Not to be confused with the Trunk Records compilation of Norwegian composer Sven Libaek's film scores that had the same name and cover photo, this Votary Records reissue is the actual full soundtrack to the 1973 Australian undersea nature documentary, Inner Space, from which only four songs were included on that previous Trunk comp. But they were among our favorite tracks on that disc, not only because of their inclusion in Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic, which used the film Inner Space as a referential touchstone, but because they are some of the most alluring and evocative jazz pop scores we have ever heard. A hallmark of what would be called in library music circles as "underwater music", Libaek captures haunting and wondrous melodic scores that carry just the right tone of curiosity, beauty and mystery found in the life of deep ocean waters. Remastered from the original tapes and including some of the best Australian Library musicians, such as John Sangster from the band Tully and an amazing soundtrack composer in his own right. Full of vibes, piano and flutes, Libaek's film score work recalls the best of John Barry, Vince Guaraldi and John Cameron, composer of Kes and Psychomania. 180 gram record in deluxe gatefold with extensive liner notes. Amazing!
Do You like sixties pop-jazz with your underwater nature films? Then you will love this. Norwegian composer, Sven Libaek scored dozens of Australian science and nature films in the sixties and Trunk Records has compiled some of the best examples here. Some of you may be familiar with Libaek's work for Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic, which featured four of Libaek's themes in the score. Full of vibes, piano and strings, Libaek's film score work recalls the best of John Barry, Vince Guaraldi and John Cameron, composer of Kes and Psychomania. Totally Awesome!
The soundtrack reissue campaign of this Australian (by way of Norway) jazz composer keeps rolling along. A few lists back, we reviewed his score for Inner Space, a nature documentary made for television about the Ocean and its inhabitants (notably sharks!), and this week we got another knockout eco-jazz score about the Australian Outback. We have been in love with Libaek ever since the Trunk Records compilation of lost film scores came out a few years ago (now sadly out of print), and his music was also famously included in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic. Now that many of his film scores are seeing proper reissues, including The Set, Libaek's only non-documentary film score, and Ride A Pale Horse, from a film about about Australian Surfing, we'll try to review those as well.
Nature Walkabout opens with a fanfare of horns in a swinging reverie of flutes and drums. Libaek's trademark style is both pastoral and upbeat, mysterious and lighthearted. Comparable to composers such as John Barry, Henry Mancini and Vince Guaraldi, utilizing harmonicas, pianos and vibes in endearing melodies that seem to describe the delicate nuances, both beautiful and dangerous of the wild Australian landscape and the birds, mammals and snakes that inhabit it rather perfectly. Fans of library music, nature scores and cinematic pastoral jazz, take note!
A vinyl reissue of this rare '70s Italian horror movie soundtrack (for cult director Mario Bava's 1977 film "Schock"), composed and performed by a very Goblin-like band called Libra. Fittingly for the murderous, paranormal goings-on of Bava's flick, this album is full of gothic keyboards, eerie wordless vocal choirs, queasy prog-funk synth vamps, and ominous drum-scapes. Libra really rock out on the Schock theme, while elsewhere they deal in creepy electronic ambience. Bands like Libra can make sweet lullabies seem scarier than full-on screams and metal guitars, and yet their spooky piano instrumentals wouldn't be out of place if used as intros for Cradle Of Filth songs. Soundtrack/horror/Goblin fans will be pleased.
None of us were surprised by how good this movie was. After all, we pretty much all love Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tennenbaums, and of course Rushmore. And really none of us should have been surprised by how great this soundtrack is either, since Wes Anderson movies are as much about the music as the movie itself. But somehow the soundtrack was a surprise. For the content as much as the way it was incorporated into the movie. The focus of the soundtrack has to be the gorgeous acoustic numbers by cast member Seu Jorge. There are 5 of them, and they just happen to all be Bowie covers, and are all sung in Portugeuse! I'm not a huge Bowie fan, but the minute we walked out of the theater, I was hoping that the soundtrack would have those tracks, and it did! Warm and languid, melancholy and dreamy, Jorge's tracks are absolutely beautiful, giving those classic rock and roll numbers a totally different nuance. And once you see the movie, those tracks will make even more (non)sense! But that's not all. Classic tracks by the Zombies, Joan Baez, Scott Walker, and the Stooges! The Stooges' "Search And Destroy" has always been one of those songs that makes you want to rumble -- that RIFF! -- and it's put to excellent use in the film! Plus a killer score by Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh. But a discussion of The Life Aquatic would not be complete without a quick digression into "The Cheadle". Not sure how many of you saw Ocean's Eleven, but Don Cheadle played a demolitions expert, with the WORST British accent ever. FOR NO REASON! Responding to every query with "Right guvnuh!" or "Cherrio!" Arghh. So infuriating. WHY WHY WHY? So consequently, pointless and poorly-performed accents are now referred to as "The Cheadle" (others refer to it as "The Kidman"). So in Life Aquatic, Owen Wilson is the one responsible for "The Cheadle", a Southern accent that at best is superfluous, and in execution is thick and impenetrable sometimes, totally non-existent at others. But fear not, that hardly detracts from how great this film is. Owen Wilson is still cute. Bill Murray still rules. The movie is still amazing and funny. And the music is still perfect!
Another amazing lost gem from Trunk records, this time it's the soundtrack to a legendary (so we're told) nature show on the BBC called Life On Earth, from 30 years ago. Obviously we've never seen the show, but the music is magical. Mysterious and haunting, orchestral chamber music that sounds way too dark and haunting and serene to be designed to accompany shots of frogs and seals and tigers and bears, that is unless they're dying or wandering away sadly into the sunset. The music here, composed by Edward Williams is really quite lovely, but is so surprisingly dark, and melancholy, minor key, sad and sometimes otherworldly, almost almost like it would be better suited for an animated Tim Burton movie, but removed from the show, taken on its own, this music is indeed fantastic, yet still sounds like it must have been taken from some old horror film, or Italian giallo.
Lonely coronets, strummed harpsichords, creepy pizzicato melodies, muted hand drums and marimbas, Bernard Hemann-esque strings, fluttery flutes, ominous swells, booming kettle drums, singing violins, bells and chimes, lots of reverbs, clouds of gentle harp melodies, so gorgeous, but definitely has us wanting to see the show, to understand just how this music worked with shots of animals and plants, it makes nature seem quite ominous and malevolent indeed.
