Psichedelica

Before Psichedelica becomes the record you think it is, it asks you to rewind. Back to June 1968, when Piero Umiliani was deep in the studio, shaping the score for Svezia Inferno e Paradiso, his ongoing collaboration with Luigi Scattini. What followed was less a soundtrack offcut and more an accidental artefact. A library LP, pressed in just 200 copies on the Omicron label, never intended for sale, yet destined to linger.

The title misleads. Psichedelica suggests something far more extreme than what actually unfolds. Instead, the record moves in familiar Umiliani territory, where beat-driven bursts collide with orchestral arrangements, and flashes of late-60s rock drift in and out without ever taking over. Tracks like the alternate take of ‘Hippies’ hint at that psychedelic edge, but never fully commit. This is not chaos. It is control, dressed as experimentation.

What gives the album its quiet gravity is its origin. Much of the material is lifted directly from those Svezia Inferno e Paradiso sessions, carrying with it the same cinematic instinct. Even at its loosest, the music feels composed with purpose. Nothing lingers without reason.

And then there is ‘Mah-Nà Mah-Nà’. Or rather, its first life. Originally titled ‘Viva la sauna svedese’, recorded with Alessandro Alessandroni and Julia Alessandroni on vocals, it was little more than a discarded filler. Left off the soundtrack. Reworked. Renamed. Exported. What followed is well documented. Chart success. Cultural saturation. A second life as a global curiosity.

It is a strange kind of legacy. A throwaway track becoming the defining moment. A composer’s most recognisable work arriving almost by accident. On Psichedelica, though, it still feels incidental. Just another idea among many, sitting quietly within a record that was never meant to travel this far.

That is the real intrigue here. Not just the rarity, or the mythology, but the sense of something unintended surviving. A private pressing that became public. A misnamed record that reveals more the longer you sit with it.