[ aquarius records — Soundtracks ]

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What with all these Bollywood soundtrack compilations coming out it's about time that there was a disc that features the work of one of the all time greats in the genre. Asha Bhosle is, as stated in the liner notes, the "indisputed Queen of Bollywood." With

RealAudio clip: In Aankhon Ki Masti
RealAudio clip: O Mera Sona
RealAudio clip: Lekar Ham Diwana Dil

Those surviving Sun City Girls are always up to something. Travelling the world, probably. But also releasing stuff. Alan Bishop regularly wows us with amazing field recordings on his Sublime Frequencies label. In the case of "Sir" Richard Bishop we tend to expect his usual guitar improv ragadelica. But what about... a motion picture!?! That's what we have here, a dvd disc containing director SRB's half hour EPIC cinematic bad trip entitled God Damn Religion. It's a colorful, kaleidoscopic, sometimes stroboscopic collage of imagery drawn from the darker side of the human religious experience from around the world, ancient and modern, western and "primitive"... Pretty intense stuff. Frightening, frenzied. An overwhelming procession of sex and violence, hellish tortures and ribald pleasures. Demons and devils. Multilimbed Hindu gods and fallen Christian angels. Suffering sinners. Savage rites. All these gratuitous graphics crammed together like a flip book succession of details from Sun City Girls album covers. A segment (one of many) devoted to depictions of leering, long-tongued devils in the European tradition is followed by footage from a shrine of overgrown sculptural phalluses in Bangkok... Elsewhere SRB drops in scenes of witches and devils cavorting taken from the '20s silent film Haxan, as well as examples of "Buddhist torture paintings" he photographed in Southeast Asia. We'd guess, rated R. Definitely not for kids, epileptics, or the impressionably Christian. The rest of us should find it quite fascinating, maybe even hypnotic. Maybe you'd even GET religion after being exposed to this, though presumably the idea is to make you sick of it. It's certainly a psychedelic visual experience, like a rapid fire glimpse into the Sun City Girls' graphic archives, and is excellently edited. The soundtrack music by SRB is of course an effective component too... And in fact as a bonus, the first edition of this dvd comes with an extra disc, a cd version of the previously vinyl-only 2006 SRB album Elektronika Demonika, which is as scary as it sounds, four long tracks of claustrophobic ethno-industrial rhythmic, droney weirdness!! Pretty trippy, a funhouse flying saucer of a noisefest that itself would likely twist your mind even without the disturbing, sexually and demonically-charged visuals that it accompanies as a portion of the soundtrack to the God Damn Religion dvd...

MPEG stream: track 1
MPEG stream: track 3

Can Bjork do no wrong? Well, her record label certainly can, by making $19 the suggested list price for this new 35 minute long (mini) album! Fortunately we're able to offer it for a little less, although our suppliers will probably jack up the price once our initial supply runs out... However, Bjork (and past Bjork collaborator, producer Mark Bell) have come up with a nice little disc here, the soundtrack (or at least, songs from soundtrack) to the eagerly awaited 'round these parts, Cannes film festival award-winning, Bjork-starring film by Lars Von Trier. It's certainly very "soundtracky" at first listen, super orchestral and all, but there's some very interesting technoish weirdness to be found here too. It seems that Bjork and co. have been listening to the the Raster school of clicks and cuts electronica (along with the Art of Noise and, Jim thinks, Gilbert & Sullivan). "Surface noise" crackle (a la Pole and, well, Portishead) and crinkly rhythm programming mixes nicely with That Voice on the track "Scatterheart". Yes, That Voice. When it comes down to it, even $19 wouldn't be too much to pay to hear this brilliant woman sing. We're hopeless Bjork fans, I guess, but "Selmasongs" is, as we expected, a joy, even if it isn't another "Homogenic". Can't wait for a real full-length Bjork album tho, one where she's free from the distractions of acting in a movie and constrained by cinematic convention / directorial needs. ...Oh, and we should mention that she duets with a few folks on this disc, among them Catherine Deneuve and Radiohead's Thom Yorke.

If the more esoteric and abstract moments of Bjork's last full length Medulla tickled your fancy, you'll surely discover much to love on her new cd of film music for Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. It's a series of eleven instrumental and vocal interludes that definitely bear the mark of Ms Gudmundsdottir. Alternately austere and elaborate, and steeped in the sounds and influences of Japan (particularly Noh theater). That is, with the exception of one rather insistent horn segment titled "Hunter Vessel" which surfaces midway through the proceedings. Performers include Zeena Parkins, Will Oldham, Akira Rabelais, Mayumi Miyata, Leila, Shiro Nomura, Tagaq, Mark Bell, among many others. Unfortunately not having seen the film, we can't comment on how they relate or interact with the visuals, but we can say that when taken solely an aural experience, it's mighty captivating.

MPEG stream: Gratitude
MPEG stream: Hunter Vessel
MPEG stream: Storm

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SORRY. Soul/funk/wah soundtrack to this 1975 blaxploitation flick, reissued on vinyl complete with full size movie poster insert! That by itself may be the reason to get this. It's a pretty insane painting -- Black Power Nazis??! ...However we haven't cracked one open yet so 1) we can't vouch for the quality of the music and 2) we can't guarantee that their definition of "full size poster" is what you and I think it is... let's hope so!

We'd heard how awesome the soundtrack to this film was for years, so we were so psyched to discover that Soundway was finally giving it a proper reissue. The film was directed by one of Nigeria's most respected directors, Ola Balogun, and was shot on location in Brazil. Balogun recruited the musical mastermind and fellow Nigerian, Remi Kabaka, to score and produce the soundtrack to the film. Kabaka has played with a wide range of folks including Ginger Baker, Hugh Masekela, Paul Simon, and Paul McCartney, and for the soundtrack rounded up some of Nigeria's finest players and crafted a collection of songs filled with such a unique and left-of-center Afro-jazz sound. There's something so raw and mysterious about these tracks evoking all manner of sweat and suspense. We're totally feeling this, late summer, slow burner for sure!

MPEG stream: Brothers + Sisters
MPEG stream: Black Goddess
MPEG stream: The Warrior

The latest from longtime aQ faves Black To Comm is a bit of a departure, a soundtrack for a Singaporean silent film (one that has been soundtracked by other artists in the past, including Oren Ambarchi among others), which was apparently recorded while Marc Richter, aka Black To Comm, was under sedation and on heavy pain killers recovering from an injury, which seemed appropriate considering the film itself was about slowness and decay, sleep and death, and while we have yet to see the film, the music on its own is quite striking. A dizzying collage of samples and electronics, singing bowls and singing saw, and some singing too, the result is heady and psychedelic, dark and droney, grim and gristly. The opening track drapes some woozy crooning over a shimmering dronescape laced with wheezing melodies, glitched out electronics and random rhythmic clatter. The follow up track is much more contemplative and spare, softly processed acoustic guitar, gently glitchy, hints of Oval and Ambarchi, swooping backwards effects, a crystalline psychedelic folk, drifting along side more of those hauntingly crooned vox, those vox getting deeper and more dramatic and weirder and weirder. The music seeming to detune alongside. From there, the soundtrack drifts dreamily, delicate piano floats serenely through soft clouds of static, over lush chordal swells, all hazy and crystalline, the vox a dark dreamy croon, a strange sort of almost Caretaker sounding ballad, before expanding into an almost Our Love Will Destroy The World sounding soft cacophony, swirling swaths of tinkling chimes and woozy loops, layered high end shimmer and lush soft focus thrum, the vocals this time drifting way down in the mix, and finally, the score finishes off with a gorgeous bit of druggy cabaret, gauzy and bleary and gently blurred into a softly churning driftscape, rife with strange animal sounds, buried rhythmic pulses, and dark delicate vocalizations, maybe our favorite track of the bunch. Definitely a lot different than past B2C releases in some ways, especially the vocals, which for some here were a dealbreaker, but to most of us, it sounds a bit like Antony from Antony & The Johnsons singing over a strange swirl of dark electronics and abstract psychedelic loopscaping, a gorgeously haunting songsuite of dark electroballads blurred and smeared into something much more abstract and atmospheric, which we are digging quite a bit!

