Music
Intrada Reissues Les Baxter’s ‘House Of Usher’ OST
Intrada has just released a reissue of Les Baxter‘s score for the 1960 horror classic House Of Usher, which starred Vincent Price and Myrna Fahey and was directed by Roger Corman. Based upon the tale from Edgar Allen Poe, the story follows, “A man, upon entering his fiancées’s family mansion, discovers a savage family curse and fears that his future brother-in-law has entombed his bride-to-be prematurely.”
Intrada’s synopsis reads:
Intrada presents entire score from only surviving music elements available through MGM – the music-only dubbing masters used in final production of film. Happily these include no dialog or effects, albeit assemblies and edits of many cues were, of course, already locked in. For early screenings of movie, Baxter supplied an “Overture” to get audience into proper mood. Cue was dropped from subsequent re-releases of film and initial home video presentations but happily was present on scoring elements and also appears on our CD. Baxter scores for full orchestra plus chorus, writes music both soothingly tonal, frighteningly dissonant. Score is lengthy, covering some three-fourths of the picture!
You can order the album here.
Track list:
01. Overture (3:03)
02. Main Title (2:00)
03. Roderick Usher (4:02)
04. Madeline Usher (2:50)
05. Tormented (2:24)
06. Lute Song (1:00)
07. Reluctance (3:58)
08. The Sleepwalker (4:12)
09. The Vault (2:36)
10. The Ancestors (2:58)
11. House Of Evil (4:53)
12. Catalepsy (4:13)
13. Pallbearers (2:03)
14. Buried Alive (8:14)
15. Fall Of The House Of Usher (13:50)
It’s a new day, and you’ve got new John Carpenter to listen to. John Carpenter, Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter have released the new track He Walks By Night this morning, the second single off their upcoming album Lost Themes IV: Noir, out May 3 on Sacred Bones Records.
Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.
Sacred Bones previews, “It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.
“Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone.
“The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”
You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now! And listen to the new track below…
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