Of course we knew this day would come, but still.

So, let’s get straight to the point here – Morricone IS film music, so far as I’m concerned. Even if he didn’t contribute to it all directly, a vast swathe of the cinema I love would sound very different without his influence.

Years before I actually saw any of the Leone films, hearing Morricone’s themes from them pop up on the radio (which they sometimes did in those days) was an event. My Dad (who, like many dads, had a yen for all things cowboy-related) would turn up the volume, and for a few minutes we’d soak it in. The drama, the atmosphere, the wild sounds were just completely intoxicating. They didn’t need any context – as always, Morricone’s music creates its own context. That was almost certainly the first time I stopped to think about music in films, about a kind of musical vocabulary which extended beyond lyrics and pop songs, and about the different ways in which sounds and images can combine to create emotion and excitement. Thirty years later, I’m still thinking about those things.

The medium by which I enjoy the Leone scores has moved over the years from radio, to parental vinyl, to CD, and back to my own vinyl, and during my adult life I’ve of course hovered up all the other Morricone I can find within my price range (which of course still only represents the tiniest fraction of the monolithic range of his total achievement).

From what little I know of Morricone’s beliefs and personality, I think it’s probably safe to say that he would wish to be remembered to the world for his work rather than his biography, so instead of rabbiting on further, I’ll share a swiftly cobbled together mix of fifteen (which could easily be thirty, or one hundred) personal favourite smash hits from his vast catalogue, assembled in no particular order. I’ll keep commentary to a minimum, because otherwise my responses to most of these tracks would just consist of variations on a theme of holy fucking shit.

Though the magic which Nicolai, Dell’Orso, Alessandroni and so many others brought to his recordings cannot be overlooked, Morricone remains a giant – one of the greatest composers and musicians of the 20th century, no questions asked.

For ease of ad-free listening, I’ve compiled these fifteen cuts into a mix on Mixcloud (embed below), but will also go through them one-by-one via Youtube links for those who wish to pick and choose.




1. ‘Titoli’ from ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ (1964)

Here’s where it all began.



2. ‘Il Grande Silenzio (Restless)’ from ‘Il Grande Silenzio’ (1968)



3. “Valmont’s Go-Go Pad” from ‘Danger! Diabolik’ (1968)



4. ‘Svolta Definitiva’ from ‘Violent City’ (1970)



5. ‘La Lucertola’ from ‘A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’ (1971)



6. ‘Guerra E Pace, Pollo E Brace’ from ‘Grazie Zia’ / ‘Come Play With Me’ (1968)



7. ‘Giorno Di Notte’ from ‘A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’ (1971)



8. ‘Magic and Ecstasy’ from ‘Exorcist II: The Heretic’ (1977)



9. Main theme from ‘The Thing’ (1982)



10. ‘Canzone Lontana’ from ‘Il Serpente’ (1973)



11. ‘Fraseggio Senza Struttura’ from ‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’ (1970)



12. ‘Ballabile No. 2’ from ‘La Cosa Buffa’ (1972)



13. ‘Titoli’ from ‘A Sky Full of Stars for a Roof’ (1968)



14. ‘Astratto 3’ from ‘Veruschka’ (1971)



 
15. ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ from ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968)

This theme makes me involuntarily break down in tears each time I hear it. Really, every time, like clockwork. Which has proved quite embarrassing whenever I’ve watched the film in company.

My reaction has nothing to do with any personal/biographical connections, or anything in the film itself (incredible though it is). The sound of the music is just completely overwhelming.

It is simply one of the greatest pieces of music ever recorded, and any classical buffs who want to fight about that are welcome to. Everything that is worth feeling within the human experience, I can hear in this.

R.I.P. Il Maestro.

Labels: bad news, deathblog, Ennio Morricone, Italy, mixcloud, soundtracks

So I knocked out another one of these radio shows last weekend.

Featuring a semi-accidental law & order / crime & punishment theme, this show delves into the extraordinary world of ‘70s Italian crime movie soundtracks. Also featuring big hitters like Slab City, Fealty, Obnox and Melting Hand, alongside such plucky newcomers as The Beatles, John Coltrane and Neil Young.

