Are you familiar with the works of composer/conductor Les Baxter?Maybe you've seen his dusty old records mildewing away in your grandparents' basement. Maybe you've run across them in that one St. Vinnie's record bin - you know, the one way back in the corner by the toasters that no one ever buys anything out of? Yeah, that Les Baxter.
Baxter might not be very "hip" (well, not since 1965 or so) or very collectible (his records, as I've already mentioned, are everyehere), but he did hit a couple homers in his heyday. Case in point: The hauntingly peppy score he put together for 1970's Lovecraftian film adaptation The Dunwich Horror. Equal parts swingin' cocktail-party jazz noodling, creepy theremin-horror compositions, and "exotic" jungle-drum jams, the Dunwich OST is distinctly a product of its times while still bearing vague subtleties of evil and genuine menace. Sure, this album can be overwhelmingly corny and dated at times, but give it a minute -- as those quote unquote Satanic polyrhythms start kicking in and the Moog starts doing its thing, you will be helpless to resist.
And dig the fact that your Granny owns a record with song titles like "Black Mass", "Devil Cult", "Cult Party", "Necronomicon", and "Sacrifice of the Virgin". Next stop: Septuagenarian King Diamond party? Hmmmm....
Download HERE
Purchase HERE
"Baxter offered package tours in sound, selling tickets to sedentary tourists who wanted to stroll around some taboo emotions before lunch, view a pagan ceremony, go wild in the sun or conjure a demon, all without leaving home hi-fi comforts in the white suburbs." - David Toop, Wired magazine
Baxter on Last.FM / More Dunwich Horror on IC
Dean Stockwell + Sandra Dee + Les Baxter + shitty fish-eye lens =
(My pre-emptive apologies to Mr. abdul alhazred over at From This Swamp, who I'm sure was planning on posting this album at some point. Sorry, Bro. You snooze you lose.)
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11 comments:
Ah, slumber does not come so easily this night, dear Shelby, much like any other. I can only view this as another tentacle in the ever-widening nuclear spiral we all dance futilely around, while playing a futile flute. However, I should warn against the viewing of the most recent incarnation of the Dunwich legend, weirdly still featuring one Dean Stockwell, as it is so hideous as to render itself nearly invisible to the human eye, and no doubt more malignant for it. Still, do not fear for your lowly servant Abdul, I am far too simple and servile to plot revenge...
Post Script - apologies for bungling the first post, as my "word verification" read "dageon" and I was briefly stunned and have only now just come to. There seems to be someone at the door...
DON'T GO TO THE DOOR, ABDUL!!!
Funny about the captcha, mine was just "ia ia cthulhu phtfagn ry'leh nyarlathotep". Weird.
ohhh this is good. thank you for posting another fine sonic submission...
Question: to your knowledge, has anyone ever tried to envisage what the music of Erich Zann would sound like? i found a animated short but i mean an entire album...that would be killer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ira4vM_SdIE
I've always wondered about that... To my knowledge it has never been attempted.
Peni did name-drop Zann on (one version of) the cover of Cacophony, though:
Exhibit A:
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cch223/images/New/rudimentary_cacophony.jpg
The whole concept is Zann, but Nick Blinko actually added the words "Erich Zann" into the artwork, just to be sure (can't see it due to shitty resolution on this particular link, but it's there).
link is bad, Google it.
this is dope.
on a somewhat related side note portland oregon has an HPL film fest every october...ill send you a link for it...
http://www.hplfilmfestival.com/
it happens this year october 1,2,3.....
Univers Zero has a track called "La Musique d'Erich Zann" on their Ceux du Dehors album. It's a brief, improvised piece.
"Baxter might not be very "hip" (well, not since 1965 or so) or very collectible (his records, as I've already mentioned, are everyehere), ..."
I take that as a joke. ;-) This might have been true for the 80s, but since the 90s Baxter is probably hipper than ever! His music is used in films by Tarantino and the Coen Brothers (to name just two), is sampled in house music, other dance and pop music and even rap music (e.g. Puff Daddy and the Beastie Boys). Not to mention the whole lounge/exotica revival that started in the mid-90s and of course most of his records are highly collectible.
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