MPEG stream: Stickstoff II
MPEG stream: Water

Arguably the definitive blaxploitation horror film (though William Girdler's Abby from1974 is definitely a close second!), the soundtrack to William Crain's Blacula (1972) finally gets the reissue treatment. Scored by Gene Page who arranged many hits for Barry White as well as being the pop genius behind Syd and Marty Kroft's Puff N'Stuff and The Banana Splits, you know this is gonna be all kinds of cheesy awesomeness! From the disco funk of the opening title "Blacula (The Stalkwalk)" to the pensive creepiness of the finale "Wakeeli (Swahili Farewell)", this is the sordid tale of an 18th century African Prince, cursed and held captive for centuries by Dracula, seeking his revenge on 1970's Los Angeles. Page has all the classic blaxploitation musical cues down: the lilting love theme, the frenetically groovy chase theme, spine-tingling harpsichords and noirish horns. With vocal help from his brother, Billy Page (who sings the sexy/sleazy "Main Chance" which for some reason reminds us of "Dracula The Rock Opera" from Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and The Hues Corporation, years before their hit "Rock The Boat", Blacula is a highly thrilling and amusingly nutty soundtrack, but what else would you possibly expect?

MPEG stream: Firebombs
MPEG stream: Main Chance
MPEG stream: Wakeeli (Swahili Farewell)

Another underrated early seventies British horror soundtrack is brought back to life by Trunk Records, and this one is a doozy. Pastoral and creepily menacing, Marc Wilkinson's score for this 1971 Piers Haggard film is like a lost companion to The Wicker Man soundtrack or Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Features the unusual instrumentation of the Ondes Martenot, one of the first electronic instruments, which provides the fiendish swoops and off-kilter tonal colors and the Cimbalom, an eastern European piano type instrument that's played with mallets providing the spine-tingling creep. The liner notes mention that the descending chromatic scale which features throughout the score omits the perfect fifth and therefore highlights the diminished fifth also known as the Devil's Interval! Truly spooky, and the gothic pics of ritual blood and female nudity make us all dying to see this film re-released. Obscure horror is what Trunk Records does best!!

MPEG stream: Fiend Discovered and Titles
MPEG stream: Rosalind's Madness
MPEG stream: Kathy's Rape and Death

MPEG stream: Born To Be Wild
MPEG stream: When I Buy My Wife
MPEG stream: Siki, Siki Baba

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SORRY. Boris fans are definitely obsessive, most wanting to collect anything and everything the band puts out, whether it's the same record with different artwork, or a limited single, or the same record with 9 minutes of extra music or a different record with the same cover or whatever. The band don't really help matters much, wholeheartedly playing into this, releasing records in ridiculously limited versions and multiple versions, with different artwork or bonus tracks or both. But this new record Mabuta No Ura has definitely pushed all this multiple version collecting about as far as it can go. More on that at the end of the review -- and we definitely suggest you read that stuff before you buy! But hey, let's talk about the record. A soundtrack to a film entitled Mabuta No Ura, this is Boris at their most abstract, maybe even at their least heavy, but Boris has yet to disappoint, and they don't here. Although depending on your personal favorite style of Boris, whether it be the slow sludgy dirges, the minimal drones or the all out super distorted RAWK, you might have to readjust your thinking to get into Mabuta No Ura. There's only one actually 'heavy track', and some of you may already have it, or at least a version of it, as the track in question, "A Bao A Qu" was released as a super limited picture disc 7" not too long ago. "A Bao A Qu" finds Boris churning through a sludgy slab of crushing psych rock, the way only they seem to do it. The rest of Mabuta No Ura finds the band exploring much more contemplative moods, constructing simple, dreamy passages of finger picked guitar, and warm swells of moody ambience. Sometimes sounding a bit like Low, sometimes a little like Slint, the theme here overall does seem to be a brooding slow building post rock. There are variations of course, Eastern sounding melodies, hazy chanted vocals, shimmering washes of cymbal sizzle, tribal rhythms, hand claps, plaintive vocalising, stretches of Sunroof!-like free-noise ambience, blown out krautrock rhythms, but it all sort of hovers around that post rock sound we love so much, dark and moody and smoldering, occasionally bursting with dynamics, but more often than not chugging along all melancholy and contemplatively propulsive. Hard to imagine what sort of film Mabuta No Ura must be, but the songs and sounds here are quite evocative, and let our imaginations conjure up the appropriate images to go with these sumptuous sounds. Packaged in a gorgeous chipboard slipcover die cut sleeve, with a dozen cd sized photos, presumable from the film, with stories printed on the other sides, unfortunately all in Japanese. So here's the complicated stuff. There are FOUR versions of this record. All of them slightly different. This is the Japanese cd version. comes in a chipboard diecut sleeve and is NOT limited. In the next week or so we will be getting the vinyl version, which comes with a dozen 12x12 photo prints and IS limited. Only 500 were made and we're getting about a fifth of those, but as with all things Boris they will not last long. So if you want one, best to preorder it now. There will be another cd version, released by the Brazilian label Essence, and there will be two versions of that. A super deluxe boxed version, and a regular digipak version. The deluxe version is super limited. Only 120 copies made. We're getting half. Those will all be spoken for by the time we get them, so if you want one of those, pre-order it now. The regular Brazilian version is the same as the deluxe version just with less packaging. And is not limited. Confused yet? Well, stick with us just a little bit longer. The Brazilian version has more music than the Japanese version. BUT, the Japanese version has music NOT on the Brazilian version. Okay. So if you just want to make sure you have ALL the music, you need both the Japanese version AND the Brazilian version. And since the Japanese cd and the Brazilian regular cd are not limited, you can easily pick up both. The lp and the deluxe version are just for those of you who need the fancy versions or feel compelled to collect them all. Finally, the Brazilian cd version won't be out until end of August or thereabouts, so orders WILL NOT be held for those! If you want both, we'll send you the Japanese cd now (lp when we get them) and the Brazilian version when they show up in a month or so. Phew!

MPEG stream: A Bao A Qu
MPEG stream: The Slow Ripple Of A Puddle
MPEG stream: It Touches

"Don't You Forget About Me"

Wow, this band keeps on evolving in wonderful ways! British Sea Power's latest musical outing is a soundtrack for the classic 1934 documentary Man Of Aran by explorer / filmmaker Robert Flaherty. Somberly foreboding, these mostly instrumental passages could easily seem like they were torn from the dramatically atmospheric books of Godspeed You Black Emperor! There are some really gorgeous, gloomily grey stretches that balance cloudy drones with delicate melodies played out on guitar, piano and strings. Nice. The rock band in British Sea Power only really surfaces a few times ever so fleetingly - midway through the proceedings on "Boy Vertiginous", then on the rugged number "Spearing The Sunfish", and on the finale "No Man Is An Archipelago" - but it fits effectively and doesn't seem incongruous. An added bonus: the cd is accompanied by a dvd that features the film with its new score!