Being that Mixcloud is a modern thing, when you upload a file they naturally make you pick a “primary tag” from a list of about thirty entirely inappropriate options. I played safe with “OTHER” this time, but I was really tempted to go for “BUSINESS”, such is my confidence that the music herein will assist you in takin’ care of such.

I threw this one together pretty quickly, so as a result a few corrections and clarifications are in order:

1. Due to some confusingly labelled MP3s, I misidentified the title of the Emerald Web track that closes the show. How could I forget that it is actually called CHASING THE SHADOW BEAST?

2. I also forgot to mention that the Obnox album ‘Templo del Sonido’ is out on the Astral Spirits label, who can be visited here.

3. Perhaps most importantly, I should clarify that when I casually referred to actor Maurizio Merli as the “bitch-slapping don of Italian cop movies” at one point, I was not in fact making some horrendously misogynistic comment, but was using the term in it’s urban dictionary defined form to refer to Merli’s endearing habit of slapping (predominantly male) suspects open-handed whilst playing crusading cop characters.

4. Likewise, we should note that Ice-T’s description of the late Barbara Bush is ill-mannered at best, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that to his face. My apologies for any offence caused.

5. I also implied during the show that Sleep’s ‘Dragonaut’ has some connection to cars. Upon closer inspection of the lyrics, this does not seem to be the case. I'd just assumed, y'know, drag = dragsters, drag-racing, etc. I was quite tired. I was wrong.

6. And finally, my apologies too to any Italian speakers for the wide variety of names, titles and phrases I no doubt mangled over the course of these two hours of live-ish radio.

With all that out of the way then, here’s a mixcloud box and full track-list. (Where applicable, I’ve added bandcamp links in brackets for anyone who wishes to buy or investigate further.)



00:00 Lee Hazlewood - The Girl On Death Row
02:36 Slab City - Tu Historia [link]
04:09 Obnox - America in a Blender [link]
07:09 The Bevis Frond - Termination Station Grey [link]
12:16 Blather # 1
17:55 Luis Bacalov - Summertime Killer
21:30 Ice-T - Pulse of the Rhyme / Ya Shoulda Killed Me Last Year
27:30 Aggressive Perfector - Infernal Raids [link]
30:42 Blather # 2
32:45 Guido & Maurizio De Angelis - New Special Squad
36:27 Fealty - Death Penalty [link]
39:28 Obnox - Names (feat. Kisha Nicole Foster & Ngina Payola) [link]
43:30 Melting Hand – Dust [link]
50:43 Blather # 3
53:40 John Coltrane - Compassion
60:00 Warp Transmission - Crash Like Waves [link]
67:24 The Beatles - She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
69:19 Franco Micalizzi / Bulldog - Man Before your Time
73:02 Blather # 4
77:28 Guido & Maurizio De Angelis - Driving All Around
80:22 Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Trans Am
84:28 Sleep - Dragonaut
90:03 Blather # 5
95:18 Guido & Maurizio De Angelis - Goodbye My Friend
99:19 Earthling Society - Super Holy Monk Defeats Black Magic Motherfucker [link]
106:16 Ian Helliwell - Water Gardens [link]
109:41 Blather # 6
114:31 Emerald Web - Chasing The Shadow Beast [link]

(Sneaky MP3 download link.)

Labels: Born Too Late, mixcloud, radio show, soundtracks

If Delia Derbyshire hadn’t existed, someone would have had to invent her, and indeed if someone had to invent a hypothetical masterwork for her fictional alter ego, they couldn’t do much better than this long lost soundtrack, which was originally created to accompany a 1972 short film based around the work of experimental photographer Pamela Bone.

Conjured up out of the ether and pressed to vinyl this year by Trunk Records, this is indeed such a mightily potent relic of mid-century British esoterica that I’d have my doubts as to its authenticity were the sounds contained herein not so singularly bracing that no 21st century cartel of bakelite-fixated retromancers could possibly have willed them into existence.