The record finishes off with what sounds like an actual clip from the show, whirring drones, distant drums, what sounds like reverbed Theremins, and a deep British voiceover (David Attenborough in fact!) discussing the disappearance of man. Wow.
Cool liner notes too, and photos, including the story of how Johnny Trunk tracked down the composer, and had to also track down Sir Attenborough himself.
Totally recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Death Waltz is fast becoming one of our favorite reissue labels, all vinyl, all horror or suspense movie soundtracks, many of them extremely obscure, some not so much, all lavishly packaged in deluxe jackets with all new artwork, and extensive liner notes. It's almost impossible to resist the urge to collect them all, which is proving to be pretty difficult, considering how many records they're releasing, and the fact that they're a little pricey, but they're worth it, if you've seen/heard any of these, you know it's true. And while they've all been pretty stellar, this one might just be one of our faves.
The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue, aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, is a rad seventies hippie zombie movie about a serious of Manson like murders which are blamed on a hippie couple, when in fact the grisly crimes were committed by a horde of zombies brought back from the dead by a machine that uses radiation to kill insects!!
It's pretty crazy, and while it's been years since we've seen it, we remember being pretty blown away. But what we didn't remember, was how goddamn good, and crazy weird, the soundtrack was. A dizzying array of symphonic arrangements, funky almost disco-y grooves (with some breakbeats to DIE for), creepy operatic vocals, haunting dronescapes, and all manner of crazy 'zombie' vocals. Even separated from the film, the music here remains creepy and cool, fluttering woodwinds drift over a chorus of moans and groans, weird vocalizations meant to be zombies, countered by soaring plaintive female vox, crooning creepy laments, that at once point devolve into maniacal laughter. One of the tracks here is a wicked organ drive groove, heavy on the percussion, with a wild drum solo, the sort of thing we can't imagine hasn't been sampled like crazy. Strings soar, chaotic percussion all over the place, long layered drones, sinister black ambience, and the whole record is peppered with those strange undead vocal growlings and mewlings, the director of the film even contributes some vocals, doing his best crazed zombie. Some of the tracks even have a Perrey & Kingsley vibe, sorta playful and melodic, but the score is never far from another stretch if blackened sinister cinematic ambience. We've been listening to this like crazy, and it's making us want to see the movie again too!
As we mentioned before, super swank packaging, that immediately recognizable Death Waltz blue and black sleeve, with super striking painting on the cover. 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.
Released in 1976, Logan's Run remains one of the coolest and most fantastically stylized sc-fi cult classics EVER. If you haven't seen it, go rent it now, you won't be sorry. It's the tale of a future world that is all about hedonistic pleasure, free love, recreational drug use, routine plastic surgery, random sexual encounters, the only hitch is that when you turn 30, you go through a ceremonial slaughter. Each citizen has a small jewel implanted in the palm of their hand, and when 30 comes it begins to blink. Logan's Run concerns a certain guard, who gleefully hunts down runners, people who decide to try and escape their fate, and drag them back for execution, until he falls in love, and begins to question the system, even moreso when his jewel begins to blink, and thus he decides to run. Outside the city, they discover a ruined Washington D.C. overgrown with plants, a post apocalyptic wasteland, and, well, without giving more away, it's trippy and psychedelic and totally cheesy and over the top. The set design is classic seventies futurism, lots of neon, and crystals, and sparkly clothing, and the holographic entertainment is outrageous and again super cheesy, the ladies are beautiful and are dressed in wild futuristic gowns (Farrah Fawcett plays the plastic surgeon's assistant, and is appropriately seventies hott), and there's a robot that they meet in an ice cave, and okay, if you haven't decided to rent it already, we're not sure what's wrong with you! Needless to say, a tripped out psychedelic vision of the future like this needed a similarly futuristic psychedelic soundtrack, which it did indeed get, courtesy of Jerry Goldsmith, and the whole thing (and then some) is reproduced here. And what with the current craze of sonically worshipping John Carpenter and Goblin and that whole retro-futuristic thing going on, it seemed like the perfect time for people who were maybe not even born at the time to get a load of THIS, which sounds in many ways like what lots of folks know are doing.
Sure it's symphonic, it is a score after all, but there's lots of sci-fi / electronic weirdness, in fact the whole soundtrack starts with a pulsing bit of buzzing synth, before slipping into some soaring strings, but then it's right back to some creepy spaced out ambience, all bleeps and bloops, electronic squiggles and alien melodies, and the whole score sort of slips back and forth, from traditional orchestral score, to avant freaked out psychedelic electronics, often melding the two brilliantly.
"Flameout" is all analog synths, and twisted effects, super cheesy and eighties, but also ominous and mysterious, Theremin like melodies, electronic rhythms, atonal cascades of 8 bit analog crunch. "Fatal Games" begins with some sort of processed electronic rhythm, pulsing, motorik, before strange liquid ambience oozes into the picture, and suddenly it sounds like some sort of lo-fi analog alien electro. And so it goes, strings soar and shimmer, electronics buzz and warble, synths whir and thrum, some tracks are goofy and over the top, others are ominous and intense with wild Bernard Hermann like string stabs, while others are super jagged and atonal and dramatic, and still others are swoonsome and melodic.
Such a great movie, and such a great soundtrack. Released on the same label that gave us The 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T ( a recent Record Of The Week) and the killer Klute / All The Presidents Men soundtrack, which means, like those, the presentation is elaborate, with a huge booklet, rife with amazing liner notes, pictures, production stills, photos, not to mention super detailed notes on each track, describing the track itself, and then what's going on in the movie while said track plays. Wow.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Fans of samurai flicks and film soundtracks from the '70s, today we celebrate! First, we raise a cheer for Daigoro (aka the "Cub" in the title) -- undisputably the most adorable *and* badass tot to ever grace the silver screen. Yay! Then, we take this cd for a spin. It compiles musical selections from each of the six films which comprised the early '70s manga-based Baby Cart samurai movie series. The music is so eclectic that it's easy to think of composers Hideakira Sakurai and Kunihiko Murai as the Japanese counterparts to multifaceted American film score master David Shire (Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, Saturday Night Fever, The Conversation, etc.), but perhaps even more 'out-there'. Their compositions are certainly as wildly varied and unpredictable in style, and often times wildly incongruous with traditional samurai movie soundtracks. That's not all that surprising though because the series itself was truly one of a kind.