MPEG stream: Woman Of Aran
MPEG stream: Spearing The Sunfish

It's been two long years since Broadcast singer Trish Keegan's tragic untimely passing, and we're finally getting to hear some of the material the band was working on before she died. There have long been rumors of a posthumous Broadcast record proper to someday be released, but until that album is ready, we have this soundtrack to a British psychological thriller called Berberian Sound Studio to keep us company. Unlike Broadcast's previous album with the Focus Group, Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age, which played like an imaginary soundtrack for the most incredible horror movie never made, Berberian Sound Studio comes across like a proper soundtrack that follows a visual plot, with repeating themes in various moods that are lilting, atmospheric and tense, but also including creepy foley sound effects of bloodcurdling screams, sinister prayers, as well as short haunting library music cues. The film, about a British sound engineer's devolving mental state while working on a giallo-like exploitation film in the mid '70s at Italy's famed Berberian Sound Studio, harkens back to the days of heralded Italian movie composers Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai working on films by Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Originally conceived as the soundtrack for the film within the film, called The Equestrian Vortex, director Peter Strickland soon decided to use Broadcast's music cues to underscore what was happening outside of the interior film as well, so that there is a lovely blurring of reality and fantasy, intensified by the various sonic cues included from the film that overall make this soundtrack stand up on its own. Of course adding to the haunting quality of the music is the ghostly but minimal presence of the late Keegan's voice, that appears mostly in near background like famed Morricone singer, Edda Dell'Orso, in lilting sing-song and wordless choruses. The question remains unanswered if that is her voice heard praying or screaming. Coincidentally, we've recently become obsessed with a similar sounding soundtrack by Polish composer Andrzej Korzynski for the eighties cult horror film, Possession (something, we are hopefully going to be able to list one of these days!) and the two have been interweaving a strange musically cinematic and terrifying spell throughout the store. Highly Recommended!

MPEG stream: The Equestrian Vortex
MPEG stream: The North Downs eDimension
MPEG stream: Teresa, Lark of Ascension
MPEG stream: Found Scalded, Found Drowned
MPEG stream: The Sacred Marriage

This new Jim Jarmusch film and its soundtrack will undoubtably do for Mulatu Astatke and the Ethiopiques compilation series (as well as Ethiopian music in general) what Ghost World did for Mohammed Rafi (and Bollywood film music soundtracks in general), that is, expose it to a broader audience. Although the music's inclusion in the film itself seems rather incongruously stuck on and hipster-point-seeking, it is pretty great to hear this music outside the confines of underground circles. Just the other day, while we were playing a volume of Ethiopiques, a customer said to his friend, "Oh this is the music from that Bill Murray movie." Of course, it's soooo much more than that, but if you've had your interest piqued by the film's soundtrack by all means you'll wanna nab this soundtrack. From there, we'd highly recommend heading directly for Ethiopiques Volume 4 (a particular AQ favorite!). Groovy, sultry, funky and soooo awesome! The ultra eclectic soundtrack also features The Greenhornes with Holly Golightly, The Tennors, Marvin Gaye, Oxford Camerata, Brian Jonestown Massacre, plus other AQ faves Dengue Fever and Sleep!

MPEG stream: Yegelle Tezeta
MPEG stream: Ethanopium

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SORRY.

Jon Brumit's last audio outing was a a sonic tour through the city dump, a dark delirious soundscape of found sounds, rickety malfunctioning equipment, all manner of scratched records and discarded tape decks, broken down computers, all cleverly and gorgeously woven together into one of the coolest weirdest records we've heard. On Vendetta Retreat, the soundtrack to a yet to be released film, Brumit seems to have honed those already impressive organizational and compostitional skills, resulting in a record that had both Allan and Andee running to the front of the store to see what the heck was playing. In fact everytime we play this in the store everyone wants to know what we're playing as well. Vendetta Retreat starts off as a super minimal slab of "skipping cd" style plunderphonia, a super intense and spare soundscape of ultra brief fragments of found record, bursts of electric guitar, the briefest snatch of a vocal line, tiny frgaments of record crackle -- not sure if Brumit's sound source is still the junkyard, but it definitely sounds like maybe it is. These sparse musical fragments create a strange disembodied melody, jagged and compellingly imprecise. Eventually, the empty space behind these bursts and shards fills up with a darkly propulsive electronic framework, minimal and murky, a distant framework for the Brumit's strange Jeck-style broken turntable workout. The second track takes the rough edit sound collage of the first track and fills it out with wild octopoidal tribal drumming, massive swells of cymbal sizzle and percussive bombast and wave after wave of layered drones, guitars thick with distortion and other effects, hiccupping loops buried beneath, barely audible, adding more texture than anything else, a huge swirl of rumble and whir like a noisier more abstract Growing, or Finnish hypnorockers Circle at their most unhinged and densely ambient. The final track is the logical extension of the track before, taking a dense swath of droney dirge as its fundamental loop, a repeating hypntotic stuttering krautrocky groove, that goes on and on and on (and if we had our way would keep going on and on forever). Imagine your favorite Circle record or some classic Faust track, with a scratch right in the middle, so it skips repeatedly, an unintentional loop, the perfect pulsing hypno riff, the best chunk of hazy repetitive riffing you can imagine, then over the top drape bits of gentle guitar filligree and clouds of disembodied notes. So amazing. One of those tracks that need never stop, we'd be happy to just drift off and bliss out until the end of time. The track evenutally falls apart, the riffs fade and dissipate, the jagged bursts of sound fragments return, this time even more strangely obtrusive, and wreathed in dense halos of echo and delay that send those shards reverberating into the ether, while underneath, the original minimal groove returns, also a bit more affected and damaged, until the whole thing fragments into its constituent parts before finally blinking out with one final blast of disembodied sound. Wow. Can't wait to see the film. And actually the film will be a compilation of clips and shorts collected over the next year, there's information on how to submit footage inside the cd. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

MPEG stream: Invisible / Hu / Man
MPEG stream: Geography / Nowhere

We all know (or should know) Roy Budd for his amazing score to Michael Caine's classic Get Carter, with its haunting reverbed sitar theme and funky throbbing groove. But among his other 50 or so film scores were the cult classic Diamonds, Charles Bronson's The Stone Killer, and loads of others including a bunch of other awesome Michael Caine movies. This collection, put together by the gent who used to run Strut records, and thus knows his funky jazz from his jazzy funk, is chock full of amazing goodies. The Get Carter theme is included of course, but it's a remixed version as are a couple others, a little more acid jazz with much more dancefloor friendly beats. The rest of the Budd tracks however are left as they were. Practically perfect. Mission Impossible style orchestral stabs, jungle percussion, wah guitars, soaring strings, groovy psychedelic ballads, warm Hammond organs, epic disco-flecked funk workouts, Morricone-ish western motifs, dreamy lounge, wailing diva soul and lots of pure seventies goodness.

MPEG stream: Get Carter - Main Theme
MPEG stream: The Stone Killer - Black Is Beautiful

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Original motion picture soundtrack. This is excellent!

