I've been meaning to devote a post to one of my favorite subjects: the moody, atmospheric world of electronic soundtrack scores. Most cult/exploitation and horror films seem to utilize this effective means of scoring weird, violent and fantastical films.

Some of the top contributors include the group Goblin, director John Carpenter, composer Fabio Frizzi and Tangerine Dream.

What are some of your favorite electronic soundtracks? My top five would include;

1) Zombie - Fabio Frizzi
2) Assault on Precinct 13 - John Carpenter
3) The Burning - Rick Wakeman
4) Suspiria - Goblin
5) Creepshow - John Harrison

Anyone else have some recommendations on other soundtracks or groups that specialize in this sound? I know that there is some groups that pay homage to these soundtracks, like the group ZOMBI and THE GIALLO FLAMES, but was wondering if there were any others.

Also, why don't we hear these type of soundtracks anymore? Does it just sound too dated?

While far from ALL electronic, Denny Zeitlin's score for the '78 INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS is a knock-out - and Zeitlin's only work as film composer.

Chuck Cirino's DEATHSTALKER II and Mark Lindsay's SHOGUN ASSASSIN have electronic themes that are fun to hum along with.

Virtually every television show for the last couple of decades is scored electronically. Does any series use an orchestra?

more abstract than previously mentioned

FORBIDDEN PLANET

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (musique concrete for the slaughterhouse)

the odd, clunky synth moments in LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH and CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS.

the trippy, reverbed-out music in THE ZODIAC KILLER

in fact, as appealing as the Prog-Electronic music of, say, Goblin, I really dig the electronic caterwaul of stuff like the afore mentioned JESSICA and CHILDREN or the mftv A COLD'S NIGHT DEATH or Dr. Who 70's episode THE SEA DEVILS. Stuff like that: jarring, clanging, atonal, bleeping, blooping, alien-sounding, just floats my boat!

I wish more modern abstract electronic musicians/groups were doing soundtracks.

Shawn, you might like some of Gil Melle's music. I'm thinking about his NIGHT GALLERY stuff mainly.

Although a mixture of organic and electric I love the soundtrack for The Humanoid by Morricone, and have also (with love) have thrown too much money at Vangelis' Blade Runner in order to get a definitive version.

Nothing beat (in the day) AOP13 and Halloween, gotta give big thanks to JC! I also loved the Frizzi Zombie (Flesh Eaters) & Suspiria music you mentioned. I also picked up an extended Deep Red in Tower Records Tokyo last month to sate my Goblin urges.

Didn't Gil Melle also compose the sinister electronic score to THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN? That's a great bit of abstract mood-music, very much in the FORBIDDEN PLANET line: menacing, remorseless, utterly alien.

Jerry Goldsmith's score to LOGAN'S RUN has some good electronic elements - that Love Shop sequence is nightmarish stuff, and the opening titles start well with a pulsing synth line before opening up into a more orchestral piece (IIRC).

Morricone's THE THING is a belter, although the CD doesn't carry the entire score - Humanity Part 2, for instance, develops in a totally different way on the album to the film. Someone should remaster this and re-release it with additional tracks.

Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave's score to PHANTASM is fantastic: a Carpenter/Goblin-esque melody supported on a wonderfully sinister growling synthesizer bassline.

Charles Wain's minimal electronic music for Peter Weir's THE LAST WAVE is likewise terrific, creating a mood no human orchestra could emulate.

Stanley Myers composed a great score to the underrated TV adaptation of Bradbury's THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, a mixture of disco-inflected electro beats and stirring melodies. Excellent stuff.

Giorgio Moroder's CAT PEOPLE score leans more towards the poppy end of the electro sound, but contains some terrific pieces; and if you can ignore the godawful songs, his controversial soundtrack to the first "restoration" of METROPOLIS likewise motors along to a number of wonderful instrumental sequences, notably the final rooftop confrontation with Rotwang. If only the whole score had been like this!

I'm a big fan of Ed Tomney's score to Todd Haynes' SAFE, or as a friend called it, "the best Eno album Eno never recorded."