Oftentimes the proceedings are so densely packed that it seems like there are multiple (and very different) soundtracks overlapping one another. Frantic fevered measures gives way to dreamlike and hauntingly atmospheric passages. Traditional Japanese instruments such as koto, taiko drums, and shakuhachi stride serenely into a looming storm of synthesizer driven space prog-iness, unbound brassy jazz and orchestral thunder. Like the violent yet honorable swordsmanship, the music's sweeping, mighty gestures are executed with the utmost of control. This attention grabbing aural madness is strangely fitting for the films' striking imagery of too-red bloody fountains splashing across glinting swords, sand and snow covered expanses, claustrophobic tatami rooms, opulent royal courts... you get the picture? So awesome and recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The previously available deluxe double cd with extras version of this fantastic, far-out album is gone, but Arcanum has put out a single disc version featuring just the soundtrack... why they don't keep the 2cd version in print, we don't know, but anyway at least you can still get this. It's the rare soundtrack to cult underground director and Crowley-ite Kenneth Anger's film Lucifer Rising (begun in the mid-'60s, completed in 1980). At one point, Jimmy Page was supposed to do the score, but he bowed out and the music was instead handled by another cult figure, the musical visionary and imprisoned killer Bobby Beausoliel, who composed and performed this spacey psychedelic opus with his Freedom Orchestra (who were all fellow prisoners with Bobby). Beausoliel and co. play electric guitars, Fender Rhodes electric pianos, some synths and bass...there's two drummers, and a trumpet player. The result is a sometimes sinister, sometimes blissful, always beautiful and "cosmic" drifting soundscape. Gurgling old-school electronics blend with propulsive rock drumming, while psychedelic guitar soloing tears across the sunset horizon created by the synths...The combination results in what you might imagine an early '70s Tangerine Dream/Ennio Morricone collaboration might have sounded like! It's indeed a lost classic. And the composer's life story is at least as weird and interesting as the music...
In the late Sixties, Bobby was a rising star in the LA rock-pop scene, hanging with Zappa, the Beach Boys, and Love. But then a drug deal went bad and he was sent to death row for murder, arrested 3 days before the Manson killing spree. Fortunately for him, his sentence was eventually commuted, but he's spent the last 30 years in jail. He's been a model prisoner, pursuing his talents in music and art despite his incarceration, and you'd think that the parole board would have let him out by now (he's been paying his debt to society longer than anybody else has for a similar crime, we're told) but sadly for Bobby, he's got to deal with his association with the notorious Charles Manson. While never a member of Manson's Family (a common misconception), he did play in a band with Manson, and the media hype surrounding anything to do with Manson hasn't helped Bobby's case, as you might imagine! Or at least...that's the way Bobby Beausoleil tells it. But the more one delves into the story of Lucifer Rising, the weirder things get -- for instance, apparently Bobby was supposed to PLAY the role of Lucifer in the original 1966 version of Anger's film, but the two had a falling out and Bobby allegedly stole the footage and buried it in Death Valley! How this jibes with him later writing this soundtrack, we don't know (though this new edition's liner notes shed some more light on these mysteries).
Yet, not being one to simply sit in his cell and rot, Bobby has, as we said, kept quite busy within the clutches of the California Penal system, with the help of his wife starting a label that originally released this (and some other, newer, more New Agey fare) on cd-r. Now in conjunction with Arcanum Entertainment, Beausoliel's Lucifer Rising soundtrack gets a proper (and like we said, at one time, deluxe) compact disc release. Although for obvious reasons Bobby wouldn't probably approve of the use of the word to describe himself and this soundtrack, in the Aquarius Records' musical context it's quite appropriate: Cult!
Original music from the cable TV series of fishing shows. Excellent, minimalist stuff from the leader and saxophonist of the Lounge Lizards. Bonus: 2 "field recordings" of Tom Waits.
The vinyl version on Sacred Bones of this classic David Lynch movie soundtrack is long gone, but now they've put out a new cd version, complete with the bonus tracks from the 7" that came with that vinyl edition. So here's what we said before, more or less...
Before we get to the actual music though, it's probably best to come clean, and admit that the person writing this review (as well as at least a couple other people at aQ) has NEVER actually seen Eraserhead! A travesty we know, not sure how we managed to make it this far without seeing it, we always meant to, and we WILL, especially now that we've gotten an earful of this amazing soundtrack. Much more abstract and noisy, droney and minimal than we expected. The first few minutes, all blurred noise, and rumbling low end, a smeary bit of ambient drift that sounds like Organum or Lustmord. Sinister and a bit harrowing, eventually all sorts of subtle sounds enter the mix, distant calliope melodies, like from a carousel way off in the distance, fog horns, all smeared into the smudged grey thrum that oozes across side one. Eventually, that low end is dialed back, leaving more of that mysterious organ music, this time wreathed in an insectoid hum, like a sky full of crickets, laced with Raster Noton like glitches and clicks, having not seen the movie, but being of course familiar with much of the iconic imagery, these sounds seem like the perfect sonic accompaniment, the score is peppered with strange dialog, and swirling hissy swooshes, sinister swells of blackened thrum, keening feedback, muted into minimal melodies, the sound noisy and industrial, and almost like some weird field recording flecked experimental drone record you might hear on Type or Blackest Rainbow, all wreathed in a sort of otherworldly hazy, which gives the whole thing a creepy, darkly psychedelic vibe.
The "Side 2" track begins with what sounds like a field recording of a couple in bed, creaking springs, rustling covers, which is soon swallowed up by a huge wheezing wall of atonal chords and layered tones, all draped over the sounds of choking, driven by a strange percussive pound. A long stretch of hiss and hum, gives way to haunting church organ, then cavernous rumbles, the whole second half of the soundtrack a wild, noisy chaotic collage of dense drones and crumbling noise, of whirling wind and fractured melodies, lots of buzz and crunch, creak and howl, it sounds less like a soundtrack and more like some lost record by Nurse With Wound, or Psychic TV or Throbbing Gristle. Super rad, and even removed from the visuals, this is a killer slab of lo-fi musique concrete, abstract free form noise and post industrial dronescaping.
The first of the bonus cuts is "In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator Song)", which is some gorgeously creepy organ driven balladry, with woozy falsetto vox and lots of warble and buzz; it sounds a little bit like a dronier, doomier Daniel Johnston. Bonus track number two, unreleased until its appearance on the aforementioned 7", is "Pete's Boogie", which is anything but a boogie, instead it sounds like it oozed right off the soundtrack, all buried organ melodies, hissing shimmer, and wheezing looped rumbles, creepy and haunting and seriously freaky. Which pretty much describes the whole soundtrack, and yeah, we know, the whole movie as well.
