composer writes in his liners notes, he would have to “work over the old mu-sic by writing new themes that would be, so to speak, superimposed upon the old musical commentary, in effect creating something totally new, something almost unimaginable.”

Thus, the tracks which make up the Zombie Composer's Cut are both reinterpretations of old themes – the title track, the percussion that tells of the immanent voodoo, the sequencer theme, and the harmonic rock sequence which accompanies the movie's goriest moments – while also crafting new music, such as “Afraid of Voodoo,” a completely new work which features the ex-pert and haunting work of cellist Gennaro Della Monica.

Not for nothing does the maestro himself add a classical guitar solo to the film's classic main title theme, adding just enough flourish to connect the droning Mellotron choir to the island themes which act as a counterpoint. It's details such as these which elevate the new music to something special, with the result being. a score which leaps out of the speakers, robust and full. The electric guitars are bigger, the drums hit harder, the bass smacks you in the chest, and the synthesizers feel as though they've had their signal boosted with a lightning strike's worth of power.