[engl] If you are into Italian Library music and soundtrack and especially fan of Morriconne, Bruno Nicolai, Sven Libaek, Keith Mansfied or Alain Goraguer then this record is for you.From funky psych jazz to more cinematic electronic this Lp is built like a Library record and so well produced. Cleary you can't date if it has been produced in the 70s or today ! As the tile say A mistery doesn't need to be understood. No need big talk check the long audio.

[engl] Not content with already liberating over twenty dedicated global horror and thriller soundtracks as part of the labels expansive discography, Finders Keepers Records resurrect their ghostly Finders Kreepers imprint, an apparition last spotted back in 2009 with the archival Willow's Songs which exposed the original twisted folk music that inspired the seminal 1972 Wicker Man score. With an unwaning appetite for the rare and obscure side of the genre the labels next short series combines ten vintage recordings from the formative years or International horror introducing a host of bygone soundtrack musicians that combined folklore, musique concrète, early electronics, child- like vocals and flamboyant orchestras to accompany the surreal and hallucinogenic films that inau- gurated and inspired the golden age of macabre fantastique cinema. Sourcing a cross section of obscure global domestic pressings and under the radar vintage vinyl runs this Finders Kreepers reissue series combines a cross section of the rare/unknown and the seminal, bringing unobtainable sonic gems of both classic and uber-classic shock cinema to a dis- cerning new generation of collectors. Starting the series off on a good foot Finders Kreepers bring you a mysterious and beguiling piece of music that has enchanted and eluded fans of vintage horror for decades. A game changer for the new wave of British horror when it was originally released the most unnerving attribute of The Innocents was the recurring childlike song that haunted the corridors and gardens of a haunted house in between bursts of concrète effects and drones (made by an uncreditted Daphne Oram). A forerunner to a generation of lullaby lead horror scenes (such as Rosemary’s Baby and Profondo Rosso) whilst drawing comparison with other macabre music featuring minor maestros such as The Night Of The Hunter and The Wickerman, this song is an oft requested gem of a micro-genre which seldom passes through second hand record stores and bookshops undetect- ed in its original vinyl form. Produced as an ambitious commercial tie-in for the release of the film in 1961 this elongated studio version sung by the lead Scottish born actress Isla Cameron (who many will also recognise as a prolific traditional folk singer on the early 60s) was casually market- ed to a small audience of movie fans who perhaps liked the idea of bringing the ghost into their own house. This rare original studio version is one of the only ways to capture the short leading motif that has echoed, in limbo, through the consciousness of film enthusiasts for over five decades. The alternate side to this debut Finders Kreepers 45 is the theme to another milestone of mono- chromatic European horror which despite its lifespan of re-distribution and edit room butchery has still failed to penetrate the mainstream DVD/Blu-ray market and stand up to be counted as the glaring influential landmark of the modern female vampire cinema genre that would spiral out of control throughout the following decade. Based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 vampyristic same-sex love story, Carmilla, the film Et mourir de plaisir (aka Blood And Roses) became direc- tor Roger Vadim's fifth feature (directly following another French literary adaptation with Les liaisons dangereuses) and visually draws a line between Powell/Pressburger's The Red Shoes and Jean Rollin's Viol Du Vampire while sonically begging comparison to Francois de Roubaixs inspired Daughters Of Darkness soundtrack. Composed by Jean Prodromidès and abetted by sound designer Robert Biard the score reaches its memorable peak during a dream sequence montage combining graveyards, claustrophobic corridors and a bizarre clinical blood transfusion scene, all of which are enhanced by submerged sound effects and a restrained blood red colour tint (predating the likes of Shock Corridor, Rumble Fish or Schindler’s List) it is clear that fans of Rollin/Franco et al will be able retrace their bloodline with this lesser-spotted picture. Originally squeezed onto an obscure six track 7" at low volume for French only distribution this dream sequence theme has been remastered and presented in good company for a fresh Finders Kreepers audience.

[engl] For the final chapter of the Finders Kreepers 7” series of bygone supernatural psychedelic cinema scores we combine a true uni- versal classic with a very deep underground gem for this unlikely pairing of witchcraft films from entirely different cinematic per- spectives. Taken from a South American only 7” EP dedicated solely to the nightclub music of The Brothers Candoli in Richard Quine’s Bell Book And Candle, the tongue-in-cheek cat magic theme on the a-side of this release combines whirring electric pianos and muted horns to provide a classic kitsch-witch freaky tiki theme complete with purrs, meows and magical spells sharing the same dark comedic approach to the looming domestication of witchcraft shared in haxan classics like Rosemary’s baby and Virgin Witch as wellas comedies like Bewitched and Saxana. The final side to this ten-part series finally sees the obscure ritual- istic funk soundtrack to Renato Polselli’s Reincarnation Of Isobel available on vinyl for the first time since its ultra rare 1973 release (under a different name) on a small Italian imprint. Composed by library music stalwart Gianfranco Reverberi for a film that also goes by the name of Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies In The Fourteenth Century, the bizarre feature-length score does little to authenticate the stylistic vintage of the films plot and brings psych rock, synth and sound effects to the proceedings bequeathing gems such as this impending bass and percussion driven title sequence. Complete with explicit feminine vocalisations and se- dated Euro mock afro rock textures this rare theme for the X-rated 1970s take on the 1922 Benjamin Christensen film Haxan does its best to provide a musical backdrop for a film that combines witch- craft, vampires and zombies combining all the key fantasy figures found in the Finders Kreepers series for an ultimate deep groove crescendo.