After a brief spoken introduction from Bone and an unidentified announcer (both perfect RP, of course), proceedings get underway with a perfect marriage between Derbyshire’s carefully wrought take on early DIY electronica and a selection of exquisite tape-crackling field recordings – island winds and crashing waves creating a gentle wind tunnel ambience, as delicately treated ‘natural’ sounds blur into the ‘artificial’ realms of Delia’s faintly malevolent lampshade-scraping drones. Elsewhere, passing seagulls are reverbed until they become alien sonar pulses, whistling past like fireflies. Distant dog barks echo across the water; grasshoppers and flapping moth wings rise to the foreground sounding as close as yr own heartbeat.

Initially an aural equivalent of encountering an inexplicable alien presence whilst walking alone after midnight on a rocky south coast beach under a full moon, the atmosphere is gradually transformed beyond all recognition, until eventually we are faced with visions of unknown, multi-coloured birds calling across a pulsing extraterrestrial swamp – unknown beings squelching and swarming like something out of Brian Aldiss’s ‘Hothouse’. An utterly unearthly sound that proves impossible to pick apart, but that still can’t help but radiate fragments of that unmistakable ‘black & white telly’ radiophonic aesthetic.

Or, alternatively: forget all that, and just imagine sitting down to spot-check a large collection of reel-to-reel nature recordings, shortly after swallowing a powerful hallucinogen.

Like so much of Delia Derbyshire’s work, this stuff is fiercely experimental, incredibly atmospheric, but also singularly lacking in pretension, utilising what we would now probably think of as “ambient” techniques to create an experience that, far from sinking into the background, remains distracting, enthralling and intermittently alarming throughout.

Anyone who has spent quality time lurking in the contours of Delia’s ‘Blue Veils & Golden Sands’ will probably want to jump on this one straight away and sink deep into it’s wordless expanses of unexplored sonic landscape… and well they might. Just watch out for those bloody owl hoots halfway through Side A though - they’ll put the wind up you and no mistake.

Buy from Trunk here.

Labels: best of 2016, comps & reissues, Delia Derbyshire, soundtracks

Watching Jess Franco’s particularly crack-brained 1972 sexploitation cash-in on ‘The Devils’ and ‘Mark of the Devil’ for the first time, most viewers will be especially struck (and likely amused) by post-production supervisor Gerard Kikione’s decision to demolish the film’s almost shaky period setting via the application of masses and masses of pungent psychedelic rock… and lo and behold, all these years later, here it all is on vinyl, lovingly pasted together by Finders Keepers.

Largely pulled from French composer Jean-Bernard Raiteux’s ‘Trafic Pop’ album, the cues used for ‘Les Demons’ pulse with pungent, historically inappropriate jazz-funk beat-downs, alongside eerie piano meanderings, wistfully priggish flute/guitar concoctions, absolutely STINKIN’ fuzz-wah freak-outs and, well, everything that makes the early 1970s the unquestioned high watermark of Western civilisation, basically – all served with a generous side order of witch-finder ranting, witches’ curses, lashing, beating, screaming and, uh… more lashing, beating and screaming.

As was the case with some of Finders Keepers’ Jean Rollin soundtrack releases a few years back, the label’s presentation of the material will no doubt have many serious soundtrack aficionados grinding their teeth to a bloody pulp as a result of audio that seems to have been pulled at least partially from the film print itself, as is clearly signalled by the utterly gratuitous chunks of fruity English dub dialogue and sadistic sound effects liberally scattered throughout. Meanwhile, FK’s apparent decision to rename tracks previously featured on the ‘Trafic Pop’ album to reflect the scenes they soundtrack in the film seems decidedly questionable, and could no doubt raise further consternation from those aforementioned serious soundtrack types, together with much potential confusion for those of a scholarly disposition… but no matter.

For us more casual listeners, it’s lovely to have the chance to enjoy this stuff purely as a long lost Jess Franco OST, packaged and sequenced in entirely the manner it might have been had the great man’s terminally marginal, shadily distributed films proved a hot enough ticket in the early ‘70s to justify the release of their own historically inappropriate Tarantino-esque mass market soundtrack LPs.

Another instant room clearance device, a perfect Halloween party disc, a further chance to convince your neighbours that you’re a heinous pervert, or just another reminder of the singular world of creation that spun around the axis of that sainted sinner Jesus Franco – take it however you wish… but take it!

