2026 July 13 • Monday

Giorgio Moroder's great synth score for Midnight Express is the 917th Soundtrack of the Week.

Moroder was assisted here by Harold Faltermeyer, who would also find a place in synth score history with his Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack and epic "Axel F" theme.

The Midnight Express soundtrack album starts with a long piece called "Chase", with a relentless disco backbeat, synth textures oozing in and out and an exciting adventure melody that has fanfare qualities.

"Love's Theme" is a sensitive piano-driven number with eletronic keyboard and strings adding lushness. This sounds like something that Angelo Badalamenti might have been inspired by.

This true story takes place in Turkey and with "Theme from Midnight Express (Instrumental)", Moroder flirts with the modality usually associated with that part of the world, but mostly keeps things in a major scale. The weaving synth and string lines and ascending harmonic movement create a sweeping romantic atmosphere.

Bluesy synth guitar kicks off "Istabul Blues", which has a female vocalist, heavy drums and a melody very similar to "Lovesick Blues" and, I guess, a zillion other songs. The lyrics are specific to the story ("They gave me thirty years" etc.).

Billy Hayes spends a lot of his prison time walking in circles around a wheel, usually with other prisoners but sometimes on his own. There isn't much to do. Moroders "The Wheel" is the eeriest and most ominous track, with blaster beam-like stabs, high chittering noises and cloudy synth bursts.

"Istanbul Opening" is a powerful and mysterious track that signals the location by hinting at those Turkish modalities and then going into a serpentine melody played on piano and an ill-sounding keyboard.

The "Cacophony" cue does indeed match its name, being varied noises and sonics thrown together, a mixture of electric and acoustic both, with bubbly synths intersecting what could be cymbalom or just the inside of a piano.

Finally there's the vocal version of "Theme from Midnight Express", which is lovely and moving.

2026 July 08 • Wednesday

The paperback edition of John Buell's The Shrewsdale Exit is presented as a post-Death Wish exploitation novel and it does indeed contain all of the requisite elements. But it isn't really that kind of book.

The cover gives the impression that the whole book will be about a family being terrorized by a motorcycle gang. All of this happens in the first chapter.

Most of the violence occurs off page and the reader learns of some specifics indirectly and clinically. This phlegmatic and understated approach intensifies the impact and the horror of the attack. The very, very old observation of the effectiveness of leaving much to the audience's imagination is reinforced for the zillionth time. Readers of this book might never forget the phrase "sexual savagery".

So what does happen in this book? Well, in one of at least two extremely improbable events that show rather too explicitly the author's hand directing the plot, main character Joe Grant survives the encounter with the bikers while his wife and six-year-old daughter do not.

For a while the book follows the steps of a police procedural while also mapping Grant's having to face his friends and family after surviving this atrocity. He then does what the heroes of Death Wish-type stories do: gets a gun and goes hunting.

But he's actually really bad at shooting guns, having never done it before. Sure, he practices, like they all do, but he still isn't very good. He manages to track down the bikers and lure them into a trap but doesn't do so well and actually ends up in jail himself, charged with attempted murder, while the bikers go free.

This was an unexpected turn of events and I've already said too much about the book's plot.

It's an attempt to take this familiar story in an unfamiliar direction, toward redemption and rebirth instead of vengeance and retribution.

It's very well written and I applaud the effort. In the end it's more impressive than enjoyable or satisfying, though.

The first line is "They decided to pull in at the Howard Johnson's".

2026 July 06 • Monday

Bill Green's music for the 1974 Australian biker movie Stone is the 916th Soundtrack of the Week.

The first track, "Eco Blue/Toadstrip", starts out with some ghostly legato tones that might be electric violin and then goes into an avantgarde mix of electronic sounds and didgeridoo.

Then the beat kicks in for "Race", a groovy number with guitar and keyboards going nuts over a couple of different rhythmic ideas. It's very "biker movie" and a high point of the genre, as is the movie itself.

The next two tracks are both only 46 seconds long, with "Head Off" being more on the sonic noise end of things, with electronics emulating motorcycle sounds, while "Pigs" is like a deranged electro-samba march.

Strings create a surprisingly tender and lovely atmosphere for "Cosmic Funeral", with the band coming in at the very end to add some rock color, which segues nicely into the rock/classical, electric/acoustic, chamber music with drums and bass love theme for "Amanda".

Not eclectic enough? Here come banjo and harmonica for the cheery country tune "Septic", followed by a bluesy solo electric guitar piece called "Smoke".

Finally our hero and titular character "Stone" gets a cue, a laidback acid rock piece with some killer grooves.

"Undertaker" is a slow electric blues track with wah-wah guitar and electric piano, followed by "Gravedigger" a high energy acid rock cut.

Echoey solo acoustic guitar playing creates an exotica-tinged mood for "Swim" and then we're in a more traditional rock band zone with "Klaude Kool and the Kats", no fuzz or distortion and with acoustic piano.

The record takes off again with the highest intensity track, the acid rock screamer "Toad" and then things slow way down for the lushly textural and otherworldly atmospheric "The Death of Dr. Death", which features something like zither or dulcimer or auto-harp.