This new cd version comes in a handsome gatefold sleeve, and includes a thick booklet too.
We've been trying to get these for ages now, a super deluxe, extravagantly packaged lp+7" reissue of the soundtrack to David Lynch's Eraserhead. They came, and went, and now it's apparently been repressed, but those are going fast too, limited to 1000 copies. We managed to get just ten, and aren't sure our supplier has any more now. So, if you want one, grab one quick before they're gone.
Before we get to the actual music though, it's probably best to come clean, and admit that the person writing this review (as well as at least a couple other people at aQ) has NEVER actually seen Eraserhead! A travesty we know, not sure how we managed to make it this far without seeing it, we always meant to, and we WILL, especially now that we've gotten an earful of this amazing soundtrack. Much more abstract and noisy, droney and minimal than we expected. The first few minutes, all blurred noise, and rumbling low end, a smeary bit of ambient drift that sounds like Organum or Lustmord. Sinister and a bit harrowing, eventually all sorts of subtle sounds enter the mix, distant calliope melodies, like from a carousel way off in the distance, fog horns, all smeared into the smudged grey thrum that oozes across side one. Eventually, that low end is dialed back, leaving more of that mysterious organ music, this time wreathed in an insectoid hum, like a sky full of crickets, laced with Raster Noton like glitches and clicks, having not seen the movie, but being of course familiar with much of the iconic imagery, these sounds seem like the perfect sonic accompaniment, the score is peppered with strange dialog, and swirling hissy swooshes, sinister swells of blackened thrum, keening feedback, muted into minimal melodies, the sound noisy and industrial, and almost like some weird field recording flecked experimental drone record you might hear on Type or Blackest Rainbow, all wreathed in a sort of otherworldly hazy, which gives the whole thing a creepy, darkly psychedelic vibe.
The flipside begins with what sounds like a field recording of a couple in bed, creaking springs, rustling covers, which is soon swallowed up by a huge wheezing wall of atonal chords and layered tones, all draped over the sounds of choking, driven by a strange percussive pound. A long stretch of hiss and hum, gives way to haunting church organ, then cavernous rumbles, the whole second half of the soundtrack a wild, noisy chaotic collage of dense drones and crumbling noise, of whirling wind and fractured melodies, lots of buzz and crunch, creak and howl, it sounds less like a soundtrack and more like some lost record by Nurse With Wound, or Psychic TV or Throbbing Gristle. Super rad, and even removed from the visuals, this is a killer slab of lo-fi musique concrete, abstract free form noise and post industrial dronescaping.
The bonus 7" features "In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator Song)", which is some gorgeously creepy organ driven balladry, with woozy falsetto vox and lots of warble and buzz; it sounds a little bit like a dronier, doomier Daniel Johnston, and there's even a little note on the sleeve about how this specific track came to be. The B-side is a never before release bonus track called "Pete's Boogie", which is anything but a boogie, instead it sounds like it oozed right off the soundtrack, all buried organ melodies, hissing shimmer, and wheezing looped rumbles, creepy and haunting and seriously freaky. Which pretty much describes the whole soundtrack, and yeah, we know, the whole movie as well.
The packaging is totally swank, with a thick black and white gatefold sleeve, the singe to housed in a heavy sleeve, both adorned with images from the film, inside a huge booklet with still more photos, as well as several photographic prints, AND a download code.
Super awesome, and again SUPER LIMITED. This is probably your last chance to snag one of these at a somewhat reasonable price. As they say, buy now, or cry later.
Latest from this hazy psychedelic dreampopper, and a bit of a left turn for sure, as these tracks are original instrumental compositions created as the score to a film, the music here borrowing heavily from classic Indonesian music, as well as incorporating some serious classic free jazz as well, the opening track alone should be enough to convince you that this is not a normal Lynch record. The gamelan rhythms, the moaning horns, the looped cyclical arrangements, the label mentions that all of these elements are woven into Lynch's bedroom psych, and there is in fact a little of that that finds its way into each of these tracks, the production is a bit fuzzy, there's one track with some cool wah wah effects, but the psych element definitely takes a backseat, letting the distinctive rhythms and melancholy melodies drive these songs, they are pretty fantastic, even removed from the visuals, some seriously cool and mysterious, Indonesian influenced free jazz gamelan psychedelia. Nice!
Comes with a download code.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
What was meant to be a limited series, seems to be extended indefinitely, with a new disc on this week's list, and at least two more installments planned. And if anything, they just keep getting better, and more perverted! There's just too much sexy sound to stop now. Longtime readers of the aQ list will no doubt be familiar with the Erotic Oriental Sunshine series of archival releases from Tiliqua Records in Japan (who also released the Joakim Skogsberg, this week's Record Of The Week). Each disc in the series unearths a lost gem from a particular sexy chanteuse, lost examples of a strange, and distinctly Japanese artform, where studio bands would perform groovy tunes, exotica, lounge, new age, jazz, even sometimes sort of Morricone style soundtracks, while a starlet would coo and purr, groan and moan over the top.
Past installments have included sexy action heroine Ike Reiko, Japanese "Play Girl" Kuwabara Yukiko, seventies bondage / S&M queen Naomi Tani (who Mabuki is often compared to), legendary porn actress Taguchi Kumi, sexy Lolita, Petite M'Amie, aka Mari Keiko and the most recent disc (and the only one not out of print), which instead of focusing on a particular starlet, focused on the composer responsible for many of these releases, Masami Kawahara.
But this newest installment returns to the series' original pattern, collecting all the recorded works by a single actress/performer, in this case, S+M / bondage queen Mabuki Junko, who essentially took over when Naomi Tani retired. Mabuki was curvaceous and busty, and a spirited performer, writhing and squirming as she was restrained, tied up, whipped and spanked, finding fame starring in films with titles like All Women Are Whores. Her film career was brief, her musical career even more so, having released a single 7" and a single cassette. The cassette was part of a series called Yoru No Driver, designed for truckers, to keep them company on long lonely all night drives, and were thus sold primarily in gas stations and truck stops. Both are collected here, and both are as weird and wild, freaky and fucked up as all of the other installments. And in its own way, one of the weirder installments.
