As far as our humbled opinion goes one of the finest soundtracks ever to grace a Hammer film production – or for that matter any celluloid offering – was that of the score adoring the backdrops of ‘Dracula A.D. 1972’. Composed by Mike Vickers it provided a deeply experimental excursion where the ways of the old abruptly met head on the free spirited modern age, the scoring multi-faceted and shape shifting beneath sand like footings mirrored sublimely the interweaving of the ancient and the gothic with the kitsch and the now for this was Dracula being dragged forth into the 70’s where only the sounds and fashion were different yet where the frailties and naivety of man remained, only ever more so. This essential soundtrack is now being exhumed by Death Waltz records in a strictly limited 1000 pressing whereupon it arrives in full colour jacket sporting a psychedelic swirl slab of wax. Blending psych, jazz funk and atmospheric classicism, Vickers’ score swings with the hip heavy chug of 70’s action spy meets cop throb grooves with the opening credits spiked with a hip wiggling sassiness that veers ever so close into Schifrin territories. Contrast its lightness with the ominous claustrophobic shadow play of ‘devil’s circle music’ where primitive ritualism and no wave jazz sets a terrifying sonically mutant tableau while elsewhere the dream like hallucinogenia of the tripping ‘baptism by blood’ and you soon begin to notice the way this set shape shifts to incorporate a wide and lushly wired and weird loose limbed sonic palette. https://soundcloud.com/mondotees/sets/draculaad1972/s-eEfnM
the sunday experience 