Nel Mondo Del Lavoro

Originally released in 1972 on Sermi, an Italian label that specialized in music for film and TV, Nel Mondo del Lavoro (which translates to “In the World of Work”) was first used for a Rai-TV documentary series on the Petroleum industry. The mundanity of track titles like “Montaggio A Catena (Assembly Line),” “Calcolatore Elettronico (Electronic Calculator)” and “Edilizia (Construction Industry),” so typical of Italian library music, belies the complexity and depth of the music they hide: jazz-funk grooves, syncopated percussions, dreamy flutes, and ethereal vocals are arranged to conjure the repetitive, relentless nature of industrial production (“Ingranaggi” and “Rotaie”), or convey the intensity of industrial work (“Lavoro Ripetitivo”). Like many of the seminal albums from that time, Nel Mondo del Lavoro’s lineup includes many of the main players in the scene, including prolific studio band I MARC 4, and I Cantori Moderni, the vocal ensemble founded by Alessandro Alessandroni which included his wife Giulia De Mutiis, an accomplished film music composer herself.