Buy directly from Finders Keepers here.

Labels: best of 2016, comps & reissues, Finders Keepers, Jean-Bernard Raiteux, library music, soundtracks

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.

Listen & buy from Finders Keepers.

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

If I say to you, ‘Forbidden World’, 1982, one of the bargain basement ‘Alien’ rip-offs produced by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, what’s your first reaction liable to be?

If it's something along the lines of “Yeah, I remember that movie – it had GREAT music!”, then congratulations, you are part of what I imagine must be a very exclusive club. I’m a member too, and, for the purposes of this blog, the conversation would end right there, were it not for the fact that the bloke who runs the Death Waltz record label is also on the club membership roll.

Having hit the zeitgeist right between the eyes over the past few years with their slightly-more-expensive-than-I-can-really-afford deluxe vinyl reissues of classic horror movie soundtracks, Death Waltz presumably now have the capital to allow them to branch out into some more quixotic and interesting ventures within the realm of horrory synth business, and one of first items on their agenda has been to seek out the master tapes for Susan Justin’s unique score to Allan Holzman’s slightly-better-than-you’d-really-expect carnivorous alien quickie, and to slap ‘em onto wax for the very first time. Huzzah.

As members of the aforementioned club will recall, Justin’s music (together with Holzman's direction, but that's not really our concern here) adds a huge dose of class to an otherwise pretty daft venture, but without ever giving the impression that the composer felt herself ‘above’ the material at hand. Basically, this is music that sounds completely at home soundtracking a trashy sci-fi/horror flick, but that also manages to incorporate all sorts of fun elements that sit completely outside the sort of thing you would normally expect to find in such a context.

Justin, needless to say, was not exactly yr average low budget movie composer. Though she also provided music for the 1983 slasher ‘The Final Terror’ and subsequently worked on numerous TV documentaries, her self-description as a “Los Angeles-based New Wave composer/performer” perhaps more accurately reflects her interests at the time this soundtrack was created, working hard as the prime mover behind unknown-to-me synth-rock group Pink Plastic.

This certainly makes sense when cueing up the Main Theme for ‘Forbidden World’, which, taken out of context, could be more in keeping with a stroll through a high tech shopping mall or a utopian display of dazzling, Madonna-esque fashions than a leery, slime-drenched monster flick, with a fist-pounding electro-beat, breathy, wordless vocal echoes and a brash, major key melody all locking in that particular ‘dawn of a new era’ hyper-‘80s feel with just a little bit of homamde murk lurking beneath to keep it real.

After that, the ‘Opening Titles’ music pulls a bit of a bait & switch on us, sounding like a funeral march from a fascistic intergalactic empire, whilst subsequent tracks return to a more fitting world of lurking corridor tension and text-book suspense movie piano motifs, but always with a definite hint of otherness about them – rumbling surface noise drones, beautifully unexpected counter-point melodies and knob-twisting radiophonic oscillator blasts all demanding the attention of attuned ears.

Very much at one with their era, the more experimental outbursts in the middle of side one could easily have found a home on Slava Tsukerman & Brenda Hutchinson’s utterly demented "non-musicians go nuts on a community access synthesizer" soundtrack to ‘Liquid Sky’, a film whose aesthetic of extremist new wave / sci-fi proto-cyberpunk fashion terrorism perhaps more closely resembles Justin’s overall vision here than anything you’d normally associate with a Roger Corman monster movie.

At the end of the first side though, we’re back in business with ‘Mutation’, which proves a total banger - sorta like John Carpenter tooled up with a tricky, middle eastern melody and a squelching, on-the-one shuffle-beat – the perfect accompaniment to zapping stop-motion beasts in yr egg-box coated space station.

Shrieking noise, bubbling ooze, basic piano exercises and dialogue extracts from the movie dominate the first half of side two (ooh, the soundtrack purists won’t be happy about that), whilst the second half plungess us into an abyss of truly impolite mechanoid terror as the shit hits the fan for the movie’s doomed characters, culminating, brilliantly, in a blast of full spectrum noise that sounds like an active electric fan hitting bathwater, and an unearthly space-siren wail fading into oblivion. (The album’s instrument credits mention use of something called a ‘Blaster Waterphone’, which I’m guessing came in handy here.)