Playing more like some soap opera on tape, the music is exotic and groovy, somewhere between easy listening and light jazz, but with strange Eastern tinges. The music fading out, to play in the background, while Mabuki and her male 'co-star' deliver their lines. Growing more and more frenzied and feverish, until Mabuki begins to sob, and groan, and squeal, the sound of fabric tearing, the sound of tape being pulled from a roll, the sound of whipping, grunting, breathless grunts and howls, all bathed in reverb, and over a smooth jazzy backdrop.
Other tracks feature fuzzy flute, muted trumpets, string stabs, groovy guitars, some actual singing (most notably on the second track, which was the title song to one of Mabuki's films), steel string guitars, spacey synthesizers, shimmering harps, shuffling snares, what sounds like koto, xylophones, some tracks totally goofy and cheesy, others haunting and ominous, at least one a groovy string soaked disco groove, but most all of them featuring long stretches of soap opera drama, with Mabuki pleading and sobbing tearfully, eventually giving in, and losing herself in some sexy punishment. Weird weird weird, but as always pretty fascinating and of course way recommended for fans of wild and exotic sounds.
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, sexy photos of Mabuki including the cover shot of her gagged with a scarf, and the gatefold phot showing Mabuki in an open robe trussed up with red cords, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese including a biography of Mabuki, and notes on each track. ULTRA LIMITED!!! Like most of the releases in this series, this one is a one time only limited pressing of only 1000 copies, and is already SOLD OUT. There's a good chance once these are gone we will be unable to get more...
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The Omni Recording Corporation has been killing it lately in a string of essential vinyl reissue collaborations with the Australian Roundtable label, focusing on rare library, lounge and private press exotica. We recently listed the Orchestra Peter Thomas Orion 2000 lp of tripped out sci-fi grooves, and this week we have two extremely fine examples of Italian library music from composer Egisto Macchi and his more well known group that included Ennio Morricone, Gruppo D'Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza.
I Futuribili (The Futuristic) was recorded in 1972 for the Gemelli Library and is one of that label's rarest releases. Along with the ritualistic Voix, this is also one of the composer's most essential. Marked by a spacious sound environment and high-relief recording techniques, Macchi takes the listener on a surreal trip of suspenseful strings, big metallic washes, tinkling bells and plaintive electroacoustic atmospherics. Mysterious, and alluring but not necessarily foreboding, these pieces could easily be the soundtrack for a horror or sci-fi film or even a planetary documentary. But what's most interesting about library music composition as opposed to composing a soundtrack is that soundtrack composers compose to the visuals of a director, while in library music, it's the other way around. We're drawn into visualizing the music and creating a larger storyline through the sound design. And while this may sound cold or abstract on paper, Macchi instills a lot of warmth, depth and beauty into these pieces that envelops us in an exquisite sound world, unlike any we've heard in British library music such as DeWolfe or KPM.
Limited to 500 copies, these might be the last we get, so don't snooze!
It's been a while since we've heard from Machinefabriek. Never thought we'd have to type those words. But it's true, after a relentless release schedule, it's been at least a few months since we've heard even a peep from Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek, but as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and we were getting a little overloaded to be honest, too many releases to listen to let alone review.
But listening to this now, we're reminded just why we were all so excited about this group in the first place. Zuydervelt has such a way with sounds, merging the pristine with the gritty and damaged, turning soft subtle shadings into dark crumbling mysteries.
This cd-r collects a handful of scores composed for the International Film Festival in Rotterdam earlier this year, and harkens back to the Machinefabriek of old, back when we first discovered his Marijn record.
Dark and doleful, soft shimmering ambience, smeared with tape hiss and subtle digital distortions, notes and tones drifting over a crystalline landscape of blurred murmur and strange crackles and creaks, everything gauzy and washed out, the sound gradually decaying, chords falling to pieces, a slowly collapsing house of sound, recorded in slow motion, and all the various elements fall to pieces, a gorgeous bit of decasia rendered in deep resonant rumbles and haunting ghostly melodies.
Elsewhere dense squalls of static explode, the shards and fragments drifting to the ground like dead leaves, hailstorms of hiss fill the air with sizzling shimmer, piano notes flutter and flicker like dying stars, thick metallic strings rumble and reveberate, huge cavernous swells sprawl over a field of muted glitch, and the subtle whir of alien machinery, gong like tones ripple lazily through a gauzy moonlit haze, disembodied chords float weightless, the ghosts of songs, the spirits of melodies, allowed to flat freely, affording us just glimpses and overheard whispers. So good.
All we needed really was a little break, and now with fresh ears, we're totally re-smitten by the gorgeous sounds of Machinefabriek.
The bad news though, is that like always, this is crazy crazy limited. So when we run out, it's not entirely likely that we'll be able to get more...
As everyone must know by now, we're huge suckers for Bollywood music. Just when we think we've had enough, another Sitar Funk or Bombay Beat comp comes in and we're madly in love all over again. Even if some of those comps revisit the same songs that were on other comps, we don't seem to mind too much, because there is always some new groove that we haven't been turned on to yet, or in the case of this record, hasn't been re-edited yet.
Madlib's Beat Konducta series has fast become our favorite side-project from this uber-prolific producer. Vols. 1 and 2 were like short unrealized film scores culled from the unlikeliest of musical places such as Van Dyke Parks. On Vols. 3 and 4, Madlib concentrates solely on Indian film music, painstakingly editing and reworking 34 newly unique and beat-heavy nuggets out of what is by now a classic and well-trafficked genre. But our guess is you won't be able to recognize much of the original sources, making it extra fresh listening for fans of Bollywood funk and instrumental hip hop alike.
Recommended!
9 new songs by Aimee Mann, remember her? Til Tuesday? The girl with one long braid coming out of her short new wave do. Since her songs are all over the film Magnolia, this soundtrack is sort of like her new album. Also included, two of the greatest songs ever written: Supertramp's Goodbye Stranger and Logical Song.
