Few films can honestly claim to truly extreme on both a visual and cerebral level, but anyone who has seen Salo: 120 Days in Sodom will vouch for the film's lasting power. The career-defining masterpiece from the controversial Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini has remained one of cinema's most extreme and challenging works, an escalating litany of atrocities (including acts of extreme violence, sadism, mental torture and coprophagia) that act as metaphors for Pasolini's views on sexuality, political corruption, and fascism. It's no wonder that Pasolini and his films have inspired artists within the more extreme regions of underground music, and this compilation features a noteworthy lineup of industrial, dark ambient and neo-folk bands paying homage to Pasolini's art. Released by the industrial label Rustblade in a special edition DVD style package, Songs For A Child includes tracks from Coil, Ah Cama-Sotz, Alio Die, and In Slaughter Natives along with ten other artists, many hailing from the Italian industrial scene, and the disc comes in a gorgeous package that includes stunning original artwork from Saturno Butt� and Alessia Catanuto, as well as an eight-page full color booklet, full color postcard, and a "magic" amulet.

The compilation begins with the mighty UK post-industrial masters Coil, who contribute their song "Ostia (The Death Of Pasolini)" from the album Horse Rotorvator, a stunning nocturnal drama written in terrifying strings, baroque new-wave and John Balance's eerie croon. That's followed by Italian post-industrial dread from Bahntier, and the dark gothic acoustic pop with chamber strings of Spiritual Front's "My Erotic Sacrifice". Ah Cama-Sotz crafts delicate techno-infused industrial darkness for "Les Millet Et Une Nuits" , and Alio Die's "Splendido Struggente" is a shimmering black drift of droning cellos, decaying EVP voices and crying waterfowl. The creepy, hallucinatory industrial rhythms and dream-like ambient dub of Teatro Satanico's "Ppppetrolio" vaguely resembles the music of Scorn, and leads into one of the compilations most powerful contributions, "Never Closed My Eyes" from In Slaughter Natives.

This exclusive track from the legendary death industrialists isn't bombastic, like so much of their work; instead, this is In Slaughter Natives at their creeping, brooding best, a malevolent droning dirge with ominous harpsichord melodies, soft female backing vocals, sinister whispered male vocalizations, and deep chanting laying out a dark, brooding atmosphere that only towards the end begins to reveal the heavy orchestral percussion that the group is known for. The minimal dark electro-industrial of Condanna is next, followed by the psychedelic Coil-esque post-industrial eeriness of Black Sun Productions, who blend together marimbas, flutes, pounding tribal drums and dark electronic shadows. The German duo Nueva Germania create disturbing industrial drones and crackling percussive noise, while The Frozen Autumn perform some fantastic Xymox-esque industrial darkwave, heavy and gorgeously ethereal. Sandblasting's "Memories" is bleak nightmarish ambience with piano and dubby abstract beatscapes, and Wertham make the most overt musical reference to Pasolini's Salo with their grim, crushing slab of muted industrial power drone "30.09.1949", which samples a segment of the original Morricone theme for Salo and loops it beneath a wash of desolate industrial noise. The last track is from the ridiculously named (and costumed) Catholic Boys In Heavy Leather, which features Joke Lanz from Schimpfluch-Gruppe/Sudden Infant and Roger Baumer from Bloodstar engaging in some leather-fetish industrial powernoise.

Issued in a hand-numbered edition of 696 copies.