Album Details

• Artist: Secret Chiefs 3
• Album: Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
• Label: Mimicry
• Year of Release: 2009
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2009-06-13

You'll be hard pressed to find a more creative and eccentric collaboration of musicians than Secret Chiefs 3. The collective are well-known in certain circles for their fine attention to detail and through a cult-like obsession with mysticism, worldly musical themes and spiritual investigations. Their sound is impossible to pin down, and has progressed through the years to almost demand use of what they call "Satellite bands", or different names for different members of the band who's collaborations take detours from what one might call the definitive SC3 sound. This began on 2004's "Book of Horizons" and continues here on Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini, which is credited to The Traditionalists.

This album, according to the band, is meant to be consumed as a soundtrack to a non-existant horror movie. They also proclaim it to be of the "Giallo" brand of soundtrack album, and for more on what that means, exactly, check out the links at the end of this review. Needless to say, the quality of this given album is absolutely top-notch from the instrumentalizing to production values, songwriting to visionary aptitude. More than anything, this album is genuinely creepy, deftly weaving an atmosphere of paranoia and fear from track to track. All in all the album is one long movement, broken into 30 parts. Reviewing any particular track is futile in this regard, however. Certain moments will remind one of Ennio Morricone, others of the Italian soundtrack band Goblin (perhaps most well-known for their work on George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" and the Italian cult horror classic "Zombi"). Others will just remind you of the grace and talent of previous SC3 works. 

The name of the game is cinematic music, and the game is a blowout. This album will keep you enthralled beginning to end in a way that no other SC3 album has done so far. It has a cohesion that is incredibly infectious and, for the more imaginative of us, leaves ample room for connecting to our own self-created mental moving pictures. The word masterpiece might be a stretch, but if this were to ever make it side-by-side with an appropriate film, many would be calling it one of the better soundtracks ever made. As it is, it's a wonderful and enjoyable experiment in a style of music that has long been appreciated in many B-movie afficionados' underground circles. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giallo

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