CAM Sugar/UMe has shared the first offering from its forthcoming album Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco: Dancefloor Seductions From Italian Sexploitation Cinema. The Italian disco rarity “What Can I Do” by Stelvio Cipriani appeared in 1979’s La Supplente Va In Citta and channels the energy of an Italian Studio 54.
It is one of 20 tracks curated by Roth, the acclaimed American auteur and actor, who was granted exclusive access into CAM Sugar’s archive of more than 2,000 Italian and French soundtracks. Out March 21, the collection includes newly restored and remastered versions of classics and cult favorites from Italy’s sexploitation cinema of the ’70s and ’80s. Nine songs have never been released independent of the films and four have never been available on vinyl. “It’s a party from start to finish,” says Roth.
Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco will be available in several formats, including a standard version on either 2LP black vinyl or CD. A limited deluxe edition presents the album on red vinyl and features a special mirrored cover, a 45 RPM 7” single with two rare cuts—one unreleased and one previously unissued on vinyl—plus a poster and a set of postcards with unseen photographs from the sets of sexy Italian comedy films. All versions of the album arrive with a 28-page booklet titled “Eli Roth’s Guide To Italian Red Light Cinema.” The booklet features interviews with European cinema icons and composers, archival posters of many Red Light films, vintage press reviews, and other ephemera from the CAM Sugar archives.
“When I first heard the music of the Italian genre films of the 1970s, these tracks were impossible to find outside of the films themselves. I would rip the music from the DVDs or VHS tapes, often with the dialogue, because I couldn’t find them anywhere else,” writes Roth in his accompanying essay. “When CAM Sugar asked me to curate this collection, it was not only a thrill for me as a film fan, it was a dream as a director too, because they opened the archive to thousands and thousands of previously unreleased tracks. Songs that have not been heard since the original film releases, all pristine as if they were recorded today. I wanted to curate a party, a very cool, very groovy 1970s Italian disco party, as if we were all in a scene from one of these movies.”
Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco includes tracks from Stelvio Cipriani, Bruno Nicolai, Riz Ortolani, Franco Campanino, Gianni Ferrio, Nico Fidenco, and Daniele Patucchi. Other highlights include Alfonso Zenga and Paolo Gatti’s “Sparklin Conversation” from 1980’s Sensi Caldi; “Taxi Girl” (Ritmico Disco), the funky instrumental theme to the 1977 classic by session legends Enrico Pierannunzi & Silvano Chimenti, under their alias Pulsar Music LTD; and Cipriani’s “Il Sesso Del Diavolo – Finale” from the 1979 flick.
Order Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco: Dancefloor Seductions From Italian Sexploitation Cinema now.
