NEWSLETTER

BY JONNY TRUNK

As a child I’d watch crap late-night films on British TV and say “wow” a lot at how great all the music and backgrounds were in movies—especially the slightly weirder and often ruder films from Italy or France.

Every weekend, instead of buying the latest pop or indie releases at my local record shop, I’d spend my time in second-hand crapholes digging about for discarded film music and anything slightly related. By the time I was 18, I’d started to meet like-minded souls, collectors, dealers, and other slightly peculiar people who owned shops that specialised in this film music thing. So I kept going, learning more, collecting more and absorbing as much film music and soundtrack information that I could. I even started a record label, Trunk Records, and one of the first things we released was the soundtrack to The Wicker Man (decades before “dark folk” had its resurgence).

These days, a lot of film music falls into a generic slushy pool of shit compilations and reverbed moody piano, or they offer up a wall of shockingly poor techno drums and soft studio horribleness that makes my ears hurt. I believe the golden age of film music was really in the 1960s and 70s. There were good ideas, funny instruments, bleak arrangements, and a sense of a really peculiar person playing them in a darkened room.

Here are my favourites.

Ghost Dance (1995) Cunningham/Muir/Giles Piano I have no idea what this film is about, and don’t really care either. That happens with a lot of film music, you can’t really watch all the films, and often when you do it can be quite a disappointment, especially if you like the music. The score here is by David Cunningham, an interesting man who was part of the Flying Lizards. They made a classic hit cover version of the Beatles’ “Money” using the sound of students whacking trays up and down in their university canteen. Here, Cunningham and his trio are using lots of peculiar instruments, the most ear-catching of which is the mouth horn. The first time you hear it is confusing and disarming, as you have never heard a noise like it. Cunningham also manages to arrange his sounds in a magical way, which means you have to keep listening.		Nightmares Come at Night (Aka Les Cauchemars Naissent la Nuit) (1970) Bruno Nicolai Digitmovies This was never issued at the time of the film but it was rescued and pressed recently by a great bunch of Italians with good taste. It’s a film all about killing and girls, with music by Bruno Nicolai, one of the great twisted Italian arrangers. On this fine horror recording, you will experience lots of very simple things: simple melodies, tunes with just one string noise repeating itself for ages, that sort of thing—and all with this very subtle darkness trotting around in the background. On the back of the CD I have stuck a Post-it note for when I DJ film music, and on it I wrote the following: “Track 3 amazing string thing, track 7 insane six minutes carousel number, track 9 spooky jazz for 8 minutes.” For me, it doesn’t get much better.

Inner Space—The Lost Film Music of Sven Libaek (1963–’73) Sven Libaek Trunk Records This guy is a Norwegian who went to Australia in the early 1960s and never went home again. I had a cup of coffee with him once in a really terrible café in the main train station in Sydney. He was wearing a slightly peculiar suit. Musically, Sven has a very unique jazzy sound. It’s all warm and lovely and happy and friendly, but still has the capacity to be quite strange when required. Sven also made some really great library music, but it’s not as good as his film music. After our meeting in the crap café, I managed to put together the first compilation of his lovely music and it has a great white shark on the front cover. His music spans a broad range of film, from outback police movies to a gay rites-of-passage movie to documentaries about the world under the sea. There is no doubt that Libaek has a strangely addictive signature sound, but most importantly it’s the sort of music you can guess what kind of movie it’s for.		The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun (1968) Farm Rebel Records When you start digging around in the peculiar world of film music, all these sub-genres and sub-sub-genres start appearing. One such example is surf movie music, and there’s a whole load of great surf movie soundtracks that you can drop into any cool surfing conversation and no one will know what the hell you are on about because they are just so obscure. This is a perfect example. It’s a film made by George Greenough, possibly the greatest surfing maverick of all time. His gang of surf-bum mates made the music, which is the perfect accompaniment to Greenough’s groundbreaking footage in the middle of wild waves. This works so well because the musicians were living and breathing the lifestyle they then had to soundtrack. One of the compositions is called “Coming of the Dawn” and it’s this ten-minute throbbing jam based on surfing in the dark until the sun comes up.

---

See all articles by this contributor

Comments

Anonymous, on Sep 30, 2009 wrote: are they all scary movies?
Anonymous, on Sep 30, 2009 wrote: this started as a child? damn, you were a really sophisticated child
Anonymous, on Sep 29, 2009 wrote: I have a real soft spot for the theme to Cannibal Holocaust. The soft synths contrasting with the brutal film give off such a melancholy vibe. I love it.
Anonymous, on Sep 29, 2009 wrote: fuck off. pat benatar is terrific.
Anonymous, on Sep 28, 2009 wrote: how much would you sell that grande silenzio soundtrack for, damn
Anonymous, on Sep 28, 2009 wrote: Try and find the old soundtracks buyer from Aron’s Records in LA. He has a WAREHOUSE of obscure titles - literally everything from 1960s to now - and when I say everything, I mean everything. Ask around in LA.
	komodo, on Sep 21, 2009 wrote: nice list but where is goblin’s score for suspiria??
Anonymous, on Sep 16, 2009 wrote: Good insight into Arthur Lipsett. He needs more of a following.
Anonymous, on Sep 16, 2009 wrote: so true. the 60’s had real music.
Anonymous, on Sep 16, 2009 wrote: You cant go wrong with Sven Libaek
Anonymous, on Sep 16, 2009 wrote: definitely adding these to my collection