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

Over the years we've fallen crazy in love with lots of compilations highlighting the power and energy and passion of Bollywood music. Collections like Indiavision, Sitar Beat, Bombay Connection, etc all share one common thread: R.D. Burman. Look closely at the credits on the songs on all the great Bollywood compilations and Burman's name is there almost every time. It should come as no surprise really, because if you've watched many Bollywood films made anytime from the early '60s to the mid '90s chances are it was Burman's music you were being swept away by, as his soundtrack work appeared in more then 300 films! His equally prolific wife Asha Bhosle adding her dazzling voice to many of his songs as well as her sister Lata Mangeshkar on some tracks as well. We're so happy there is finally a domestic collection of Burman's amazing music. Instead of being teased with single songs here and there on various compilations, now we have two whole discs worth of his forward thinking yet totally romantic and enchanting sounds. While Burman passed away over a decade ago he finally seems to be getting the respect in this country that he so rightfully deserves. One of the most gifted and prolific musicians and producers of the last half century for sure!

MPEG stream: Mera Naam Hai Shabnam (My Name Is Shabnam)
MPEG stream: Tumne Mujhe Dekha (You Looked At Me)

In the late seventies and early eighties, there were a handful of jungle-sploitation / grindhouse / cannibal / horror / gorefests, that most definitely pushed the boundaries of good taste, with many of them including footage of actual animals being killed, hiring actual tribespeople to play the 'savages', at the time, films like these are reviled, and often banned, and even now, they're difficult to watch, the inherent racism and animal cruelty, but they are also fascinating, twisted, and car-wreck mesmerizing. One of the most (in)famous was of course Roberto Donati's Cannibal Ferox, also known as Make Them Die Slowly, which like most of those films, found unsuspecting folks stumbling into a world of savage cannibals, who would systematically torture, dismember and of course eventually eat the explorers. Total gross out exploitation, that definitely foreshadowed the torture porn so popular today. And like lots of soundtracks of the era, it's a dizzying mix, of noisy, psychedelic, avant grade electronics, brooding, ominous mood music, and cheesy funk. The best tracks here are all swirling synths, fuzzy psychedelic guitars, pounding tribal drums, sounding at times like a more spaced out Goblin, and at others, like something you might hear on Hospital Records, and at others, like some droned out psych-kraut spaciness. We have to say, as much as we were mildly obsessed with this move, and movies like it, we don't at all remember the soundtrack being so cool. Seriously tripped out and experimental, heavy in places, psychedelic all over. It takes a strong stomach to watch the film, but the soundtrack is definitely pretty fantastic all on its own, sans visuals. As always, fantastically packaged, in a heavy full color gatefold jacket, with stunning images from the film inside and out. Also included are handful of unreleased tracks not on the original score, as well an insert with liner notes from various folks involved in the film, which includes some terrifying/harrowing tales of making the movie!

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SORRY. Not only is Wendy Carlos a pioneer of electornic music as we now know & love it. Her transformation from Walter to Wendy led to a new beginning in music making for Carlos. No longer was there just an academic and novelty approached to a new form of music(see "Switched On Bach"), but her music started to take a much more intense and focused eye. Haunting sounds, creepy melodies, something bubbling under the surface. Her work is most heard in film scores she has done over the last few decades..with this, her score for A Clockwork Orange being a seminal moment and a great place to start the voyage into the magical mystery of Wendy Carlos.

One of the most engaging pioneers of electronic music Wendy (formely Walter) Carlos has made some of the most haunting and chilling sounds over the last several decades. The collaboration with filmakers was a very natural progression for Carlos as her sounds so perfectly match the images of equally creative and twisted filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick for whom she scored both The Shining and A Clockwork Orange. This new compilation of her lost scores contains the stunning sounds she crafted for The Shining which never made it to album form before as well as tracks from A Clockwork Orange that were not included on that soundtrack. Dark electronic soundscapes years before labels like Scape or Schematic even existed. The last few tracks are devoted to her score work for several UNICEF films..those don't quite do it for us but wow how much the first 25 tracks from Kubrick's films sure do. Totally creepy and trailblazing.

MPEG stream: Greetings Ghosties
MPEG stream: A Haunted Waltz
MPEG stream: Bumps In The Night

This one's a long time fave! Gene Moore's creepy organ soundtrack of eerily offkey, slowed down carnival music for this low-budget 1962 cult classic by producer/director Herk Hervey set a lot of standards for the use of these sounds in future horror films. According to the liner notes by screenwriter John Clifford, the idea was for the music to take up as much of the soundtrack as possible, in order to save money on having actors read lines! So it's close to being a silent film, with the organ music music actually being integral to the plot of the film, which involves a talented young female organist, um, haunted by her involvement in a car accident. The music perfectly complements the film's striking black & white visual imagery, the hordes of dancing ghouls that increasingly inhabit her waking nightmare world... it's like she's lost in her very own, very goth, Day Of The Dead celebration. This soundtrack reissue consists of 37 tracks over 49 minutes, including some snippets of the film dialog, given titles like "First Trip To The Carnival", "You Can't Live In Isolation", "Church Is Just A Place Of Business", "Dark Entry", etc... 4 of 'em are cues that were actually unused in the film, and all were apparently sourced from slightly scratchy old acetates, which just gives this even more creepy atmosphere.

MPEG stream: Introduction
MPEG stream: Departure
MPEG stream: First Trip To The Carnival
MPEG stream: Church Is Just A Place Of Business

Death Waltz alert! John Carpenter alert! Awesome soundtrack alert! Death Waltz finally gets to this Carpenter soundtrack, at last. And they've put it out on compact disc (in stock and being reviewed now) as well as of course on vinyl, which we're told should be here next week possibly. Heck they even did a cassette version, sadly much too limited for us to get. Assault On Precinct 13, a low budget action thriller from 1976, is one of our favorite Carpenter flicks - and film scores. Like so many soundtracks, this mainly consists of variations on a theme - a pretty damn cool theme, though, simple and effective. You'll probably remember it as soon as you hear it... dah dah de dah dah dum dum duh de dum, sorta sounds like it could have been used as the triumphant theme for some Rocky-like boxing movie, except that it's way too sinister for that. Just a few fat distorted synth notes, over a drum machine driven rhythm. The whole soundtrack is drum machine driven, sometimes nothing BUT drum machine, very atmospheric and "old school", sounding like Schoolly D ought to be rapping over it. Which totally fits in with the "urban jungle" race-riot paranoia of this suspenseful, violent movie, which as you may remember is about an enraged street gang attacking an isolated police station in the ghetto of South Central LA. The plot and vibe were inspired by George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, as well as the western Rio Bravo. Composer/performer Carpenter crafted a taut and minimal synth based score (recorded in just 3 days) that has come to be regarded as a classic. Among the memorable sonic elements found on it are a melodic electric piano motif, and, of course, an ice cream truck jingle, also laid over the usual creepy drum machine tick tick bip bap, for the crucial, shocking scene early in the film involving said ice cream truck. The Death Waltz edition of this previously hard-to-find soundtrack is remastered, boasts excellent new artwork as per DW tradition, and comes with plentiful liner notes in the swank digipack. Now that Death Waltz has done this, clearly the next one up has GOT to be the soundtrack to Walter Hill's The Warriors, are we all agreed? Let's hope!

MPEG stream: Main Title
MPEG stream: Targets / Ice Cream Man On Edge
MPEG stream: Wrong Flavor

The 20th anniversary edition soundtrack. It certainly is pretty damn cool that two of the pioneers of horror films (John Carpeter and Dario Argento) scored their own films. The soundtrack for Halloween is a tense pulsing score of piano and synthesizers that comes off as an evil fusion between Terry Riley and Mike Oldfield. Lots of soundbites from the movie also make their way onto this CD as the remastering of the disc was probably done directly off of a print of the film.

