IF the music released by Giallo Disco wasn’t already called horror disco, you’d have to christen it that the moment you first laid ears on the ultra-ominous, Assault On Precinct 13 bass keys that swathe Ubre Blanca’s The Sadist in glorious darkness. Or the onrushing choir of ghosts who usher in Vercetti Technicolor’s Tropical Terror Suite I. Or the goosepimple synths of HAEX-HRLL’s North of Warren. Or… well, you get the picture.

The horror disco sound certainly predates the 30 or so records Giallo have put out in the past five years – New York’s Steve Moore and his band Zombi, the Dutch synth maestro Legowelt and the labels Clone and Creme Organization are particular champions of the sound. But Giallo, with their lovingly created cover artwork and music videos cut together from old horror movies, have done more than anyone to advance the genre’s sound and aesthetic in recent years.

Indeed, frustration at the closure of another outlet for the style was at the root of label co-heads Antoni Maiovvi and Gianni Vercetti’s decision to start Giallo in the first place, as Maiovvi explains. “The kind of horror-inspired stuff had been happening for quite some time in one form or another, and both Gianni and I came from a very similar place: a love of old film scores, progressive synth and Italo disco. There was a sub-label of Kompakt called Fright that put out my first 12-inch with a very similar concept, but they stopped operating and we were always sad about that. Gianni and I met when we played together in Greece, but it took a couple of years before we decided to try and do a label, and it happened more out of frustration than anything else.”

The National:

(All cover images by Eric A Lee)

Whatever the reasons for its birth, starting Giallo has proven to be a masterstroke, and popular regard has steadily grown for a label whose aesthetic and atmospheric mores are tightly maintained even as its musical parameters are kept just loose enough to include a wide array of producers. “It has to be cinematic, that’s the most important thing,” Maiovvi begins. “And Gianni and I have to agree 100 per cent on it, but it can be drone-terror or zombie-march or slasher-boogie or even X-Files-esque-technobodymusik and it still might well work for the label. We don’t want to release something that is purely dancefloor oriented just because it sells. Hopefully we’re filling a space where you can use it as a DJ tool and listen to it at home.”

Maiovvi and Vercetti are always on the lookout for producers capable of fulfilling this brief, and former Heartbreak member Ali Renault, Christoph de Babalon (ex of Alec Empire’s cacophonous 1990s Berlin noise label/lifestyle choice Digital Hardcore Recordings) and Glasgow’s Ubre Blanca have all made the imprint’s release schedule. Ubre Blanca were one of many bands and artists who Giallo have gone out of their way to pursue, but their hookup with the Edinburgh producer Neil Landstrumm, whose Roller Killer EP came out on the label this week, initially came from the opposite direction. “I was sitting in Berlin and I suddenly got a friend request from Neil,” says Maiovvi. “I was a bit taken aback to be honest because I knew who he was! So it was unexpected. He sent me some music and Gianni and I both thought it was great.”

The National:

(All cover images by Eric A Lee)

Landstrumm, whose most recent appearance in The National caused a stir worldwide, was more than happy to climb aboard at a label he’d been a longtime admirer of. “I’ve loved Giallo for a good while,” he says. “It’s very original and unique, and the way they blend an Italo-influenced horror-disco style with films from the past is incredibly imaginative and clever. It has a strong, identifiable, cinematic style that creates a mystique long since lost in much of today’s electronic music scene. I have always been a fan of UK and Italian horror films so I’m very comfortable in the zone of terror and darkness in which Giallo resides.

Although the tracks on Roller Killer sound tailor-made for Giallo, Landstrumm says the dovetailing of styles was a happy accident. “The best records are always like that, I think. I was experimenting with a new synth in my studio and came up with a two-minute piece of music that was unlike anything I had made before. A friend pointed out that it would be a great fit for Giallo, so I got in touch and we pulled the EP together from that original track and a few others I’d been working on. I worked with a friend in St Louis called Ulrike on the design idea of a massacre in a roller rink, and the Roller Killer EP was born.”

Landstrumm has a justified reputation for being able to turn his production hand to just about any style, but I find myself struggling to remember him tackling anything on the horror disco spectrum before now. “You’re right actually yeah,” he says. “It was a bit of a stretch early on to be working with these slower disco tempos.

"Although,” he grins, “I think it’s fair to say a lot of the music I’ve made over the years has been tinged with feelings from the darker side of human existence. So maybe channeling the doom and stench of evil comes easily to me.”

Neil Landstrumm’s Roller Killer EP is out now on Giallo Disco