You could make a case for THE BIRDS having an electronic 'score' of sorts.

For me, the biggest splash was made by the John Carpenter/Alan Howarth collaborations.* PRINCE OF DARKNESS is a stunningly creepy electronic score that pretty much takes you through the whole film in your mind - from the moody minimalist notes that underscore the lengthy credits/prologue right the way through to the exciting, sting-laden finale. It's always been a favourite of mine. The next release of THEY LIVE is very similar but adds a country/blues twang to the mix. Of all the JC scores, THE FOG is my absolute favourite building upon a melancholic piano riff.

Victor

*
I seem to be drawn to choral effects (real or otherwise) so I would also recommend early Elliot Goldenthal like PET SEMATARY and ALIEN 3.

Thomas Dolby's GOTHIC is a great score which I understand is the product of him taking delivery of a brand new emulator of some sort (Synclavier or something). It mixes dialogue extracts with manipulated sounds from the movie and a shrill vocal effect that one might liken to a banshee theramin.

Jason Minnix

Coicidentally, I just purchased a few Oskar Sala trauntonium albums!!

Victor Boston

Agreed! THE FOG is a masterpiece. I've always meant to upgrade my vinyl copy. I love the suspenseful track with the increasing waves of shrill hissing that builds and builds!

Marty McKee

I am a Melle (New Jersey native, I believe, like myself) fan from his work on Night Gallery and the Night Stalker theme and that killer ANDROMEDA STRAIN opening that predicts the stuttery/sputtery sounds of bands like Pan Sonic and some glitch music acts. He was a pretty good jazz be-bopper as well. NIGHT GALLERY seemed to offer work for a lot of jazzbos who settled on the west coast. There is a Gil Melle "electronic compositions" album out there, but I don't have it.

I was watching the 2nd 42 STREET FOREVER recently and really dug the music playing during Ms .45. Loud, pounding and sinister.


marc

I like this thread, like all the comments and have always loved Goblin and, in particular, John Carpenter soundtracks. Actually, seeing ESCAPE/HALLOWEEN/ASSAULT etc all those years ago on VHS and becoming enamoured of the scores meant that I always associated a certain freedom in genre filmmaking with doing your own effective synth music, and I always hoped to emulate this fine tradition in my own work. Nowadays with Sonar 3 and various VST instruments (such as the Moog Modular 2 and many others) you can dial up a preset, press a note on the keyboard and immediately be greeted with one of the many oooooeeeoooeeoooooo / bowbowbowbowbow / dummmmmmmmmmm sound effect tunes familiar from many a Carpenter score. It's heartily satisfying and I know my eventual final product will be a real piece of work if I ever get the bloody script finished.

I'm partial to the THEY LIVE / ESCAPE / FOG / PRINCE soundtracks, plus the ASSAULT and HALLOWEEN main themes. I also have a soft spot for the MOUTH OF MADNESS main title guitar riff, an obvious Enter Sandman ripoff in some respects but offering such a weird melange of genre / film music satisfaction that I played it endlessly for the better part of half a year when staying at a college back in 1995. I'd be more excited to watch Carpenter's recent MoH episodes if he did the music himself, rather than farming it out to his offspring.

Claudio Simonetti better do a ripper of a score for MOTHER OF TEARS or I'll consider it an opportunity missed.

Slightly off-topic, as it's not score-related, but if anyone's looking for something along Goblin/Frizzi-esque lines but have played the grooves out of their soundtracks, that person could do worse than to check out the band Zombi (the link is to their myspace.com page featuring music samples). I've only just stumbled upon them, and have been listening to their two albums (on Relapse Records) practically non-stop over the past few weeks.

True but none of the soundtrack albums I've heard have the one of my favorite cues from the film - the one with the underscoring the drive up to the church early in the film.

As for CAT PEOPLE, the soundtrack album has been completely reworked by Moroder for release (the various cues as they are in the film are much nicer).

My fave:
CHARLIE'S FAMILY Soundtrack by Download.

A lot of my favourites have already been mentioned - Frizzi's stuff for Fulci horror movies, Goblin's stuff (the Argento films are the best examples, but Contamination does get a frequent spin in my CD player) and I'd offer another recommendation for Goldsmith's LOGAN'S RUN.

