Unmade Scores

Adrian Valanti writes music for films that were never made.

Italian by origin and unmistakably Italian in temperament, the composer behind Unmade Scores grew from a musical imagination nourished by Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota, Piero Piccioni and Armando Trovajoli.

But Valanti does not imitate them.

He inherited something more important: an understanding that film music can possess elegance, sensuality, humour and personality even when separated from the image.

Unmade Scores therefore does not sound like generic cinematic music.

It smells of leather seats warmed by the sun, old film stock, espresso cooling beside an ashtray, Mediterranean evenings, expensive cologne and hotel lobbies in which something important may or may not have happened.

Valanti embodies flegmatic elegance.

Nothing appears hurried.

Nothing desperately demands attention.

The arrangement simply knows it will eventually receive it.

Piano, strings, orchestral writing, analogue electronics, environmental sound and silence form his palette, but every element is treated with restraint.

The music feels perfumed with carefully selected essences.

Refinement without sterility.

Luxury without ostentation.

A track may suggest an opening sequence, an empty Roman street, lovers separating beside a railway station or closing credits for characters the listener has never met.

The absence of an actual film is the entire point.

The listener becomes the director.

Valanti provides the light, the perfume, the camera movement and occasionally the heartbreak.

Within Kinetic Distro, Unmade Scores represents imaginary Italian cinema at its most sophisticated: music composed for memories that never existed.