* 2023 stock * Stelvio Cipriani had been scoring films since 1967 when he accepted the assignment to compose the music for Mario Bava's proto-slasher film, Ecologia Del Delitto (Ecology of Crime, aka A Bay of Blood) in 1971. The first of three films he would score for the legendary Italian director, it would be followed by GLI ORRORI DEL CASTELLO DI NORIMBERGA (aka BARON BLOOD et al.) in 1972 and Cani Arrabbiati (1974; RABID DOGS, also now available in an extended edition from Chris' Soundtrack Corner).

A Bay of Blood was Mario Bava's twenty-fourth film as director. While his 1963 thriller THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH had been one of the first giallo films, dutifully inspiring many of the directors of the genre that followed, Bava took that one step forward in  A Bay of Blood, essentially inventing what became known as the slasher film. With a fine cast of European actors occupying the roles, Bava carved out a unique story of multiple murders and multiple murderers, motivated to their acts and their ends by simple greed.

Like the majority of his thriller scores, Cipriani contrasts beautiful, light melodies with harsh electronic guitars, emphatic drumming, and atonal sound textures. In  A Bay of Blood, tribal drumming, fuzzy electric guitar and bass, strident celeste, gentle pop rhythms, and yearning rhapsodic melodies work together to build a sonic environment into which the characters are placed, and the stark contrast between the impassioned lyrical music and the shocking, drumming tension music really gives Bava's visual storytelling a breadth of expression, excitement, and eloquence.

Italy's Digitmovies CD label first released 37 minutes of music from A Bay of Blood in 2005, as part of a double album containing Cipriani's music from three Bava films (CANI ARRABBIATI and BARON BLOOD were the other two). All of that music appears in this new expanded release from Chris' Soundtrack Corner. Eleven bonus tracks of about fourteen minutes' total length are added to this album, seven of which are previously unreleased – these include alternate takes, "wild" recordings, or edited mixes of original takes extended by looping the music and thus doubling the length of the track in order to offer a better listening experience. The cues are not sequenced in film order but have been placed in an order that we believe provides an optimum listening experience of the music apart from the film.

This extended release of Stelvio Cipriani's  A Bay of Blood score is produced by Christian Riedrich and newly mastered by Stefan Betke. The CD is accompanied by a 16-page illustrated booklet designed by Aletta Heinsohn featuring detailed, exclusive notes by film music journalist Randall D. Larson.