Then, a moment of silence brings us back to a triumphant, closing credits reprise of the main theme, crusing through the cosmos on a wave of chopped up, reverbed vocal samples and waving us off with a truly bitchin’ synth-flute solo. Superb.

I don’t know if even in our wildest dreams we could claim “radioactive corridor music” as a legitimate genre, but if you’ll allow me the leeway to do so, Susan Justin’s work here formed a key pillar around which such a style could be retrospectively inaugurated. Recommendations for other examples welcomed, because I’ve sure been jamming the hell out of this one since it appeared in the post last Saturday.

Hopefully a more affordable CD/digital release will be along at some point in the near future for those out there who don’t relish staring at Kimberley Holladay’s rather icky artwork in its full 12” x 12” glory (no disrespect or anything guys, but I think I’ll keep the enclosed giant poster out of sight this time around); so come on in, join the Forbidden World Soundtrack Club: the sauna's lovely and we’ve got plenty of room.

Labels: album reviews, soundtracks, Susan Justin

Pierre Raph –
Jeunes Filles Impudiques 7” EP
(Finders Keepers)

Is this what it’s come to, Stereo Sanctity? Reviewing porn soundtracks?

Um, apparently.

As a teaser for their forthcoming extravaganza of Jean Rollin soundtrack reissues, Finders Keepers here present a 33rpm seven inch disc of music and sounds from 1974’s “Jeunes Filles Impudiques”, aka “Schoolgirl Hitchhikers”, the first of numerous ‘adult films’ made by Rollin under his Michel Gentil pseudonym to help pay the rent and finance his own, more personal films through the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Composer Pierre Raph (who also worked with Rollin on “Requiem for a Vampire”, “Les Demoniaques” and “La Rose de Fer”) provides the music, whilst a lively cast and some English language dubbing artistes provide the, uh, other stuff.

Side A kicks off with “Gilda & Gunshots”, a giddy confection of double-speed rock drumming, distorted whip sound effects (I guess they’re supposed to be the gunshots?) and orgasmic gasps and shrieks, warming up into a startling runaway train prog excursion with the addition of muted trumpet and a sinister, minimal bass line. Play it daily, and let housemates/neighbours know you mean business.

Track two is a forgettable bit of ‘sensual’ renaissance faire guff, but I like how it’s warm and fuzzy and crackly as if it were taped straight off a battered mono film print (which I guess it quite possibly was).

“It’s time for you to know that Jackie and I have, let’s say, a very… intimate relationship, and act unblushingly when we are together”, says the voice of the same woman I’m sure I’ve heard dubbing the female leads in dozens of Euro horror movies at the start of side two. Fair enough. I act unblushingly when I hear the dreamy combination of ‘Sketches of Spain’ horns, owl hoots and an incessantly repeated Hank Marvin-style guitar phrase that follows. Things wrap up with a jolly tune that sounds like the theme from an uncharacteristically light-hearted Spaghetti Western in which bandits probably grin straight to camera and dance with old ladies a lot, and we’re out.

Bravo, Finders Keepers!

And if you like the sounda that, the full soundtrack album for one of my all-time favourite movies “Le Frisson des Vampires”, as performed by forgotten French acid-rock combo Acanthus, is in the shops now, and by my reckoning is more essential than food.

http://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/

Labels: Finders Keepers, singles reviews, soundtracks, weirdness

Pointless Lists Week.

#2: Six movie soundtracks, beyond the obvious ones, that you should, like, totally check out:



1. Danger: Diabolik! (Ennio Morricone)
2. The Shuttered Room (Basil Kirchen)
3. A Lift To The Scaffold (Miles Davis)
4. The Holy Mountain (Don Cherry, et al.)
5. Il Grande Silenzio (Ennio Morricone)
6. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (Nora Orlandi)

Labels: Basil Kirchen, Don Cherry, Ennio Morricone, film, Miles Davis, Pointless Lists Week, soundtracks