Various Artists ‘Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom’ soundtrack finally issued on Cold Spring, 13 February 2026
Various Artists 'Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom' soundtrack finally issued on Cold Spring, 13 February 2026
The fine UK label Cold Spring will release the original soundtrack to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 film “Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom” on 13 February 2026 on LP, CD and digital formats. The collection marks the first time the film’s original music appears as a dedicated soundtrack release, and includes a new 12-minute piece entitled “The Salò Haunted Suite”.
The “Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom” album assembles classical works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Frédéric Chopin, Carl Orff, Giacomo Puccini and Arnaldo Graziosi alongside material conducted or composed by Ennio Morricone. It also includes vocal performances by the cast and Morricone’s farewell piece “Addio a Pier Paolo Pasolini”, written after the director’s murder in Ostia in November 1975 and placed in the film’s final cut.
The “Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom” original soundtrack appears in three formats via Cold Spring:
- Limited LP (blood red vinyl) – 12″ LP on blood red coloured vinyl, limited to 500 copies. The record comes in a matt-laminated gatefold sleeve.
- CD in ecopak – CD edition housed in a matt-laminated gatefold ecopak, including the 12:48 bonus piece “The Salò Haunted Suite”.
- Digital album – digital version available in 16-bit/44.1 kHz quality via Bandcamp, with the bonus suite included across album purchases.
The LP, CD and digital versions are scheduled to ship and release on 13 February 2026. Note that this date coincides with the 249th anniversary of the Marquis de Sade’s imprisonment in the Vincennes fortress on charges of “debauchery and immoderate libertinage”.
Table of contents
About “Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom”
“Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom” is a 1975 political art-horror film directed and co-written by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The film adapts the Marquis de Sade’s unfinished 1785 novel “The 120 Days of Sodom” and relocates its setting to the short-lived Italian Social Republic in 1944, commonly known as the Fascist Republic of Salò.
Pasolini developed the script with Sergio Citti, drawing on de Sade’s structure and integrating motifs from Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno”. The story follows four fascist officials who abduct a group of young men and women and submit them to a strict regime of rules, rituals and punishments inside an isolated villa. The film organises its episodes into “circles” that mirror Dante’s descent, charting escalating abuses of power.
Production took place in Italy with a cast that mixed professional and non-professional actors. The principal roles include Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle and Aldo Valletti as the four “Masters”, supported by Caterina Boratto, Elsa De Giorgi, Hélène Surgère and others. Cinematography was handled by Tonino Delli Colli, with editing by Nino Baragli.
The musical score combines original material from Ennio Morricone, performed on piano by Arnaldo Graziosi, with pre-existing classical works from Bach and Chopin, together with Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” and operatic passages by Puccini as key elements in the final soundtrack.
Pasolini completed the film in 1975. On 2 November that year he was murdered in Ostia, near Rome, three weeks before the premiere at the Paris Film Festival on 23 November 1975. In response, Morricone composed “Addio a Pier Paolo Pasolini”, later added to the film and now included in this Cold Spring release.
Censorship, bans and distribution
“Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom” quickly became one of the most controversial titles in European cinema. Italian censors initially rejected the film, then granted approval in December 1975, before withdrawing it again after a short national run in early 1976.
The film’s depiction of sexualised violence, torture and murder of characters presented as under eighteen led to bans or prosecutions in several territories. In the United Kingdom, the British Board of Film Censors refused a certificate in 1976; later uncut screenings in London were subject to police intervention, and the BBFC only passed the film uncut for general release in 2000.
In Australia, the film was banned in the 1970s, briefly cleared in the 1990s, and then banned again in 1998 before being permitted on DVD in 2010. New Zealand maintained a ban until 2001, when it passed the film with an R18 rating.
Despite these restrictions, “Salò” circulated through festivals, specialist cinemas and later home-video editions. The Criterion Collection issued the film on LaserDisc in 1993 and on DVD in 1998.
About Cold Spring
Cold Spring is an independent record label based in Northamptonshire, England, founded in 1990 by Justin Mitchell. The label developed from Mitchell’s involvement in the UK’s industrial and experimental scenes and has built a catalogue centred on noise, power electronics, dark ambient, neo-folk, industrial, experimental electronics and dark soundtrack work.
Over more than three decades Cold Spring has released material by artists from Europe, North America and Asia, often focusing on archival, cult or boundary-pushing projects such as The “Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom”.
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