Newest release from these mysterious Italian black metallers, who recently have evolved into a more sort of avant industrial experimental outfit, albeit with black tendencies. Much in the way Ulver transformed from grim buzz to moody cinematic ambience, Thee Maldoror Kollective have almost entirely shed their black metal skin, revealing a strange metallic skeleton and a circulatory system of buzz and glitch, beats and samples.�
Only�the most adventurous black metallers will dare tread here, four tracks from the soundtrack to a Spanish movie called Proxima, sounding a bit like Skinny Puppy crossed with Muslimgauze, crunchy grinding beats, glitched out electronics, snippets of Eastern melodies and female vocals, little chunks of skittery breakbeats, haunting stereo ambience, record crackle, and creepy synth melodies, and that's just the first song. Epic and cinematic, haunting and mysterious.�
The other three tracks are just as leftfield, a symphony of beeps and buzzes, snippets of voices, crunchy guitar way down in the mix, processed into sort of industrial grooves, more Skinny beats, shuffling Boards Of Canada style electronica, new wavey synths, moaning mournful strings, tablas, operatic vocals, skipping skittering chopped up loops, exotic tribal percussion... Quite dizzying, an intense immersive listen that definitely leaves us wanting to see whatever crazy film these sounds could possibly be designed to accompany.�
Included at the end are two older tracks, remixed and revamped, not sure what they sounded like before, but they've been modernized and minimalized, the first one sounds like some sort of Chain Reaction heroin house, that builds into some synth Euro Kompakt groove, with swooning synths, and all manner of robotic glitches and bleeps, while the second is super creepy and ambient, all high end shimmer and ominous drones, sort of Hitchcockian and John Carpenterian, with a distant heartbeat like pulse, and disembodied minor key melodies.
Definitely a weird one, no metal to be found here, but still pretty awesome. Fans of later Ulver will definitely dig, as will folks into abstract electronica, weird mood music and creepy soundtracks...
This is the first and second volumes of the soundtrack to the popular television series "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." composed, arranged and conducted by Hugo Montenegro.
Awesome film. Awesome sounds.
In the Rough Guide To Bollywood Legends series. She is a Legend indeed.
Finally available again, the Death Waltz soundtrack to Frank Khalfoun's remake of the 1980 slasher/exploitation classic Maniac! The new version stars Elijah Wood, as the demented owner of a mannequin shop, who scalps women and attaches the purloined hair to his mannequins. The movie itself is interesting for how it was shot, so you never see the main character except in reflections, and you see his hands, via the killer's POV as he does his dirty work. Not nearly as gritty and grimy as the original, it's still pretty intense, and the soundtrack is fantastic. Definitely harkening to the soundtracks of old, John Carpenter of course, each track a mini epic, swirling, soaring synths, dark haunting melodies, pulsing motorik rhythms, shimmering crystalline chords, all blurry and gauzy, and hauntingly harrowing. The single named Rob who did the soundtrack is rumored to be one of the guys from Phoenix, although we couldn't find any definite corroboration. Some tracks, like "Haunted" sound a bit like a creepier, moodier M83 too, but the bulk of the tracks are very cinematic, minor key piano melodies, nestled amidst swirling synthscapes, some are super stripped down, and minimally kosmische, others are sort of new wave-y, very eighties style, as if an homage to the original film/era, and still others are weird assemblages of swirling FX and arpeggiated synth shimmer, all of them are fantastic, including a surprising closer, complete with female vocals, a sort of modern re-envisioning of eighties new wave pop, the sort of song that seemed to play under the credits of pretty much every movie in the eighties.
Definitely one of our favorite of the Death Waltz releases, so much so, that some aQ-ers tracked down copies overseas when the original disappeared and it seemed like maybe no more copies would make it to the US. So grab one while you can.
And like all Death Waltz releases, the packaging is exquisite, the cover a super striking and disturbing shot of mannequin heads (a still from the movie?), pressed on thick vinyl, the sleeve an old school heavy tip-on style jacket, includes a poster and liner notes, including notes from Rob himself. And yeah, as always, very limited as well! (If we thought it would be easy to get more of these, we'd have made it a Record Of The Week, by the way.)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ah, yes it's summertime! Warm sunshine and trips to the beach! And what's more summery than surf music? Lo and behold, our favorite label for obscure and amazing reissues, Japan's EM Records, has a special new series of five, count 'em, five reissues devoted to lost "surf" music treasures. The first two, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, are out now, with the others to follow in short order. We're pretty sure all of 'em are awesome.
And if you're familiar with the eccentricity of this label, you'll know that this "EM Under Water" series isn't going to be about, y'know, "regular" surf music of the Jan & Dean or Ventures variety, nope. These first two releases are both soundtracks to rad '70s surfing movies, and are fully psychedelic, with tripped out grooves, synth experiments, and heavy rock jamming all part of the mix.
This album is the soundtrack to a cult 1974 documentary film entitled Drouyn, that followed champion Australian surfer Peter Drouyn (hmm, depending on how it's pronounced, Drouyn could be a bad name for a surfer!) on a globetrotting quest for the perfect wave, a journey that took him and his surfing pals to a variety of exotic locales -- as far afield as Africa and Japan -- over the course of the two years spent shooting the film. Filmmaker Bob Evans commissioned composer and classical guitarist Peter Finch to do the music, and also Sydney-based hard rockers Finch were brought in on the project as well. These songs and incidental music passages fully capture the lure of sun, sand and sea, as well as the sheer excitement of the wave-riding sport. You get orchestrated pop instrumentals, Eastern ethnic interludes, and even a laidback Beach Boyish cut ("Morning Comes The Sun") with harmony vocals. The contributions from Finch add a dose of fuzzed-out rock and roll energy as well, with their song "Roses" being a kick ass bit of hippy hard rock kitsch with lyrics that go: "Anyone can grow roses / but it takes a green thumb to grow grass" and "Everywhere you go you get busted by the fuzz / get out of the system, have a natural buzz". Peter Martin makes good use of the Finch boys on here, and also offers up arrangements for soulful horns, wigged out ARP synth, and strings... it flows wonderfully, sunny and melodic and mostly mellow. A summertime treat, like the Farm album it's own special thing, lovingly reissued by EM with all the bells and whistles.
Brian McBride, for those who don't know, is one half of beloved slowcore drone drift soundscapers Stars Of The Lid, and based on the reviews on the aQuarius website, you might assume they were one of our all time favorite bands, and well, you would most definitely be correct. If there was indeed an official aQ pantheon, Stars Of The Lid would absolutely be included, their records, spanning the last two decades now, have without fail been absolutely breathtaking works of sublime ambient brilliance, from raw blurred 4 track shimmer, to the more orchestral and composed later releases, we can't think of a SOTL record that we didn't love.
The Effective Disorder is a score McBride recorded for a documentary film called Vanishing Of The Bees, and in the liner notes, McBride explains that he tried his best to compose music that was hopeful, striving to capture in music the "gloriousness of the bees", but that the result was more in keeping with his past works, pieces that tended toward the melancholy and lamentable, that dark and haunting and sweetly sorrowful. And we're not complaining one bit!
