Untangling the convoluted and fragmented evolution of Italian soundtrack legends Goblin may very well be an exercise in futility. The history up to the point of Roller, their 1976 non-soundtrack album is pretty easy, though: bunch of kids got together and played live a few times as Oliver, changed a few members and got picked up by a label who randomly changed their name to Cherry Five. They recorded an eponymous album of progressive, fusion-ish tunes with a vocalist (we’ll get around to reviewing it this month) before hooking up with Giorgio Gaslini to help score Dario Argento’s Deep Red. Gaslini left the film, and Argento had the band do the composing themselves. To ensure this work didn’t conflict with the about to be released Cherry Five album, they changed their name to Goblin. Make sense? Who knows, but after the classic Deep Red score the band went and created Roller. And here we are.

And honestly? It’s fine. This is kind of the curse of the vinyl collector: you get on these laser focused dives where you insist to yourself you HAVE to have this thing or that thing. It’s essential to the genre you’re investigating, and, oh look! A new reissue! Or an original pressing! And it goes deeper and deeper and you’re sitting with records all over the house that you maybe listen to once or twice and that’s it. I’ve always thought it would be nice to simply have everything, and when the desire hits me I can find and listen to everything I collected.

But if I’m being honest, I can’t even remember half of what I own, and I get so caught up in THE NEXT THING that I forget about whatever my focus was and move on. The point of Consuming The Tangible was to think about what the stuff I consume says about me, specifically the physical or “tangible” side of music, and increasingly I’m coming to the conclusion that it says I have a lot of stress and anxiety and I ignore it by focusing on buying everything I can. There’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to really listen and review everything I own, or at least review it in a way that’s meaningful and says something about the music, about me, and my relationship to it.

So what does Roller have to say, either about me or Goblin in general? There are flashes of what I would come to love about their work with Argento: the opening title track feels the most like what they would go on to do with Argento and George A. Romero, and shows off the copious talents of Claudio Simonetti’s keyboard work. The lineup here is I guess the “classic” lineup with Massimo Morante on guitars and Fabio Pignatelli on bass. The band seemed to have a rotating drummer but on Roller it’s Agostino Marangolo who somehow managed to stay through 1981. And while both Simonetti and Morante typically gather the majority of accolades, I’d argue Marangolo’s drum work really holds everything together. They very loud and pronounced, dry and snappy, and on the oddly titled “Aquaman” really click against Morante’s stellar guitar soloing.

There’s a lack of cohesion, though I’m not going to complain that much when you get something like the funky fusion of “Snip Snap” – it’s probably the most outside the band’s expected sound, but it also drives home another era I’ve been digging into, the fusion going on in jazz in the mid 70s. In some ways it’s the best thing on Roller simply for being such a diversion from I’ve come to expect from the band. Similar in approach but not in execution is “Il risveglio del serpente” which besides being the only track in Italian is also the simplest – this is a fairly straightforward piano piece, a showcase for Simonetti with Marangolo providing accents and flourishes with his cymbals. It’s fine, nothing I would revisit and if listening digitally would most likely skip over.

To satisfy the prog heads you get your epic on the start of side 2. “Goblin” is just over 11 minutes of the band reaching for those instant classic melodies, often keyboard arpeggios accentuated by a steady rock beat. There’s a lot of ambient keyboard sounds, giving me distinct Mike Oldfield vibes – possibly still swimming in my head after listening to Ommadawn again. The pace picks up and goes full on rock god when Morante whips out his solo, and here’s as good a place as any to talk about Fabio Pignatelli and his bass playing, which is phenomenal. I’ve been focusing on bass a lot lately, listening to a lot of the Karmakanic album and comparing Jonas Reingold as a leader and arranger there to how Michael Stolt works around the compositions on the latest Flower Kings release. Pignatelli is definitely playing in those leagues: his bass playing is busy and technical without resorting to empty flash. During the quieter passages he stands out not only by his tone but his tasty note choices.

Before the song’s end we get back to some of that funky fusion, and then it’s onto “Dr. Frankenstein” to close Roller out. Which is again perfectly fine and acceptable without actually being fantastic, although I do really enjoy how frantic and active the arrangement is. Will I listen again? Probably not for a while; I’ve had my fill and want to move onto other things. It remains to be seen if Goblin will be one of those records I pull out every now and again for certain moods, or if I watch an Argento film and need more.