[engl] The mastermind behind this album can be seen as a luminary in the field of movie soundtracks especially for the 60s and 70s while his career lasted until the early 90s up to his untimely death. "Panic Button" is the third album of its kind from his hands composed for an Italian low budget comedy film released in 1964 and originals in good condition may fetch up to 200,00 Euros today. The most interesting fact about the movie is the participation of cult actress Jayne Mansfield who also was part of the inner circle of Mr. Anton Lavey in the 60s. The music on the other side is a colorful trip through different styles from Italian traditional music to lush orchestral baroque music with most of the tunes being laid down by a well – rehearsed big band. The background of this album is obviously big band swing. From here Garvarentz explores the more light footed corners of this genre and the result is a breathtaking joy. The melodies bring images of crowded market places and nifty street restaurants in Italian cities to your mind. The performances have the right amount of steam and passion to drag you from your seat, dance and sing along these sunny harmonies. And the pieces themselves are perfectly placed with high energetic moments and gentle parts following each other to sustain the attention of the listener and underline the different scenes of the movie in an ideal way. If you love the old movie scores from the early 60s with this abundant big band orchestration and a hip shaking groove to the tunes with the exception of a few parts that set you into a hushed mood you will really enjoy this beautiful piece of music. It is all about fun and felicity and a deeper feeling to accompanies the compositions. A masterpiece!

[engl] From deep in the heart of Moominvalley, frozen in time for many midwinters passed, comes a genuine treasure chest of never heard Moomin melodies and instrumental comet songs composed for the continued animated adventures of our Fuzzy-Felt freak folk friends who disappeared from UK TV pastures in the mid-1980s. From the top of the Hobgoblin’s hat and the bottom of Snufkin’s satchel, original Moomin’s composer Graeme Miller (The Carrier Frequency) kindly shares this patchwork selection of spellbinding sound poems and percussive peons made using the very same selection of ocarinas, kalimbas, miniature squeak boxes, Waspy synths, cornflake box shakers and a seemingly endless array of talent and lo-fi home studio trickery. Regarded as one of the most enigmatic, beguiling and haunting imported children’s programmes to ever grace UK TV screens, The Moomins was one of the first-ever commissions by Anne Wood (The Teletubbies) who ingeniously replaced the original Polish/Austrian/Finnish soundtrack with homemade music experiments by unknown post-punk theatre students Graeme Miller and Steve Shill (aka The Commies From Mars) who after the screening of two unforgettable series in 1983 and 1985 were left in eager anticipation of rescoring further Moomin adventures with new melodies, arrangements and sound designs which then lingered in the ether waiting until the Groke awoke and Snorkmaiden sang once more. With future felt adventures screened exclusively in Poland and Germany for many years (often as feature films) these unheard recordings are the only genuine musical sequel to the bizarre UK version of The Moomins and stand as important inclusions the Graeme Miller’s own portfolio of theatrical theme music and sound installations as part of The Impact Theatre Cooperative including collaborations with artists and writers such as Russell Hoban. Witnessed in fragmented form during a short run of incredible rare live screenings at The Barbican Theatre and various film festival this record marks the first time this music has been heard in its original full-length form, free from sound effects, dialog and whimpers of euphoric joy and nostalgia from those who have continued to crave the company of our Moomintrolls and their mysterious music over the last five decades. After a long unintentional hibernation Finders Keepers return this summer with the first in a series of limited special editions of previously unreleased archival recordings and who better to kick off the festivities than the maestro behind the music of our faithful felt folk friends from Moominvalley. Here you will find totally unheard proposals for an unreleased third UK specific series of 1980’s The Moomins TV series and unheard comet songs expertly recorded for potential cinematic sequels from the heart of Graeme Miller’s very own original musical micro laboratory, housed in unique collectable packaging, hand-made in Finders Keepers inimitable bespoke style. These two variants both come in sturdy book bound sleeves with stitched seams and two colour screen-printed illustrative artwork which is absolutely unique to his release. The Comet Flame Red edition comes in two tone grained leatherette with black line-art and gold Comet Insignia detail, while alternatively the Hot Sand edition comes in a porous crushed velvet featuring a black line-art and amber Comet detail. Both hand made editions are limited to less than 50 copies each and include inserts and the black vinyl pressing of these latter day recordings before their official 2022 reawakening.

