Now for a handful of mix cloud sets, in truth these happened across our listening desk after tripping over ‘the burning’ soundtrack by Rick Wakeman which I’ll just say needs to be heard by those still of the mind that the bloke is a pompous prog head, maybe after this you’ll be a little more forgiving and respectful for this is one of THE great lost soundtracks – a masterclass in psychosis and disturbia that weaves elements of Carpenter, Goblin and Tangerine Dream into an ever darkening void of detachment which much like the aforementioned references pretty much set the benchmark for all ensuing 80’s b-movie / cult sci-fi / horror musical mosaics
Death Waltz are one of a number of labels specialising in releasing out of print and long forgotten horror / b-movie soundtracks, in fact we fell over ourselves mention the oft overlooked and underappreciated ‘Halloween III’ score a little while back – this version expanded with previously unreleased cues. Well you can expect plenty more Death Waltz groove in the coming weeks given we’ve sharpened our sights on both ‘a cat in the brain’ and ‘a girl walks home alone at night’. Before that though, this – a dandy little Death Waltz mix tape that clocks in at just shy of 60 minutes – okay granted it is heavily weighted towards John Carpenter – Fog, Christine, Halloween’s II and III and Escape from New York all feature along with a scattering of Goblin, Fabio Frizzi and Wendy Carlos nuggets along with the aforemention ‘the burning’ score by Rick Wakeman but fast forward to the sequence break featuring clint Mansell and riz ortolini’s respective scores for ‘in the wall’ and ‘cannibal holocaust’ for maximum heart shock listening….. https://www.mixcloud.com/dazed/exclusive-death-waltz-halloween-mix/
While you are there – it’s also worth hooking up to the Fangoria site who’ve got a dandy little ‘monsters rule okay – a Brit horror mixtape’ – a fine gathering of the strange, the surreal, the sadistic and the downright scary – some oft excluded soundtracks here such as ‘the company of Wolves’, Douglas Gamley’s ‘the beast must die’ and a few sound effects from the Nigel Kneale penned classics ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ and ‘the stone tape’ not forgetting to mention both ‘Dracula AD 1972’ and ‘psychomania’ the latter being in my own humble opinion one of the finest horror soundtracks of all time…. http://www.fangoria.com/new/exclusive-british-horror-mixtape/
Here’s a little something we pulled from the site of the dead – ‘shock waves’ was a 77 released low budget creep out that featured undead Nazis headed up by a certain Peter Cushing – the soundtrack by Richard Einhorn was for many years thought lost until recently appearing on the howling wolf roster, the suite featured here is all grimly gouged minimalist electronics, very sinister and claustrophobic in texture not to mention shadow lined in a spectral swampland edginess…..well worth a peak…..
Whilst on this little soundtrack sojourn we also hit upon a top 100 horror soundtrack list compiled by FACT from a few years back – features all the usual suspects – Bernard Hermann, krzysztof komeda, goblin, tangerine dream, popol vuh, john carpenter, ennio morricone, broadcast, Delia Derbyshire and brian hodgson, basil kirchen and Jerry Goldsmith – yet take the time to wade through what’ll be long since forgotten or overlooked gems from the genre and you’ll be greeted by the likes of ‘cannibal ferox’ – an uncanny melange of 50’s b-movie scores, a particularly head warping ‘the bogey man’, Pinno Donaggio’s disorientating score from ‘tourist trap’ clearly influenced by Bernard Hermann’s ‘vertigo’, ‘the chopping mall’ composed by chuck cirino in a kind of Miami vice meets ‘escape from new york’ homage, Donald rubinstein’s beautifully macabre ‘martin’, Howard shore’s nightmarish ‘videodrome’, the sublime ‘the house by the cemetery’, the psychosis psych of ‘the shiver of the vampires’ and Myrow and seagrave’s ‘theme from phantasm’ always near the top of my preferred list.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg5ScSqSDXssdb6I0GWjlFm7lkDxIUZ9K
the sunday experience 