We have VERY few copies of this, so we won't get too in depth. Sadly, as always, it seems, Mondo made way too few of these, so we got as many as we could, which was not nearly enough, so all you soundtrack nerds, grab one while you can, cuz this is a super amazing version of Carpenter's classic score to his 1978 horror classic Halloween. Many arguments can be made as to which of Carpenter's soundtracks are his best, Escape From New York, The Fog, They Live, but few could argue that Halloween is by far his most iconic, if not just for THAT theme, you know the one, that creepy, instantly recognizable, dread inducing refrain, and while that theme pops up all over the score, in different iterations, like all Carpenter soundtracks, there's so much more. Carpenter is a master at evoking fear through simple sonic soundscapery, and never was his mastery more on display than right here. Not sure if this has been on vinyl before, certainly not this expanded 28 track version, and even then, it definitely wasn't this deluxe. A super swank, double lp (pressed on Halloween orange wax), the lps 180 gram vinyl, the records cut at 45rpm as well, all housed in an eye popping heavy gatefold sleeve, the cover art a super creepy close-up of Michael Myers' mask, and if you look closely at the detail, the mouth is actually a painting of the Myers' house, complete with glowing jack-o-lantern, and Myers' shadow. Open it up and the inside gatefold is yet another painting of the house, with Myers carrying a body onto the porch, and flip it over, and there's Myers again, lurking ominously in the darkness amidst the clotheslines. So cool. And again, SO LIMITED. Already out of print, so these are the last copies we'll ever get. Fans of Death Waltz, Waxwork, and Mondo of course, who have been collecting all of these deluxe horror vinyl reissues, will want this one BAD.

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. The super spooky soundtrack to this 1979 horror film, newly reissued, complete with bonus tracks (including a radio interview with star Jamie Lee Curtis done back in the day, that kinda spoils the mood at the end of the disc, but is pretty funny, like when she talks about looking for diversity in the roles she takes: like the difference between her characters in Halloween and The Fog!). Anyway, this is great creepy horror music, similar to Carpenter's classic score to Halloween. If he wasn't already a filmmaker it seems that he could have found success simply as a composer.

This really kind of had to be Record Of The Week. We're darn excited about it, and we're sure as heck not the only ones. John Carpenter, as you probably know, is a director of horror films and sci-fi thrillers, who also composes the soundtracks - suspenseful, powerful, pulsating - for many of his movies (often with collaborator Alan Howarth). We've reviewed reissues of many of our favorites: Halloween, The Fog, Assault On Precinct 13, Escape From New York� classics, all. In recent years, as you probably also are away, there have been many, many, MANY artists who are hugely, obviously, inspired by the film music of John Carpenter. We're talking artists like Zombi, Umberto, The Night Terrors, Majeure, Nightsatan, Steve Moore, Roll The Dice, Zombie Zombie (who did a whole disc of Carpenter covers), Crypt Vapor, and quite a few others. So, in our reviews, we're constantly saying stuff sounds "Carpenter-y", "Carpenter-esque", referring to "John Carpenter worship", and in general using the soundtracks of John Carpenter as a necessary reference point for all these bands who indeed do worship him. (Italian giallo soundtrack greats Goblin, of course, are also another big influence on this crowd, but the synth-ier side of things is especially Carpenter-y.) So it's about time John Carpenter himself got in on the act, and put out an album of his own, of music for the music's sake, not associated with any particular, actual film. Sacred Bones has scooped everybody with this brand new album of non-soundtrack music by John Carpenter. Carpenter recently formed a trio with his son (who is in a rock band) and godson (a film composer) and they jammed in his home studio until they came up with these pieces, freed entirely from the constraints of scoring specific scenes in a film. Instead, YOU provide the mental images� Despite the title, these tracks weren't ever meant for any of his films - it's not like they're from the cutting room floor, or were intended for movies that never got made - although, he could always use some of these themes in something in the future, we suppose. In light of what we said above, you know it's tough for us to review this without quite tautologically saying it sounds very John Carpenter-y!! Which is EXACTLY what we all want it to sound like, obviously. Heavy on the spooky '80s sounding synths, and propulsive chase-sequence grooves. The nine tracks here are each given a simple but evocative title, almost like this is Carpenter's own collection of "library music". There's thumping opener "Vortex", urgent and ominous, haunted by a repeated piano motif, followed by the melodic nightmare romance of "Obsidian", its powerful throb taking on epic proportions. Next, "Fallen" is another suspenseful transmission from the horror-zone. Then, side one (on the vinyl) closer "Domain" takes on some more uplifting qualities, but evokes many moods, propelled by Euro-disco beats and colored by heavy synth and organ flourishes. Powerful stuff, big grooves, stirring melodies, lots of atmosphere, and a bit of that "training montage" vibe we love. And so it goes, the remaining tracks ("Mystery", "Abyss", "Wraith", "Purgatory", "Night") replete with eerie tinkling synths, creepy organ, soaring guitar soloing, minimal percussive skitter, hypnotically repetitive rhythms, thick synth bass, and the miasma of droning electronics. Very, very satisfying; recommended to all fans of Carpenter and his acolytes! While we won't say "accept no imitations" (we LOVE the imitations), it is nice to get the real deal from the maestro. Now if only they'd go on tour... and if SB would reissue the rare record JC made in 1985 with his band The Coupe De Villes, pressed only for friends... Note: there is vinyl of this too, but we didn't get as many copies as we'd ordered, and have already run out - but, we're told a repress is on the way, possibly around the end of March.

MPEG stream: Obsidian
MPEG stream: Domain
MPEG stream: Night

Whew! People were starting to panic 'bout this, cause it seemed that this desirable Death Waltz release was so terrifically limited that none of 'em were gonna make it across the pond from the UK. But thankfully the label relented and pressed some more, so now we have some - but still not very many, so act fast if you want one! And you DO probably want one, 'cause of the many awesome soundtracks that John Carpenter composed for his movies, this is one of the best. The film The Fog itself may or may not be among his best - there's a difference of opinion at aQuarius about that, we'll argue about it offline - but we all agree about the soundtrack. Of course, whether 1979's The Fog is for sure worth the rental if you haven't seen it lately, after all (spoiler alert!) it's got ghost pirates in it (undeniably a cool concept, if perhaps not the scariest idea ever), and Jamie Lee Curtis, and of course the titular fog. Fog is always spooky. But the soundtrack, that's what we really remember from the movie. And it's not actually as typically John Carpenter-y as what we usually mean when we call something John Carpenter-y in our reviews. It doesn't have the groovy '80s disco-synth beats, not so much. Really, it's more of a drone record. Slow and low stuff, y'know. Inspired, no doubt, by fog horns! But played on electronic synthesizers, of course. At times, it's not unlike what what a lot of today's experimental drone artists might come up with - if they were scoring a horror film, that is. Distorted whooshes of sound, ponderous piano plinking, crushing church organ chords, subsonic detonations, ringing electronic pulses forming into slow building, nerve-wracking rhythms... just imagine the best Umberto album ever. This soundtrack has a creepy ambient quality that's really engaging, completely apart from the story or visuals. It's beautifully ominous, and also in a way quite HEAVY. Furthermore, the eerie, melodic main theme, a few notes tinkling in sinister sequence, reprised of course throughout the album, is a classic, up there with our faves from Goblin. By itself it would keep the hairs on the back of our necks up all night. Well we could go on, but we suspect there's no need. Get it while you can, and we apologize in advance if we run out. This Death Waltz version is an expanded edition of the soundtrack (also recently made available in the States as a double cd by the Silva Screen label, which we will list soon too), featuring 33 tracks over four sides of 180 gram gold vinyl, including a large number of cues from the movie not found on earlier versions. Also, of course, course, Death Waltz provides brand new artwork by Dinos Chapman for this release, along with new liner notes by John Carpenter, Dinos Chapman, and Randall D. Larson.