The Effective Disorder plays out like it could very well have been a new Stars Of The Lid records, lush and orchestrated, but still intimate and emotional. Separated into suites, the opening two parter mixes the muted sitar-like buzz of old SOTL soundscapes, with soaring strings, swirling streaks of minor key melody, and lots of space, the sounds unfurled in glacial swells, gorgeous harmonies left to gradually fade and drift into nothingness.
"Girl Nap" is about as close as The Effective Disorder comes to sunshiney, but even then it's just barely, sun dappled shimmer dissipates in a haze of hushed soft focus blur, peppered with far away reverbed piano, "Several Tries (In An Unelevated Style)" is another assemblage of longform tones, lushly layered, the overtones adding color and movement, "Supposed Essay On The Piano (B Major Piano Adagietto)" adds horns, the mournful brass moans giving the already sorrowful sound a funereal cast, but shot though with warm hints of hope.
The three part "Toil Theme" is brooding and ominous, haunting and delicate, another dreamscape of minor key swells, while "Beekeepers Vs Warfare Chemicals" drapes tinkling chimes over streaks of stings, and warm sun dappled melodies, the track gradually transforming into something much darker and depressive.
The brief closer, "Chamber Minuet" is the perfect coda, a brief recapitulation of the rest of the score, and of the two sides of McBride's composing style, beginning with a rough bit of low fidelity drift, gauzy and hushed, before it blossoms into a more traditional sounding string quartet, dramatic and majestic, only to slip right back into the opening ominous minimal drift. So lovely and captivating.
The music perhaps darker than the film makers intended, but for the purposes of pure listening, removed from the visuals, Stars Of The Lid fans will not be disappointed, nor will fans of dark brooding ambience.
The Andromeda Strain was Michael Crichton's first book published under his own name, and told the story of a military probe returning to Earth bearing a lethal, microscopic virus, that proceeds to wiped out an entire New Mexico town, as scientists frantically try to devise a way to destroy the ever mutating virus, eventually considering detonating a nuclear bomb, sacrificing their lives to destroy this insidious interloper. The book was a huge success, as was the movie that followed, retaining the book's documentary-like vibe, hiring unknown actors as well as using graphic footage of virus victims dying. Long a cult favorite, the movie was most notable to music geeks for two reasons, its trippy electronic musique concrete score, and that score's original lp release, which found the record housed in a cool octagonal sleeve, mirroring a recurring shape in the film.
The music, composed by Gil Melle, is incredible, minimal and abstract, but haunting and ominous, even removed from the visuals, it's a harrowing listen, much of it performed on an instrument called the Percussotron III, the FIRST instrument ever designed and built specifically for a film score, some sort of primitive synthesizer we'd assume, percussive as well judging by the name, but details and history aside, this is just a simply fantastic piece of music. Strange electronic chirps, ominous low end thrums, helicopter like whirs, deep swirling drones, spidery squiggly high end melodies, blooping and bleeping glitch skitter, some mechanical percussion, plucked strings, crunchy buzzing swells, haunting bell like tones, militaristic snares, clipped and truncated scrapes and bleats, moaning strings, shimmering synth buzz, tinkling piano, clouds of music box like chirps and whistles, blurred and smeared into a whirling cloud of intertwined sine wave tones, grinding rumbles over swirling streaks of hiss, chromatic melodies unfolding into atonal shards of jagged crumbling sound, cool stuttery machine like rhythms over tangles of bass warble and clouds of glitch, and huge psychedelic swirls of interlocking prismatic tones, all the various elements woven into a truly otherworldly soundtrack. One that sounds like some legendary lost musique concrete artifact, as much as it does a chunk of kitschy sci-fi weirdness, when in fact it's most definitely both.
Unfortunately this reissue doesn't replicate the awesome octagonal packaging, but it makes up for it with a massive booklet, featuring tons of photos, liner notes about the movie, the soundtrack, the composer, each individual song, as well as all of the original lp liner notes. So awesome. We'd been waiting for a proper reissue of this FOREVER. So totally recommended.
OK pay attention because this is confusing. The first twelve tracks on this disc are the first time on cd (the vinyl is out of print) of the soundtrack to the film Tropic of Nipples. Participants include noted rockcrit / Blue Oyster Cult lyricist Richard Meltzer, Guided By Voices head honcho Bob Pollard, the legendary-since-the-'70s noise outfit Smegma, and something/one called Antler.
In various permutations these folks cobbled together a soundtrack that's equal parts GBV-style fractured pop and totally annoying declamatory utterances (like the Nihilist Spasm is also wont to do) over a bed of random noise.
*However*, this cd also issues some material never before available, notably six tracks of Meltzer's punk band Vom, who were SO GREAT! Releasing one record in '78, they played an absolutely rippin' Voidoids-Richard-Hell-style, fiery three chord punk. So great, boy are these guys due for a proper reissue. (Maybe Peter Buck will do it, he's reportedly their #1 fan.) Other extras include a song Pollard wrote with the late Jim Shepard.
Worth the price of the disc if you like the three VOM samples below. If you're not into those, I can't strongly recommend the rest of the material here.
The first 2002 peep from the prolific pen of Stephen Merritt (following the epic "69 Love Songs 3-cd box set) comes not as a new Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes nor Sixths album, but as an indie film soundtrack. Sounding just as you'd expect film music composed by Mr. Magnetic Fields would... lovely, lonely, spartan and droll. Lingering piano and harpsichord notes, brief solemnly sung moments that I wouldn't quite classify as songs (which include despairing renderings of O Tannenbaum and Greensleeves), clinky-clunky, off-kilter antique toy instrument sounds and experimental soundscapes. Word has it he's been deep in recordingland working on new Magnetic Fields and Future Bible Heroes albums, but until those surface...
If you're at all familiar with the AQ gang, you already know very well that Cup gives the heartiest of thumth-upths to lisp-friendly Stephin Merritt and his various projects (Magnetic Fields, Sixths, Future Bible Heroes, etc). If you're at all unfamiliar with the man and his music, consider this your prime opportunity to get acquainted. We haven't seen the movie yet, so we can't comment on the music's relation to the film. However, we can say that in comparison to his previous soundtrack album for the film Eban & Charley which included a varied selection of songs and instrumental soundscapes, this is solely a collection of songs. It's a great sampling of previously released Magnetic Fields and Sixths songs (from 69 Love Songs and Hyacinths And Thistles respectively) as well as previously unreleased MF and solo Merritt works. Actually one of the two Sixths songs that's included -- "You You You You You" sung by Squirrel Nut Zippers' Katharine Whalen -- is indeed one of Cup's absolute faves. Aaah, such consistently top notch, achingly pretty, sweetheart songs. No one pinpoints the many matters of the heart from first blush to cold shoulder to brutal heartache in such wonderfully droll fashion as Mr. Merritt.