[engl] Frozen in time over four decades this 1984 “cyclic incantation” combines electroacoustics, grazed euphoria, industrial aesthetics, sampled salvage and recycled mechanic folk to score a widely revered dystopian physical theatre performance from the UK’s hugely influential Impact Theatre Co-Operative. From a seminal post-punk art-action faction (formed in a Leeds warehouse space alongside Gang Of Four and The Mekons), this apocalyptic prophecy not only cracked avant-garde stage boundaries but provided a captive audience with stunning set design and an incredible broken-music soundtrack before its swan song amidst Poland’s 1986 power plant panic. From the sonic workbench of the very same bedsit-Situationists that created the haunting 1983 music to The Moomins TV animation comes the eventual isolated music release to this pioneering theatrical spectacle of truly mythical status. The Carrier Frequency (1984) was a legendary stage work that emerged from the collaboration between the influential performance company Impact Theatre Co-Operative and cult novelist Russel Hoban. The incantation of Hoban’s text voiced in the broken verbiage of a post-apocalyptic broken language and the entranced physicality of Impact’s ritualistic performance in a pool of cold dark water printed deeply on those who witnessed it. It reached an impassioned crescendo on the rising score by Graeme Miller and Steve Shill who also performed in the work. The music exploited samples from Hoban’s own recordings of the shortwave radio broadcasts which he tuned in as he wrote, helping him order the green phosphorescent letters on the screen of his Apple computer. Shill and Miller mirrored Hoban’s channelling in their approach to making the score, following the notion that this was the broadcast of some Central Eurasian radio station doomed forever to circulate fragments of static interlaced with desultory public information broadcasts and “The Record”, its only surviving fragment of a lost culture. The score was forged on an 8-track tape recorder sandwiching harmonium and accordion with the output of a digital delay machine that could trap and fragments of audio to be triggered and manually pitched. It is a knowingly crude montage where samples denote fragmentation itself and their reassembly, like Frankenstein’s monster, shows the stitches that join the stolen body parts.

[engl] Imagine, if you will, a foreboding homemade electro-acoustic, new age, synth driven, proto-techno, imaginary world music Portastudio soundtrack for a Polish-made animated fantasy based on a Finnish modern folk tale and created for German and Austrian TV, composed in 1982 by two politically driven post-punk theatre performers from a shared house in Leeds! To even the most perspicacious and adventurous of alternative music fans the genuine bloodline of this previously unreleased record already begins to sound like an entire record collection in one sitting. It would be surprising if this project’s ambitious and exotic credentials didn’t tick at least one box on your musical matrix and without one drop of unnecessary nostalgic hyperbole this project already sounds like the perfect fantasy record that you’ve never heard. Alternatively we could just say The Moomins and, for many, things would instantly begin to make perfect sense. From the same social landscape as Gang Of Four, The Mekons and Impact Theatre Co-operative – armed with a Wasp synthesiser, an ocarina and a cassette of the Robinson Crusoe music taped off the TV, Graeme Miller and Steve Shill used minimum means for maximum mayhem, instilling over 35 years of dreamlike illusory fuzziness and freakiness into the memories of a generation of school age TV addicts waiting for the next 5 minute fix of outernational fuzzy felt folklore. Collected here, all in one place for the first time, Finders Keepers in close collaboration with the original composers finally bring the original homemade micro-melodies and reintroduce them to a musical landscape where fans of vintage electronics, concrète tape effects, pocket percussion and domestic synths are finally ready to be reunited with the magnetic music of Moominvalley.

[engl] Gruff Rhys presents the soundtrack to the film Set Fire To The Stars. Although recorded around the same time as Gruff’s last LP (2014’s hugely acclaimed American Interior), Set Fire To The Stars paints a very different picture to that of the Welsh explorer John Evans. Equal parts cocktail jazz, hazy Americana and Atomic Age bop, it’s a love letter to New York in all its hopeful, post war glory – a gorgeous diversion of a record to add to Gruff’s increasingly brilliant solo catalogue. Gruff on Set Fire To The Stars: “This is an album of music written for a film directed by Andy Goddard concerning the poet Dylan Thomas’s first week in the USA in 1950 and his uneven friendship with fellow poet – and agent of sorts - John Malcolm Brinnin. As the film is shot in black and white and set in the Jazz age, I decided not to use any instruments unavailable in that era. I also keep the recordings as live takes. Beyond that – I didn’t try and ape the style of that era in particular apart from the song Atom Bomb which on screen, plays on a jukebox in a cafe and needed to be true to the year sonically and lyrically in some way. “Playing the guitar, I formed a short lived Agro-Jazz quartet (you got a problem with that?) called Video Loss with Chris Walmsley on drums, Jim Barr on double bass and Osian Gwynedd on piano. I wrote a bunch of songs and instrumentals. Some other bits were improvised to picture by Osian Gwynedd and myself. Chop Shop features Video Loss on max Moon-Ra improvisational setting. Gruff ab Arwel arranged all the strings and Gavin Fitzjohn played and scored the brass. It was recorded and mixed at Toybox, Bristol by the incredible Ali Chant – apart from the strings which were recorded at Metropolis, London.”