MPEG stream: Theme From The Fog
MPEG stream: Reel 9
MPEG stream: Blake In The Sanctuary

Seems like UK vinyl horror movie soundtrack reissue label Death Waltz is slowly working its way through all the John Carpenter movies (and scores), they've done Escape From New York, Prince Of Darkness, Halloween II, Halloween III, there are so many others we were waiting and hoping they'd get to, but probably none more than this one, THEY LIVE. One of our favorite movies EVER, Carpenter or otherwise. The movie itself is great - pro wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper discovers that aliens are living amongst us, and via subliminal messages, are controlling the humans. The only way to see these aliens is with special sunglasses, which when worn, not only reveal the true faces of the aliens, also reveal that almost every surface is covered with slogans meant to control us and make us meek. That's it in a nutshell, but the movie looks great, the concept is awesome, the special effects too. It also includes one of THEE longest, and thus most uncomfortable fight scenes ever, where Piper fights Keith David, in order to convince him to put on the glasses. There are classic lines galore including the almost Evil Dead worthy "I have come here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." So before we even get to the soundtrack, if you haven't seen They Live, probably best if you go watch it, RIGHT NOW. We'll wait. OK, so besides looking amazing, and being hilarious and scary and over the top, as always Carpenter and his musical partner Alan Howarth have whipped up another stunning score, that perfectly suits the movie, this one a bit bluesier than other Carpenter/Howarth scores, as the two were trying to capture the feel of LA, and of Piper as a down on his luck drifter, the opening (after a TV broadcast from the resistance about the aliens), is all low slung blues creep, a bit twangy, with some woozy harmonica, a little slide guitar, a bit of sax, it's the perfect intro. But then things get classically Carpenter-y, with the creepy synthy "A Message", all drones and haunting minor key melodies, deep chordal throbs, or "The Siege Of Justiceville", which is minimal and skeletal and ominous, with more brooding synths, martial snares, mysterious percussion, there are even a couple melodies that harken back to Carpenter's classic Halloween score. The rest of the score splits the difference between the bluesy swagger of the opening, and the haunting synthiness of the creepier tracks, often mixing the two, like on "Return To Church", "Kidnapped" and "Transient Hotel" which meld the harmonica, and bluesy dirge of the opener with sinister synths and ominous swirling ambience. "Underground" might be the coolest track, with its glitchy noisy opening, its haunting minimal throb, and its tense sonic sprawl. And it was 1988, so closer "Wake Up" is a sorta eighties end credits bluesy synthy funky jam, revisiting the theme of the opening, and creating a template for the warped retro pop of folks like James Ferraro and Ariel Pink. SO GODDAMN GREAT!!! Like all Death Waltz releases, the packaging is over the top, super swank gloss varnish full color covers, with new They Live artwork by Gary Pullin, liner notes from both Pullin and Howarth, and a huge fold out poster of Pullin's new artwork.

MPEG stream: TV Broadcast
MPEG stream: Coming To L.A.
MPEG stream: Return To Church
MPEG stream: Underground

Easily our favorite of the Halloween movies. And oddly enough the only one without Michael Myers. Instead it focuses on a company that makes Halloween masks for children, who have a seriously sinister agenda... if you haven't seen it, we don't want to give too much away, needless to say it really is a classic: atmospheric, super creepy, totally original, and WAY weird. And of course, director John Carpenter along with longtime collaborator Alan Howarth, whipped up what might be one of our favorite Carpenter scores EVER, which is saying a lot. This hard to find soundtrack joins the already amazing lineup of classic horror scores on the Death Waltz vinyl reissue label, and it's a perfect fit. One listen to the main title music, and you'll be sold. That first weird electronic effect, that is constantly surfacing throughout the move, so much so that listening to it while we review this reissue, gave us goosebumps. Creepy buzzing synths, murky rhythmic pulses, disembodied melodies, lush layered textures, sinister chordal swirls, it all sets the mood perfectly, the whole movie oozing with a creeping atmosphere of dread. Carpenter at his best, both as director AND composer. Most of the tracks are variations on the main title theme, with pulsing synths, brooding and rhythmic, all wreathed in ominous drones, in fact much of the soundtrack is drone based, Howarth and Carpenter letting tones drift and slowly decay, before introducing the next melody or texture, and it's incredible effective. And fear not, there's plenty of pounding tense synthscapes, the sort Carpenter is so good at, the chase scenes, even here sans the visuals, will have you compulsively looking over your shoulder. And of course that weird electronic effect that opens the movie pops up again and again, perfectly creeping the listener out. And while the whole soundtrack is pretty incredible, we can't neglect THE SONG, the one you hear constantly throughout the movie, the commercial that plays on TVs all the time, getting the kids psyched up, and counting down the hours to the special horror-thon and giveaway and whatever else Halloween might bring, a maddening jingle that will stick in your head like crazy, and once you've seen the movie, that jingle will sound even more terrifyingly ominous. SO goddamn good. And so utterly recommended. As is the movie. If you haven't seen it, well it IS almost Halloween... Like all Death Waltz releases, super fancy packaging, this one in a glossy full color jacket, with a full color rendering of a TV screen, which of course plays such a big part in the plot, not to mention a logo for the mask company. Notes from the composer on the back of the jacket, the inside sleeve featuring extensive liner notes AND a beautiful poster of the cover art.

MPEG stream: Main Title
MPEG stream: Halloween Montage
MPEG stream: Chariots Of Pumpkins
MPEG stream: Robots At The Factory
MPEG stream: I Do Love A Good Joke
MPEG stream: Halloween Close/Open

We highlighted the vinyl last time, and now it's available on cd too! It's funny to think that if you could somehow remove someone you probably have never heard of from existence how remarkably changed things would be. Case in point, British electronic composer and inventor Tristram Cary, considered by some "the father of electronic music" who gets this loving and long overdue retrospective treatment from Trunk Records (hopefully it's the first of many). Perhaps not as well known as Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, or John Baker, Cary made an indelible mark on modern music, not just for his soundtracks to such Hammer classics as Quartermass and The Pit, and his sound effects work for the first Dr. Who series, but one of his most important contributions was his role in the creation of EMS (Electronic Music Studios), the UK's first ever synthesizer company. Without their first major products, the VCS 3 synthesizer, the suitcase Synthi[A] and the Delaware, The BBC Radiophonic workshop, Brian Eno and Pink Floyd (just to name a few artists) would have had sounded completely different. Born the third son of novelist Joyce Cary, Tristram Cary learned electronics not through artistic or musical means but as a radar operator in the Royal Navy where he first encountered modern German tape equipment. He soon became interested in working with recorded sound, and after studying composition and learning a few instruments, he started building up his first electronic studio. Subtitled, Works For Film, Television, Exhibition and Sculpture, the pieces included here are mostly from his commissions as an industrial sound designer creating sound pieces for industrial films and sculptural World Expo exhibitions. Highlights include "Divertimento" a piece that Olivetti commissioned for the grand opening of their UK training center in Surrey. Combining the cold sounds of Olivetti's business machines against the warmth of the human voice (represented here by the Ambrosian singers ) and a jazz drummer. "Shapes For Living", a short film about product design, premiered at EXPO 70 and most of the non-instrument sounds were created by enhanced and exaggerated recordings of bad packaging, poor design and users struggling with it. "A Hill, Some Sheep and A Living" was for a 1967 television documentary and features an instrumental ensemble. The final track "Narcissus", features a flute player and two tape recorders that starts off soft and pastoral and ends up all kinds of weirdly terrifying as the flute playing through the recorders gets more layered and processed and sped up. Cary died two years ago and Johnny Trunk had been working with him and Cary's son John on this compilation for a couple of years before, so it's nice that this retrospective highlighting a little known, but highly influential player in the development of British electronic music finally sees the light of day!

