Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2011 October 10 • Monday

It's music library time again for the 186th Soundtrack of the Week. George Romero found a lot of great stuff in the De Wolfe Music Library for Dawn of the Dead and, lucky for us, some dedicated and hard working individuals did the dirty work of actually finding the material and putting it on a CD!

There's no on-screen credit for the library tracks.

The Goblins do have music in the movie—the amount of music depends on which cut you watch—and we'll get to that next week.

Instead of starting with the first track, let's jump ahead to the fourth, my personal favorite. It's a country-rock song with a mariachi horn section performed by The Pretty Things using the name Electric Banana.

The song's name is "I'm a Man" and it accompanies the scenes of good ol' boys enjoying the new hunting opportunities provided by the zombie apocalypse. You can watch it and hear some of the song here.

The first track on the CD is the goofy "The Gonk", which plays in the shopping mall. "Cosmogony Part 1", the second track, is the first music you hear in the movie, very eerie and frightening.

"Sinestre" comes after that, more dramatic tension and suspense. Then there's "Figment", a party for analog synthesizers.

"Mask of Death" is more straight forward, small ensemble dramatic underscore that starts tense but lifts off with a lighter, almost jazz meets baroque section.

"Scarey 1" and "Scarey 2" are very short cues, less than a half a minute each, that rely mostly on Moog.

"Dark Earth" blends bass clarinet and percussion with strummed piano strings and organ or synthesizer for another effective atmosphere of dread.

"Mall Montage Scene (We Are the Champions)" is a medley that begins as insane American football march music, goes into a 1920s-swing meets bluegrass section, then a sort of Muzak tango and, finally, an organ-driven Bach-like disco piece. Wow.

This is followed by "Barrage", which is more writing for terror with frantically bowed string section and bursts of hand percussion.

"Desert de Glace" is a soothing, minimalist piece performed by, I guess, synthesizers and percussion. It's really nice and quite different from the rest of the album, almost like something by Toru Takemitsu.

"Sun High" features electronic piano on top of some drones and support from what sound like other synthesizers. It's surprisingly tender and laid back while keeping a feeling of menace running throughout.

The piece ends with "Dramaturgy", anothere downbeat cue with moaning strings and timpani. This is great music and thank you, Trunk Records, for digging it up and releasing it!