Flash Gordon OST

"Klytus, I'm bored. What play thing can you offer me today?"

Cheese, Sire! Pure, unadulterated cheese.

I have films that serve certain roles in my life.  There're a few films that I pretty much only watch when I'm ill because they are guaranteed to make me feel better; 'Singin' in the Rain' is one of them,  the Peter Falk wrestling movie 'California Dolls' ('All The Marbles' in the US) is another and the pitch perfect creature feature 'Tremors' is a definite.  When I'm feeling at odds with the world then 'Amelie' or (the original) 'Harvey' goes on but when I just want to be entertained then the gloriously camp extravaganza that is 'Flash Gordon' is the only candidate.

I have watched the film so many times.  I love everything about it.  Sam Jones' outrageously wooden acting (although he's still better than ex-Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan having his manhood tested), Peter Wyngarde's magnificently sleazy Klytus, Brian Blessed BELLOWING EVERY LINE whilst dressed in feathery underpants and gold wings, Max von Sydow's lecherous tyrant Ming and, of course, there's the lurid, day-glo plastic sets made with all the restraint of a toddler in a sweet shop and all the better for it. 

And then there's that soundtrack.

When Queen recorded the album in late 1980 they were riding high on the back of a series of massive selling albums and two recent global hit singles with "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust" so a synthesizer heavy, predominantly instrumental soundtrack to a sci-fi B-movie could be seen as an odd move but this is a band that put an opera bit in the middle of their signature tune so odd moves were par for the course.  The soundtrack is a glorious mess of rock licks, ambient synthscapes and radiophonic electronic twiddles interlaced with choice pieces of dialogue with the tracks running into each other so the whole thing sounds like a massive prog rock concept album.

 In those pre home video days if the TV wasn't showing it albums like this alongside the novelisations were the only way you had of reliving a favourite.  As a sci-fi obsessed 11 year old in 1981 listening to this album (along with Jeff Wayne's 'The War of the Worlds') through giant headphones on a beaten up Panasonic cassette recorder got me through a bout of chicken pox quarantined at my grandparents house for a week with only one comic to read.  As a result I know every wibble, wobble and word and it holds a special place in my heart.

Buy it here - Flash Gordon - or listen below.



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BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Out Of This World

AudioGO 

(LPBBC25250)

LP

As an LP this re-released collection of sound effects conjured up by the wizards at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is perhaps a little less satisfying than the wonderful Doctor Who album I reviewed recently but that is simply due to track lengths.  

The pieces here range in time from the briefest at 3 seconds to a mammoth prog inspired 1 minute 22 seconds.  In themselves they are the most wonderful cavalcade of joyously fantastical sounds but as an album it is more than a little bitty.

Truthfully though, how could you ever go wrong with an album containing track titles like, 'Andromedan War Machine', Magic Beanstalk Grows', 'Two Terror Twangs' & 'Three Terror Bangs' made by people called Brian, Delia & Glynis (amongst others)?

Geoff Love and his Orchestra

The first album I ever bought was a copy of 'Star Wars and other Space Themes'  by Geoff Love and his Orchestra.  It was about 1979 and I bought it in a jumble sale in the next town along from the one I grew up in.  I think I paid a staggering 10 pence for it but I can't be sure.  I remember my mother looking at it disdainfully and asking what on Earth I wanted it for which even at the time - at the grand old age of 9 - I thought was the stupidest question ever.  I mean look at it.  It's beautiful

Almost everything about that cover was designed to ever so slightly avoid copyright infringement.

Buy it here - Geoff Love & His Orchestra - Star Wars and other space themes & Close Encounters of the Third Kind and other disco galactic themes

She relented and I walked home the happiest kid in town and only got happier when the needle hit the groove.  I cannot begin to tell you the joy this album gives me.  The version of the Doctor Who theme is to die for and Star Trek isn't too far behind.  This was the beginning for me of a love for rearranged cheesy lounge music that has never gone away.

A good few years later a friend - now sadly no longer with us - turned up at my house with a gift he'd dug out of the back of a cupboard where it had languished for about a decade.  He handed me the carrier bag and my breath caught in my throat as I pulled the ugliest LP cover ever made from the bag.

But, oh my.  the track listing.  The perfect, and I do mean perfect, sister album to the one I already had.

It's another frankly awesome experience of the finest aural cheese.  The drum break in Batman is blistering.  Steve Austin never sounded so kitsch, Wonder Woman would still be shaking her star spangled booty and Spider Man is doing anything a spider can but he's doing it with a strut.

There are a couple of odd choices in there that don't really live up to the superhero billing.  Dick Barton, The Saint and Blake's Seven not really living up to the title but album run times need to be filled and there were only so many superhero films and TV shows.

It was on the frankly insane 'Close Encounters...' album - credited to Geoff Love's Big Disco Sound - that Blake's Seven (check out the copyright free Liberator on the album sleeve) really came into it's own.  Along with the Omega Man theme it's the highlight of a collection of very unlikely disco reconstructions of sci-fi themes.

Buy it here - Geoff Love & His Orchestra - Star Wars and other space themes & Close Encounters of the Third Kind and other disco galactic themes
(NB - It's the same link as the one above)

Through the rest of his career Love continued to churn out the reworked themes.  Westerns, TV shows, disaster movies all felt his baton waved over them.  The Bond one is another to look out for.

He also did many, many more albums of love themes, kids music, etc.  There're not 1, not 2 but 3 double LPs of Sing-Along Banjo Party, several with Shirley Bassey and one with the most 1970s British sounding titles ever 'The Biggest Pub Party in the World: 36 Boozy Ballads'.

Anyway,  if you live in the UK and have ever looked in the record racks of a charity shop you will have seen many of Geoff's albums.  I counted 23 in one box once. Most of them are pretty awful but in amongst them are some real gems like the ones above.  So, to celebrate Mr Love and his busy, busy orchestra here is a mix I've made featuring some of my favourites from the 4 albums I've shown you up there.  Hope you enjoy.

Quietude #14: Geoff Love and his Orchestra by Quiet World on Mixcloud

A Field in England OST

For me one of the crowning glories of Ben Wheatley's fabulous 'A Field in England' is the score written for the movie by Jim Williams and featuring contributions from Martin Pavey, Blanck Mass & Richard Glover.  

Within the film the music exists almost as a character in itself as it forces itself into the narrative - never more so than when Richard Glover sings 'Baloo My Boy' directly into camera.  Williams has created a score that feels alive.  It has body and texture, it moves, it breathes and it surprises as it is utterly at home within the movie.

Outside the context of the film though it's possibly even better.  A gigantic, roiling beast of a thing filled with tumultuous drones, grand sweeps, delicate melodies and gritty ambiences.  For a soundtrack album to work outside of the movie is always a treat; for it to work this well is a rarity and a glorious achievement on the part of Williams and his compatriots.

I'm a huge fan of ambient / drone / experimental / whatever you want to call it music (it's what I do when I'm not here - www.quietworld.co.uk) and this is as fine an example as you will ever find and I wholeheartedly recommend it to you.

One complaint though.  Why was this only ever released as a now almost impossible to find, and if you can find then impossible to afford, limited edition vinyl and as a download?  The movie has been championed as being a 'multiple platform' release so why not the soundtrack?

Finally, I'm going to leave you with a little video about the making of the score.