BLACK CASSETTE / J-CARD / INSERT
Listen / Download digital version here: A. RALLA - La gabbia umana
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In 1979 the director Antonio Rasiera started filming a sci-fi tv-movie called “La Gabbia Umana” (The Human Cage), an alienating and dehumanizing post-apocalyptic parable in which the human body is described as an inexorably closed cage, “without key and without lock”.
A few days after the start of filming, director Rasiera (already prey to his serious disease) dies: today what remains of “The Human Cage” is its soundtrack, composed by the maestro Augusto Ralla.
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Last April, at HDK headquarters, we received a package without a sender containing some tapes and a handwritten letter. The letter said:
“In a ghostly Milan overwhelmed by what will go down in history as 'the first wave', I found myself violating the curfew imposed by the authorities and by pure chance locking myself up in the basements of what was once Docuvideo TV network. Here, after a frantic search, with enormous amazement I found a treasure in my hands - I could not call it otherwise - since we all thought it was a buried legend, certainly shrouded in an aura of sinister and almost mystical mystery: the intact reels of the soundtrack of "La Gabbia Umana" (The Human Cage), a TV movie script never made for unknown reasons. The forgotten masterpiece of one of the most underestimated and unrecognized authors of soundtracks in our cinema, the maestro Augusto Ralla.
From the very first listening I was sucked into the organic and proliferating sounds of those tapes: the famous "phonological experiments" of Maestro Ralla bounced in my ears, insinuating them like crawling worms, acoustic bacteria that made their way into my ear pavilions, sweeping away any grip on an ever more shattered and incomprehensible world.
In my head slowly the images of what would have been the first and only Italian drama with a virological-apocalyptic background that should have aired between the end of 1979 and the beginning of 1980 came to life. Composed in a few weeks these ghost tracks - or rather orphans - they were made with little means, few oral indications from the director Rasiera and no reference screenplay.
These songs are the sonorous narration of that story: a alienating and dehumanizing post-apocalyptic parable in which the human body is described as an inexorably closed cage, without a key and without a lock. I propose them as originally conceived by the author, faithfully reproduced from the original recordings ".
Should we believe this story? Maybe not, but we prefer to think it's true. Have a good listening.