MPEG stream: Music For Light (Red /Green/White)
MPEG stream: A Hill, Some Sheep and a Living
MPEG stream: The Curious History of Money
MPEG stream: Divertimento (Start)
MPEG stream: Narcissus

A mind-bending Italian library obscurity gets a nice reissue thanks to Penny Records. Daniela Casa may not be as well known as Ennio Morricone, Egisto Macchi, or Alessandro Alessandroni, but his 1970 concept album Societa Malata (The Sick Society) is one of the strangest psych "soundtracks" we have heard. It begins very dreamy, with hypnotic vibes and woodwinds lulling us into a restless sleep state, where we are introduced to the acid guitar grooves, loping bass rhythms and bongos that seem to anchor the majority of the record as we traverse otherworldly landscapes tinged with paranoia, seduction and uncertainty. Moogy flourishes and hectic rhythms add to the fever dream feel. With piano and echoing metallic percussion highlighting the noirish vibe, but it's not all terror. "Esoda" carries a wondering pastoral vibe, even if it does have a creepy tinge, but not as creepy as a track like "Occultismo" with its chorus of ghostly voices, or the final track, "Dittatura", a beautifully doomed march to destinations unknown. It's a wonder how the Italians can make such beautifully dreamy music that scares the bejeezus out of us, but we're entranced every time! Each record comes with a cd version as well, nice.

MPEG stream: Strade Vuoto
MPEG stream: Fabbrica
MPEG stream: Esoda
MPEG stream: Occultismo
MPEG stream: Dittatura

We hope you've seen Werner Herzog's 3-D documentary film about the incredible 30,000 year old paintings in an equally incredible cave in France, for which is is the soundtrack. If you haven't, well, you should rent it! But it's really too bad if you don't see it in 3-D, unlike a lot of other 3-D movies. For Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, the 3-D isn't so much a gimmick (though Herzog of course has a sense of humor about it) than an important aesthetic choice, rendering the otherworldly, rarely visited underground setting all the more wondrous - and real. Furthermore, the prehistoric paintings that are the subject of the documentary were of course not rendered on flat canvases, but on irregular, rocky, curving cavern walls, and the 3-D helps to capture the sense of movement that the surfaces help give to the ancient artwork. Amazing, magical movie all around, and when we saw it, we certainly noticed the beautiful soundtrack music, thinking, wow, this could almost be something on the Miasmah label, alongside the cinematic soundscapes of Kreng or Jacaszek. Some time later, we discovered that the soundtrack had been released on cd by the European contemporary jazz and classical label Winter & Winter, known for their unique, fancy packaging as well as the musical quality of their releases (one we always stock is their lovely recording of Teodoro Anzellotti's accordion transcriptions of Satie). So, we ordered this in, and have been meaning to review it ever since, but the thing is, it keeps selling out in the store before we get to list it, without a review on our site or tag or anything - people who saw the Herzog's film, just know how gorgeous the soundtrack music is (though in the context of the movie, it's almost trying too hard, and considering that the visuals are so breathtaking!). This week, we managed to get enough extra copies in to finally list it for you. Composed by cellist Ernst Reijseger, a Dutch jazz musician, it's a magnificent, moody modern classical score that conveys the same spiritual sense of wonderment the cave and its contents evoke. With graceful and somber strings, droning church organ, some calm piano, and haunting choirs, it's music that's both delicate and weighty at once. Somehow both grand, and intimate. There are passages of liturgical sounding singing, wordless angelic ahhh ahhh ahhhs of male and female voices raised in harmony; also the recurring spiraling motif of Reijseger's sawing, sublime cello solos, set amidst ambient shimmer... Recorded almost entirely in a church in Holland, this music indeed sounds as if emanating from a large, enclosed, and holy space. And it certainly works apart from the film, as we said, it's nice to have it on its own to appreciate, without the 3-D distractions of Herzog's albino alligators (whoops, sorry, that's a spoiler if you haven't yet seen the film). Seriously, so nice.

MPEG stream: Rockshelter
MPEG stream: Forgotten Dreams #4
MPEG stream: Carbon Date Cello Solo

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

It's been several years now that Warren Ellis from The Dirty Three has been serving double duty as a part of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds but it really hasn't been until this score that the totally distinctive Dirty Three violin stylings of Ellis and Cave's dark brooding presence have totally meshed together to create something so strikingly gorgeous! While Cave's name will probably end up the focus in most people's eyes, the truth is this record is just as much and kind of even more about the sound of Ellis as more then half of the score is instrumental, which is very fine by us. The playing and mood is as good and at times even more grand and gorgeous then recent Dirty Three outings which of course we always adore. When Cave does step to the mic it's the more subtle and creepy and less crooning side of his delivery which for the mood of this record works so perfectly. Can't tell you anything about the film The Proposition but we can tell you the music in it is pretty damn stunning!

MPEG stream: Martha's Dream
MPEG stream: Queenie's Suite

Charm is a gore-tastic low-budget psychological horror film made in the year 2000 by San Francisco underground moviemakers, former AQ-er Sadie Shaw and Sarah Reed (both of The Husbands). Five years later, it's finally available on dvd and cd! The soundtrack covers a wide range of song styles. All are appropriately haunting, though they travel from classic soundtrack stuff to pulsing techno beats to spaced-out melancholia. Some highlights are Tim Green's very classic sounding title theme; Aislers Set's Joy Division-ish rhythm on "Attraction Action Reaction"; Deerhoof's rowdy noise-fest on "Appetite"; Replikants' spacey melancholia of "Memory" sounding a lot like that Ulrich Schnauss we listed a little while back; a weird one from The Need with lots of dog barking and Carol Channingesque vocal magic; Sara Lund and Aaron Beam's appropriately titled "A Lucid Moment" which is a melodically peaceful moment before the Thrones' "The Walk" creeps up at you; Concentrick's technocratic "Dansk Floor"; The Lies' angry rock song, "Wrong Kind Of Flirt"; and again with Tim Green and his classic-film-score "Epilogue". This movie is for fans of lo-budge emotionally-charged gore flims, its soundtrack for fans of, well, awesome soundtracks!

MPEG stream: Main Title Theme
MPEG stream: Attraction Action Reaction
MPEG stream: The Walk

Since 2000 Sylvain Chauveau has been making delicate and minimal musics, composing for dance and film and playing live on bills with the likes of Fennesz and Sigur Ros. But it wasn't until this record that we really took note of his delicate touch, creating soft fragile sounds that perfectly capture solitude and frozen emotion. All the tracks here were originally recorded for two films by Sebastien Betbeder. Strings and piano are the main instruments, played with a perfect restraint that helps create a lush and somber beauty. The music on Nuage has made us think of the clear airy sounds of Jon Luther Adams, the melancholic beauty of Michael Cashmore, the collaborations between Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamato and recent record of the week alumni Erik Enocksson. All very fine company to be in. And such a perfect record for the chill of winter. Sounds that can give our hyperactive minds a moment to simmer and slow down. So nice!

