Suspense is a soundtrack for one or more imaginary suspense movies, composed by M. Zalla – a pseudonym of Piero Umiliani, who also directed the orchestra at the recording in his own Sound Workshop studio. The cover design follows the same approach as other Umiliani records on Fonts In Use: an uncredited designer picked an image/color and used it as large as possible in combination with some big type, in this case all caps Cooper Black Italic.

The track listing on the back is set in Folio [it’s the similar Permanent, see comments]; the album title on the back is set in another, yet unidentified grotesk [Cairoli a.k.a Neue Moderne Grotesk / Aurora-Grotesk I–IV], and “Orchestra diretta dall’autore” (“orchestra directed by the author”) uses Recta.

[More info on Discogs]

Piero Umiliani (1926–2001) was an Italian composer of film scores and library music who was also behind a few music labels labels and a recording studio. “In his long career he composed and recorded 190 soundtracks, 40 library albums and 35 TV title themes”, according to Discogs.

Paesaggi was originally released in 1971 by Liuto records as an album by Suonano / Mark 4; re-released 9 years later under Umilani’s moniker (M.) Zalla by Ciak records in 1980, and this version was re-released in 2022 with the original artwork by Four Flies Records:

Finally putting an end to a long wait for library music lovers, Four Flies Records is proud to present the first reissue of Piero Umiliani’s Paesaggi – a record that, despite remaining for many years pretty obscure compared to other titles in the maestro’s discography, is now regarded by collectors and experts as the gold standard in Italian library music.

Originally released in two versions with different sleeves, the first on Liuto Records in 1971 and the second on Ciak Record in 1980, the album features tracks composed by the maestro himself (under his alias Zalla) and performed by the legendary super-group of Italian session players I Marc 4, this time with Angelo Baroncini instead of Carlo Pes on guitars (which probably explains the name being spelled with a ‘k’ instead of a ‘c’ on the album cover).

The artwork on the 1980 (and 2022) release was not made for the album, but selected from the oeuvre of Croation artist Ivan Generalic who made a name with depictions of rural life (landscapes, cattle, villagers). The work used here appears to be Noon, signed 1967, or 1969, made with oil paint on glass.

[More info on Discogs]

PianoFender Blues is a library music recording by Rovi, one of the many noms de plume of Piero Umiliani. The album features twelve easy listening tunes with a bluesy flavour. The artist’s name is not mentioned on the cover; the album title however, takes up more than half of the available space.

The three tightly spaced words are set in stacked and slightly overlapping lines using Blackline, a design by German graphic artist Wolf Magin (1927–2009) that was adopted by Berthold for phototypesetting in 1971. Around 1974, Blackline was also available from Mecanorma for dry transfer lettering.

[More info on Discogs]