I attended a live appearance by Simonetti a few years back and bought a couple of his Argento soundtracks from him - I'm not entirely sure what he thought when I asked him to sign my soundtrack CD of THE NEW BARBARIANS though. Some great electronic stuff on those early 80s Italian post-apocalyptic movies but not nearly enough of it available.

In a totally different style to the above but still an absolute masterpiece of electronic music for film has to be Alain Goraguer's score for LA PLANETE SAUVAGE [FANTASTIC PLANET]. It's available on CD and anyone with a love of electronic film scores needs to own it.

Finally, and again on a slightly different but vaguely related note, can I just recommend picking up the compilation album DISCO UNDEAD, which contains modern electronic/techno style reworkings of some classic Euro horror themes. I swear, the versions of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and ZOMBI make this CD an essential purchase by themselves. I picked it up out of interest because I love the original music and because one of my non-movie hobbies is collecting bizarre-but-great cover versions. On both fronts, this CD delivers, in my humble opinion.

Oh, and another recommendation just popped into my head - Simonetti's CONQUEST (there's that man Fulci again). Slight cheap and cheesy sounding but all the more lovable for it.

EDIT: It also occurs to me that if the FORBIDDEN PLANET style of electronic weirdness is your bag, a copy of TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO by Gino Marinuzzi Jr might also appeal.

Moroder seems to make it regular practice to alter his soundtracks for album release. In addition to Cat People, the music of Scarface, Midnight Express, and American Gigolo also appear in different and truncated form on album. To my ears, the film versions have a richer, more textured sound--I remember being particularly surprised by how much more sumptuous "Chase" (Midnight Express) and "Irina's Theme" (Cat People) sounded within in the film as compared to the album versions. I would particularly love to have more of the Scarface score available and would, of course, very much like to have all of Moroder's film music made available in a form more representative of its original presentation.

Other electronic favorites:
all of Carpenter's work from approx. Assault to They Live
Goblin's work on Argento's classic period oeuvre and Dawn of the Dead
Tangerine Dream's output from Sorcerer to Legend
Phantasm - Fred Myrow/Malcolm Seagrave
Knife in the Head - Irmin Schmidt (of Can)
The Burning - Rick Wakeman
The Warriors - Barry DeVorzon
Nighthawks - Keith Emerson
Blue Thunder - Arthur B. Rubinstein
Reckless - Thomas Newman
Summer Lovers - Basil Poledouris
Wizards - Andrew Belling
Class of 1984 - Lalo Schifrin
Firstborn - Michael Small
The Thing - Ennio Morricone
Christiane F. - Jurgen Knieper/David Bowie
Creepshow - John Harrison
Martin - Donald Rubinstein

Adding to what's already been mentioned, and I too love Thomas Dolby's intense score to GOTHIC, I like the score to LIQUID SKY. Also, DAWN OF THE DEAD, PHANTASM and THE TERMINATOR, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.

And anything by the brilliant Wendy Carlos, including A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and TRON.

then don't forget Stanislas Syrewicz's score for its companion feature LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM.

Oh, most definitely!

Wow, these are all terrific recommendations! I am glad that people enjoy this stuff as much as I do!

I also whole-heartedly (is that a word?) recommend the DISCO UNDEAD album...as it contains some really interesting and fun reworkings of some classic horror/cult title themes, i.e. The Beyond (one of the best tracks on the album!), Cannibal Holocaust (which is reworked into a new, fun and actually happy sounding track!) and even a redux of the theme to Halloween III! I got the CD off of the Movie Grooves website and I listen to it almost every day.

I also second the recommendation of the Fantastic Planet soundtrack - it's amazing.

Also, I was quite surprised to see some amazing and somewhat obscure (or so I thought) soundtracks in the iTunes store! I was able to pick up Herrmann's score for Sisters (which has some very nice and eerie electronic moments) as well as several of Goblin's scores! I was very shocked to see those for some reason, I guess I assumed it was so niche that albums like that wouldn't be available.