Alessandro Alessandroni's Long-Lost Project the Pawnshop Resurrected by Four Flies

BY Brock ThiessenPublished May 18, 2018

While Alessandro Alessandroni may have departed us last year, the Italian musical mastermind continues to live on thanks to a series of dedicate labels. Among them is reissue hub Four Flies, which has once again dug deep into the Maestro's archives for a pair of new releases.

In the wake of the stunning Lost & Found collection and the beloved Afro Discoteca 12-inch, Four Flies has unearthed a release by the little-known Alessandroni supergroup the Pawnshop, a trio featuring Alessandroni (a.k.a. Braen), fellow library great Giuliano Sorgini (a.k.a. Raskovich) and Alessandroni's wife Giulia De Mutiis (a.k.a. Kema).

As the Pawnshop, the group only released a handful of now impossible-to-find 7-inches, recorded in the November months of 1970 and 1971 at Piero Umiliani's legendary Sound Work Shop studio. In 2018, finding any copies of the trio's work as the Pawnshop is a nearly impossible task, making the Four Flies reissue more than a little welcome.

Here's how Four Flies describes the upcoming Pawnshop 12-inch:

Warped guitars, screams and voices gone berserk; furious drums, tenacious bass guitars, frenzied Hammonds, avalanches of sitars, dramatic inflections, and hypnotics breaks. All these things together and many more are the Pawnshop. A moniker for an obscure supergroup behind which three truly unforgettable heroes of the Italian library music used to conceal themselves and experiment without any musical boundaries.

For a small taste of the release, you can sample an excerpt of the soulful "Please, Don't Say No!" down below.

Four Flies will release the Pawnshop 12-inch on June 8, with 300 copies arriving with a white cover and another 300 with a black cover. You can pre-order the record here.

In addition to the Pawnshop release, Four Flies will also be releasing a new 7-inch from Alessandroni and Sorgini under their Braen & Raskovich moninker. It will include the tracks "Afro Beat" and "Afro Flower," both of which have never before been released.

The 7-inch will also arrive on June 8, and both dancefloor-appropriate tracks can be heard at the bottom of the page. You can pre-order the release here.

In addition to the pair of Alessandroni releases, Four Flies will be releasing a 7-inch featuring Nico Fidenco's classic Black Emanuelle tracks "Eternal Anguish" and "Come Back! Rhythm" on June 8. You can get that release here.

As previously reported, Alessandroni passed away in 2017 at the age of 92.



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