Various - The B-Music of Jean Rollin: 1968-1973 LP

Label: Finders Keepers

Our Review:

A collection of kooky and creepy music from the films by French underground auteur Jean Rollin, circa 1968-1979. Many of these film revolve around vampires, and many of about sexy lesbian vampires! The late Rollin has been proclaimed the "father of European Horrortica." On the freaky fringes of free jazz and psych rock, the tracks found here are the perfect accompaniment to the director's sexy, surreal cinematic phantasmagorias. And unless we're much mistaken, we recognize one of the tracks here in Acanthus' theme to "Le Frisson Des Vampires," as having been surreptitiously covered in heavier fashion by drugged-out doomlords Electric Wizard on their Witchcult Today album.

Another one of note is Pierre Raph's aptly-titled "Gilda & Gunshots," a track of consisting of excited percussion, jazzy bass and pretty trumpet, overlaid with whipcrack-like gun shots, girlish whimpers and cries. It could almost be some noir-jazz experiment by the Boredoms.

With great titles like "Abstract Procession," "Crotch Batterie," "Blue Doll Baroque" and "Croque Weasel", other tracks vary widely and weirdly, encompassing spooky theremin-like tones, chamber music drones, somber choirs, flute-laced grooves, melodic reveries, arrhythmic interludes, all sorts of stuff. It's a real cornucopia of suspenseful strangeness and freeform avant-rock. Composers/performers responsible include the aforementioned Acanthus and Pierre Raph, along with others Yvon Gerault and Francois Tusques.