Tag Archives: soundtrack

THE HAPPY FAMILY – Rodrigo: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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SEPTEMBER REWIND: PROG CHAOS, SUBLIME BRISTOL BEATS, GOTH/POST PUNK COLLABORATIONS AND A DRONE METAL ANNIVERSARY

THE HAPPY FAMILY ‒ Rodrigo

Zeuhl music? That’s a new one on me – blame it on the lack of Magma in my life.

But if zeuhl translates to a heavy, scrambled splatter of maniac prog like this awesome blowout from The Happy Family, sign us up. Rodrigo isn’t new – it came out in 2014 ‒ but the impact on virgin ears is immense. Chunky metallic riffs, quintessentially 70s keys, blazing short solos, awkwardly-crammed-in time sig changes and chaotic, almost disco-driven beats make for a deliciously demented instrumental. And the unbelievable crunch on the riffs serves the Metal Realm very well, even though jazz un-sensibility and genre-chopping hyper prog are the bigger drivers. NoMeansNo come to mind in the harder bits, as do Faith No More in places (you could definitely imagine Mike Patton losing his shit all over this). 

GET THE BLESSING – Oscillation Ochre

Sticking with the instrumentals for a minute, this is another brand new exposure to a band who’ve been around a bit. Less crazoid than The Happy Family but absolutely no less inventive with the beats, it’s the stripped bass and deft, light-touch skitter that pulls you in. How so magnetic? Well, Clive Deamer’s behind the kit and those Bristolian waters run deep. You can hear where Radiohead/The Smile like to splash around. Great track for the headphones, every instrument slides in and out just when it needs to. Taken from upcoming album Pallett. 

BRIAN ENO – Cutting Room I

If Eno did blues jazz film noir … hang on, stop right there. What are we thinking, trying to put Brian Eno’s music into words? How very dare we. There’ll be a depth of engineering, detail, creativity and process that’s beyond the oafish scope of the barely literate scribe. And, being the thoughtful, precise writer that Eno is, you can bet he’s already crafted an exemplary few words that render your own effort to be as eloquent as battered sausage leftovers. From last week. 

So, back to (BATTERED SAUSAGE ALERT) ‘blues jazz film noir’ … Cutting Room I, a soundtrack to Top Boy, grinds mild menace from a low bass that moves with the slightest of struts down underlit back streets. Piano suspense too. Could definitely hear a big band ensemble pulling this off. 

Overwritten embarrassment over. Just have a listen.  

LOL TOLHURST x BUDGIE x JACKNIFE LEE – Ghosted at Home

How many legends can you cram in a project title? Here’s another one: Bobby Gillespie, because he’s the voice of Ghosted and maybe that’s why it circles back to Primal Scream’s more inventive soundscapes – a loping, looping Vanishing Point pulse is the centrepoint to this kaleidoscopic inner-city trip. Get up and dance to it. No, scratch that. Groove to it. These beats are introspective.

EARTH – Angels

Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version – the seminal Earth 2, as many write-ups will no doubt repeat – gets a 30th anniversary reissue next month. Cannot argue against its landmark status as a monolithic statement, but whether you find it listenable let alone enjoyable is a different question – am much more in the Hex camp meself. Anyway, the Earth 2.23 Special Lower Frequency Mix EP that’s out with the reissue gives us a different way into the source, starting with Angels getting grimy via The Bug and Flowdan. Check it here.       

‘til next time!

Northern Quarter, Manchester
Manchester, Northern Quarter

HALLOWEEN: sound tracks and lost highs

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It started with a wolf, howlin’. Evil (Is Going On) was on BBC 6Music in all its electric-version glory as part of a ‘ween spesh, and it was soon followed by I Put a Spell On You. Classy sassy stuff (thanks Cerys Matthews). Got me thinking: instead of a bleak-o heavioso metallic horror soundtrack for halloween this year, why not go for some killer (yes!) atmos? The creep not the scream, the shadows not the gallows. Tension over bludgeon.

Henry Mancini.

Now, your man Cini might not be in thrall to demons and satan and Marshall stacks, but what is Shot in the Dark if not a tip-toed creepabout? Ditto The Pink Panther Theme and double ditto the perfectly titled Experiment in Terror, its sticky harpsichord adding enough gothic suspense for Fantomas to wind it through their avant mangle on The Director’s Cut (mentioned this album a couple of halloweens ago, insane and essential is what it is).

But if we’re on the prowl for a killer soundtrack that’s literal, we need a killer, so let’s call on the guy who always gets the shit end of the stick – the big fella, the head-clean-off guy, the in-all-this-excitement guy: Harry Callahan. Lalo Schifrin’s Dirty Harry seedy funkjazz score dwells in permashadow and night-time neon, and in No More Lies, Girl we even get a mention of halloween. It’s too jaunty a track for tonight though so for max creep you gotta go to Prologue/The Swimming Pool, Scorpio’s View, The Cross, Floodlights and School Bus (and you’ll not hear a filthier bass this side of November than Scorpio’s View and School Bus, promise).

From Dirty Harry we take a cinematic sidestep to Harry’s namesake …. Dirty Barry. Sounds dodgy already, like a cross between Pulp’s Seductive Barry and Mark and Lard’s Fat Barry White, but it’s by the guy who’s almost got the Addams Family name, one Barry Adamson. Check Oedipus Schmoedipus and there it is, track six, but skip back a few and you also land on Something Wicked This Way Comes.

See where we’re going now? Down the unfound road to a Lynch-ing with the nails of nine inches for bad company, aka Lost Highway, David Lynch’s unfathomable 1997 trip that’s tracked by as good a collection of goth-tinged electronic rock as you’re gonna get. Pulled together by Trent Reznor, it’s heavy on Angelo Badalamenti and B-Adamson scores and haunts, but there’s axe as well as strings. The Perfect Drug is perfect NIN – menace plus hook plus destruction plus ambience – Smashing Pumpkins get their pre-Adore electronic spook on with Eye, and David Bowie … well, he claims I’m Deranged from the never-bettered Outside.

Finally, for an axe-heavy non-Highway finale of monstrous bloody heft, dig up the bones of Another Body Murdered by Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E from Judgment Night soundtrack. Not a bunch of guys you’d want on your doorstep demanding sweeties.

Happy helloweeeeeen ….