As far as my own peculiar interests go, the Finder Keepers label has been absolutely on fire over the past few years, both with a swathe of choice reissues and, more importantly, first-time-ever excavations of impossibly cultish film music that has never previously seen the light of day anywhere except within the reels of the films that contain it (and sometimes not even there).

Best not even get me started on FK’s current series of releases concentrating on my favourite ever Italian film composer Bruno Nicolai, or their single-handed attempt to salvage the reputation of Polish synth maestro Andrzej Korzyński (maybe those will be the subject of future posts here?), but for the moment, let’s simply say that if someone had told me back in the distant past of, say, 2011, that I would be soon able to obtain an almost complete collection of the music composed for French director Jean Rollin’s wonderful surrealist vampire movies, all pressed on vinyl and delivered to my door for fairly reasonable prices from a UK address, I would have dismissed their suggestion as the fanciful delusion of a disordered mind – the kind of impossible, acquisitive fantasy that someone like me would quite literally dream about. I mean, what kind of record label would possibly engage in such a foolish quest? From the Herculean task of tracking down the composers, the rights and the tapes, to eventually dealing with the fact that probably only a few hundred obsessives worldwide would actually have any interest in buying the results of your labours, the whole thing just sounds like madness. But now, somehow, it has ACTUALLY HAPPENED, and we have those bearded dream-weavers lurking somewhere in the general direction of Manchester to thank for it.

As such, it is high time I got around to discussing some of these records, even though it’s sort of verging onto the aesthetic territory covered by my other blog, and as it happens, 2014 has brought forth one of the most interesting releases yet in the Rollin series – namely, a whole LP of the music recorded by avant-jazz auteur Francois Tusques for Rollin’s astounding 1968 debut feature, ‘Le Viol de Vampire’.

You will of course have noted that the name on this LP, ‘La Reine Des Vampires’, is different from the name of the film in which bits of the music appeared, so in brief, and trying not to veer too much into Other Blog territory, the sequence of events goes a bit like this: ‘Le Viol de Vampire’, as it eventually appeared in 1968, was actually a combination of two films, the first a stand-alone short made under the ‘Le Viol..’ title, and the second a mass of additional footage that Rollin shot when the producer Sam Selsky asked him to expand it to feature length, in spite of the fact that he’d ended the first half by killing off most of the characters. So, whilst ‘Le Viol..’ (the first half of the finished film) was scored with a few well-chosen pieces of library music (including the rather lovely ‘Profoundeurs’ by Roger Roger, which Finder Keepers also put out as one side of a 7” on their Kreep imprint), the second half, entitled ‘Les Femmes Vampires, had a little bit more money behind it and thus featured specially commissioned music from Tusques. The working title of this second act though was apparently ‘La Reine Des Vampires’, and Tusques seems to prefer that name (or perhaps wants to use it to differentiate his music from its use in the film?), so et voila, the title of this LP. To further confuse matters, Rollin also reused some of the music, without Tusques’ permission, in his second film, ‘Le Vampire Nue’ (1970), but… well let’s not get too bogged down in all that, eh, since we’re here to discuss the music itself?

And verily, it is music that is well worth discussing, functioning very well as a standalone release that often sounds entirely unlike anything intended to score a horror film. Though far from a household name (unless you live in a REALLY hip household, I suppose), Francois Tusques was and is quite a big figure in the sphere of European jazz and free improv, with a CV that includes oft-mentioned collaborations with such luminaries as Don Cherry and Archie Shepp, suggesting that our man was a regular on the welcoming committees whenever America’s finest undertook one of their “fuck this, I’m going to Europe” relocation plans during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Tusques recently played a solo piano gig at London’s Café Oto, priced at £15 a ticket on the door, so for those in the know, he’s far from an unknown, that’s what I’m sayin’. And, outside of ‘the know’ as I may be in this particular instance, I can only assume that the music on this LP represents an important addition of his legacy, irrespective of its cinematic connections.