Note: Please be forewarned this cd tips the scales at just over 26 minutes, but oh what a splendid 26 minutes it is! Very recommended.
Hoooo boy, what can we say about the latest Stephin Merritt release? This is a tough one. On the first day that we had this album in stock, it provoked some of the most immediate and strongest reactions. To put it mildly, we've got some pretty damn diehard Merritt supporters around here (we might add, some of them are card-carrying showtune lovers too!), but even they had to swiftly flee the scene of this album by the third song. Did we mention it's comprised of a whopping 26 opera-heavy compositions that he collaborated on with China's opera star Chen Shi-Zheng for three stage presentations (Orphan Of Zhao, Peach Blossom Fan and My Life As A Fairy Tale)? Yup, this modern day pop Pied Piper left his usual gang of merry pop pranksters at the rock club and trotted himself right down into high art theater row. We suspect those blinding Broadway lights might've shorted out a few of his good-sense-o-meters. Unquestionably, this is one of Merritt's most bizarre, ambitious and ballsy releases to date. As far from his Magnetic Fields, The Sixths, Future Bible Heroes, Gothic Archies et al as he (and you) can get! Be forewarned, 'tis an acquired taste.
Aside from the many problems which arose from the movie that accompanies this 'soundtrack', it should be noted that Metamkine - the brilliant musique concrete label from Paris - began a series called "Cinema for the Ear" about eight years ago. Unfortunately for Jerome (the man behind Metamkine), this movie did not even come close to acknowledging Metamkine and only gave namechecking references to Stockhausen and Cage.
As a compilation that documents the history of populist electronic music from the past 20 years, it hits on some important players but acts more as a canonizing agent than as a collection of 'fresh' sounds. The drum & bass representatives of Panacea, Aphrodite, and Goldie sound unimpressively dated, the one unifying problem for all of electronica with a few exceptions. Fortunately, two of those exceptions are present - Giorgio Moroder's production on the diva-disco classic Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" and "No UFOs" by Model 500, the track which spawned the Detroit sound of techno.
At best this is a mixed bag of tracks, and we certainly recommend that you check out the full albums by some of the artists present (i.e. Giorgio Moroder, Afrika Bambaataa, Model 500 / Juan Atkins, LFO, Derrick May, Panacea, Ryoji Ikeda, Coldcut, and To Rococo Rot...) and the singles from Metalheadz (cos Goldie's full length albums have been utter crap) and Aphrodite (ditto).
Psychedelic, surreal, bizarre, expansive, campy, politically charged, charming, stylized, kitschy, technicolorful, captivating. Oh my god, what the heck could all of those adjectives apply to? The Monkees' Head of course! Yup, it is all of that and so much more! If you've passed on watching Head in the past because you saw The Monkees' name on it, you've been seriously missing out on a work that is *exactly* whatever you might think The Monkees and their music was, but it also reaches far beyond their scope as well as that of more shall we say 'serious' auteurs... and successfully so. Co-written and co-produced by Jack Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson, this 1968 movie continues to kick ass almost forty years after its original release. Seriously, DO NOT MISS THIS!
Or more precisely, "The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and The Holy Grail". This classic "soundtrack" is of course a hilarious comedy record in its own right, so even if you've seen "The Holy Grail" 300 times (and also,
Where would we be without the Moog synthesizer? Well, we'd be missing a whole lot of our favorite artists that's for sure. In fact Stereolab would just disappear in the blink of an eye. Thankfully, the Moog is still everywhere, and for years has shaped the sounds and songs of tons of our favorite bands. None of us have seen the movie yet (by filmmaker/musician Hans Fjellestad), but the soundtrack is a doozy! Featuring tracks from Stereolab (obviously), Jean-Jaques Perrey, Luke Vibert, Meat Beat Manifesto, Tortoise, Money Mark, The Album Leaf, Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins and loads more. But it's the bonus disc that hits the spot and offers up some of our favoritest classic Moog moments: Emerson, Lake And Palmer, Gary Numan, Devo, New Order, They Might Be Giants and of course Yes!
One of our all time favorite movies featuring arguably our most favorite song of all time! Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, one of Britain's best comedy duos were at their creative peak in this 1967 Stanley Donen classic in which Moore, apart from writing and starring, also provided the jazzy piano-led score. In the film, Moore's character meets the devil (awesomely played by Peter Cook) after a failed suicide attempt and sells him his soul for seven wishes. Infatuated with a co-worker, Moore uses his seven wishes to become more attractive. First as an intellectual, then as a rock star, then a wealthy industrialist. Each time outwitted by Cook who consistently one-ups Moore's attempts at charm. The best scene is the rock star segment, where Moore, after delivering his best Cliff Richards imitation in a music showcase ("Love Me"), is shocked to be followed by Drimble Wedge and The Vegetations, led by Peter Cook in full Velvets/Warhol mode with an army of modly-dressed dancing girls performing the title track, "Bedazzled", an arch call and response that is the pinnacle of psychedelic ambivalence ("You knock me out / I don't want you"). Incredible! The rest of the score is jaunty and jazzy, reminiscent of Vince Guaraldi and the Michael Garrick Trio. This reissue contains both Mono and Stereo versions.
Rudy Ray Moore was best known for his seventies XXX party records. Raw, dirty and totally exhilarating. Moore gained most of his fame and notoriety from his starring role in Dolemite, one of the baddest, most revered and often imitated films to come out of the blaxploitation era. Just as thrilling, raw and compelling is Moore's soundtrack. Deep funk with vocals here and there but mostly scorching short instrumentals that sound exactly how you want your 70's funk/soul to sound. The score had to be made on as tight a budget as the film, so a group of musicians called the Soul Rebellion Orchestra were hired for a minimal hourly rate and in those recording sessions came up with the raw sounds that would serve as the perfect backdrop, helping create the mystique of Dolemite, which was all about an attitude, an aesthetic, and a sound. Moore and Dolemite have had a huge impact on folks like Snoop Dog, Quentin Tarantino, Ice-T, and Spike Lee. This soundtrack has been impossible to track down for years but has finally been gussied up and reissued properly by an unexpected source, Relapse. Who knew that under all that metal they loved them some funk. We're sure happy they do!