MPEG stream: Fly Like A Horse
MPEG stream: Nuage II
MPEG stream: Andrea's Hands

Hearing this being played in the store, when they didn't know what it was, on several occasions aQ staffers have thought we were listening to some 20th century avant-classical piece, like by some obscure Eastern European atonal academic composer or something, what with its uber-spooky swells of ominous shimmering string drone and sudden attacks of clattering orchestral percussion. Even if you guess it's a soundtrack, it seems like it must be from some cult classic arty Italian suspense film from the '80s. Well it is from the '80s, and it is from a cult classic, but it's not Italian. The dramatic crescendos and atmospheric interludes you'll hear on this are from tracks with titles like "Batteries Included" and "Chucky Kills The Doctor". Because of course this is the soundtrack to Child's Play (1988), the first film in the "Chucky" series of horror movies about a kid's toy, a doll that's been sorcerously possessed by the soul of a serial killer, turning it into an animated, not-that-cute-anymore, pint-sized knife wielding maniac. Whose subsequent reign of terror is accompanied by an appropriately sinister score - full of creepy rumbling, stabbing shards of sound, electronic-sounding treatments, and echoing rhythmic passages, and featuring a suitably eerie, melodic main theme. Who knew the Child's Play soundtrack was this good? And, even better, this limited edition & now discontinued La-La-Land release - which we have for a special sale price while they last - includes 3 bonus tracks, including one that wasn't used in the film itself but is practically worth the price of admission here, "The Chucky Song". As with most horror flicks, there's an element of humor to Child's Play - how could there not be? But as we recall, this first Chucky film was actually pretty scary. And the soundtrack sure is. What humor you get on this disc comes at the very end, via the "The Chucky Song", featuring jaunty synths, drum machine beats, a children's chorus of playground Double Dutch style jump rope rhymes, and Chucky himself (voiced by '70s outlaw biker blues rock singer Simon Stokes!) singing and rapping about just how bad he is. The track is bizarre and silly and we can't help playing it over and over. Even though this novelty number is completely at odds with the stark, scary vibe of the actual soundtrack (which is why it probably was left out of the movie!) we love it. The rest of the disc, though, makes for good late night listening, but we'd recommend locking your doors... Any fan of John Carpenter, etc. style stuff ought to love this - in fact, we'd suggest that the Death Waltz label ought to look into getting their hands on this to do a deluxe vinyl version one of these days, it would be perfect for them!

MPEG stream: Maggie Gets It / Maggie Out The Window
MPEG stream: El Ride
MPEG stream: Good Night A.H. / Mamma Visits
MPEG stream: The Chucky Song

UK horror soundtrack vinyl reissue label Death Waltz might crank out the releases, but US label Waxwork has steadily been giving DW a run for their horror vinyl money, most recently with the vinyl release of the soundtrack to the 1986 techno-horror-schlock thriller Chopping Mall, and while we can safely say, before this reissue, we didn't remember AT ALL what the soundtrack was like, we can wholeheartedly say we LOVE the movie. For those who somehow missed out on this classic, the plot revolves around a handful of kids who work in a hi-tech shopping mall, who one night stay after hours for a party, only to be trapped when the mall goes into lockdown, and then all hell breaks loose when the futuristic security robots malfunction and become murderous killbots and try to eliminate the kids! Besides being hilarious and ridiculous and over the top, it also features some notable stars, including Barbara Crampton, probably best know to horror nerds from her roles in Re-Animator and From Beyond, as well as Mary Woronov who starred in Eating Raoul (as well as plenty of other horror movies including Silent Night, Bloody Night and Death Race 2000) and was a member of Andy Warhol's Factory and a one time go-go dance for the Velvet Underground, along with frequent Woronov collaborator Paul Bartel, a Roger Corman protege who directed Eating Raoul (and Death Race 2000) and starred in Eating Raoul along side Woronov. Hearing the score again after all these years though brought us right back, cheesy and super eighties sounding, but futuristic and robotic, a sound that had us immediately thinking this could be some lost synth wave obscurity that could get reissued on Medical or Dark Entries, but it's still plenty soundtracky, with some John Carpenter like chase music, some shreddy guitar licks, stuttery drum machines, the vibe tense and claustrophobic, easily conjuring up the image of wild robots hot on your trail, with some tracks getting seriously avant, pulsing and pounding ominously, minimal and tripped out, brooding and psychedelic, with some tracks using primitive sampling to chop up vocals, and create crazy hiccuping melodies, and still other moments, sounding almost like it could be video game music transcribed for analog synth and drum machine. With a lot of these soundtracks, a lot of the appeal is pure nostalgia, and for the film mostly, not the music, but Chuck Cirino's score is pretty amazing, dense and dizzying, and noisy, and wildly chaotic, and is some seriously fantastic listening even removed from the visual. Although this has us really, really wanting to watch Chopping Mall again, which is likely what we're gonna do! Pressed on 180 gram transparent pink vinyl, housed in super heavy, glossy stock, full color jackets, with killer, cool new retro-modern artwork by art collective We Buy Your Kids, and a 12" x 12" full color printed insert, with more artwork, and new liner notes from Cirino and Chopping Mall cowriter Steve Mitchell.

We listed this last time, on the same day we got it, so we thought we'd list it again now after having had some time to give it a few more spins... though really we don't have much more to say - it's Circle, it's great! Here's what we said last time, with a little bit more commentary added in: This new lp with the sibilant all caps title, by our & everybody's fave Finnish hypno-rockers Circle, just showed up at the shop TODAY, and is thus being treated to a fairly brief "first impressions" review so we can get it on the list, not that it really even needs a review cuz heck it's a new Circle lp after all, and one thing about Circle is that they're pretty darn reliable. Their previous record (if we don't count the recent avant-death metal Incarnation album, by the Circle-that-isn't-actually-Circle) was last year's Six Day Run lp, a soundtrack to a documentary by Finnish artist and filmmaker Mika Taanila. This one's also sort of a soundtrack for something by Mika Taanila, but it's a live album, recorded at a museum in Helsinki (the Kiasma Museum Of Contemporary Art), where Taanila was holding an exhibition called Time Machines, a retrospective of his works over the past decade. Circle wrote these songs to perform there, accompanying a film installation of Taanila's, and we get the idea that the visuals have to do with science and technology, experimentation and exploration. Hence, well-respected space rock band Circle makes a good match-up! About the music on SSEENNSSEESS, there are four exclusive (and long) tracks here, two to a side: "Kudos", "Radiant", "Sleepwalker" and "Terminal". Giving it a first spin, and expecting the unexpected as always with Circle, we're happy to hear actually-not-so-unexpected yearning, surging, epic keyboard-laden stuff that's majestic and mostly instrumental (though keyboardist Mika Ratto does contribute some of his operatic glossolalia at key moments), tracks like the 11+ minute "Terminal" reminding us of Circle's Rautatie album. The volume and energy and slashing psych guitar soloing situates this somewhere between the shoegazing and the Stoogesy. Apparently Circle and Taanila are taking this music/film installation on tour, but probably only in Europe, so this lp is the closest our senses will come to experiencing the entirety of SEENNSSEESS, and while getting the full multimedia effect like at the museum would undoubtedly be cool, there's something to be said for being able to spin this again and again at home, as we imagine will we be doing a lot!

MPEG stream: Terminal (live)