As far removed as much of it may be from anyone’s idea of a ‘horror score’ however, neither is ‘Le Reine Des Vampires’ a feast of the kind of honking, free jazz blowouts that the big names on Tusques’ resume might lead one to expect. As to what it IS, with these possibilities removed, well… I’m not sure where you might best file it really, but it certainly makes for engaging listening.

At a blind-taste-test guess, you could maybe say that it most closely resembles the kind of high-minded Free Improv that European jazz would involve into during the ‘70s and ‘80s, but it is slightly more “lyrical” and conventionally musical, less technique-heavy, than much of that music tends to be, despite the presence of a great deal of abrasive, skittering and clattering hoo-hah. In part it even occasionally reminds me of the bass and string playing on some of Albert Ayler’s recordings, if you can imagine such a thing existing in isolation from both sax and drums.

In the main then, this is largely string-based music, alternately doleful and impatiently energised, that seems to distantly grasp at the ghosts of melody and composition, but otherwise has broken away entirely from notions of classical scoring, leaving a weight of absence and uncertainty in its wake – like some insane string quartet in an darkened theatre, fumbling blindly into the unknown.

The origin of this unusual feeling lies in the unconventional methods Tusques used to put this music together, as outlined in the sleevenotes to the FK release. Apparently, his first step was to record a series of piano themes he had composed for the film. He then played these themes back to his musicians - Barney Wilen (tenor sax), Eddie Gaumont (violin), Jean-François Jenny-Clark & Bernard Guerin (basses) - via headphones, and had them improvise over the top whilst the tapes rolled. He then presented these recordings to Rollin (and by extension, to the world) WITHOUT the initial piano tracks, lending the remaining music a unique sense of emptiness and uncertainty, with the central structure around which the other musicians were building rendered invisible.

As a result, I suppose you could even question Tusques’ authorship of this record, given that neither his compositions nor his playing eventually appear on it, but maybe that’s a dilemma best left to music theory students with a lot of time on their hands; the ‘Le Reine Des Vampires’ pieces very much feel like music driven by a sort of unseen guiding hand, and in this capacity I’m more than happy to give Tusques his due.

The complete lack of drums or percussion, usually an essential inclusion on even the most far-out examples of jazz and improv from this period, further emphasizes the music’s sense of absence and otherness, leaving brief patches of silence scattered throughout. The overall impression is that of a figure dancing with an invisible partner (a Rollin-esque image if ever there was one), rising and falling with a strange, mad kind of theatricality at the whim of an invisible, unheard beat.

Deep cello-like tones and mournful, muted horn reminds me a bit of Mile Davis’s classic soundtrack to Louis Malle’s ‘Ascenseur Pour l'Échafaud’, and in particular, I wouldn’t be surprised if Miles in this mode was a big reference point for Wilen on the sax, as he repeatedly launches into these conventionally beautiful passages of moody reflection that are largely responsible for lending the music it’s more ‘lyrical’/melodic flavour. By contrast, Gaumont on the violin keeps knocking out these snatches of sorta jagged, Eastern European flavoured almost folk-ish kind of themes that add a great uneasiness to proceedings, meaning that, if I had to guess what kind of a horror movie this music belonged to, I’d probably be more apt to imagine some ‘Repulsion’-esque Polanski sort of business.

The unused and rejected themes on side two of the LP are particularly good in this regard, less tetchy and scratchy than those on the A, and more inclined toward extended work-outs of pure atmosphere. Church-like reverb and slight variations in volume are used by the musicians to send tones careening off through space, and, despite the sudden shocks, unsignposted left turns and collapses into nothingness that inevitably characterise this sort of improv, the music’s consistent abrasiveness after a while becomes quite comforting; for such a wild and avant project, it makes for surprisingly good ‘relaxing in the evening with a whisky’ type music. Muchly recommended, if this all sounds even remotely like your cup of… something a bit stronger than tea.

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Labels: album reviews, Finders Keepers, Francois Tusques, soundtracks