[engl] From Guy Skornik, the composer and arranger behind Popera Cosmic and Pour Pauwels, comes the enigmatic instrumental cues that provided fellow existentialist and notorious auteur director Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain) with the soundtrack music to what is now considered his rarest and most overlooked feature film, Tusk. As part as Finders Keepers ongoing dedicated Jodorowsky soundtrack series we present the original film edits from the 1979 studio sessions featuring Steve Hillage (Gong) and members of Cossi Anatz. Following his mind melting masterpieces Fando & Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky’s “disowned” attempt at a family film retains the director’s ongoing demand for intense, experimental film music resulting in what is undeniably one the best kept sonic secrets from the darker corners of this coveted filmography. Cherry-picked from pre-recorded synthesiser fuelled cosmic pop sessions by Skornik, these compositions provided Tusk with arabesque new age synthesis alongside full-blown ambitious electro rock, as well as classic French Fender Rhodes driven romanticism during some of this lesser-spotted movie’s most memorable moments. Presented here in isolation, Guy Skornik’s multifarious futurist-pop evokes worthy comparisons to Ash Ra Tempel, Eno’s Bowie and Suzanne Ciani, mapping an unlikely journey between Magma and 10cc in the process. Don’t ignore Jodorowsky’s “elephant in the room” – you never know what is hidden in the trunk. As part of Finders Keepers’ ongoing commitment and adoration for the cinematic work of Alejandro Jodorowsky the label now follows-up on the soundtrack releases of The Holy Mountain, El Topo and The Dance Of Reality with a record that not only unearths a lesser-known Jodographic gem but forms another spiritual circle in the label’s alternative pop universe, forming new twines in the Finders Keepers family tree.

[engl] The unreleased Euro pysch score to the French/Portuguese X-rated version of The Devils meets The Witchfinder General! Synchronised by Spanish anti-establishmentarian, sexual liberator, die-hard independent filmmaker and unrepentant voyeur Jess Franco (Vampyros Lesbos/De Sade). Composed entirely by French composer Jean-Bernard Raiteux aka Jean-Michel Lorgere (Sinner/Harlem Pop Trotters) and presented here in full soundtrack form for the first time. Proudly claiming the dubious accolade of the Spanish sexploitation version of The Devils as the distributor’s most bankable asset, this previously banned 1973 European witch flick would rip the art house facade from Ken Russell’s well polished box office smash and push the envelope way beyond the closet titillation of the gentrified new wave controversy seekers. Delivered on a comparable shoestring budget as the 55th feature in Jess Franco’s filmography of approximately 203 completed movies, The Demons (Les Démons), directed under the Anglicised pseudonym Clifford Brown, took many of the Franco’s sexually stylistic watermarks (epitomised in his Vampyros Lesbos trilogy) adding witchcraft, possession and nunsploitation against a rural Mediterranean backdrop before disappearing into the woods. Whilst clearly taking inspirational plot cues from Michael Reeve’s The Witchfinder General (UK 1968) and drawing comparisons with scenes from Eiichi Yamamoto’s Belladonna Of Sadness (Japan 1973) this B-Movie reduction of Franco’s wide palette of colourful ingredients has in recent years provided enthusiasts/champions/defenders of the workaholic horrotica bastion with a rare and treasured addition. Future-proofed by an essential component, omnipresent in Franco’s films, it is the mysterious commercially unobtainable soundtrack music that cements the unwaning interest in his risqué brand of unconventional shock/schlock sinema (not hindered my the enigmatic title card misinformation that often surrounds the original composers) and the music herein that has given Franco’s harshest critics a second chance/reason to reevaluate this man’s unapologetic art. Following on from Finders Keepers previous expanded release of Bruno Nicolai’s score for Franco’s 1970 adaptation of De Sade (FKR069) this record stands as another tribute to Franco’s life which he lived through the mechanisms of a camera with relentless zeal and a passion to challenge every aspect of movie making along the way. UNDERground, OVERambitious, RIGHT on, LEFTfield, BELOW the radar but ABOVE criticism. INdulgent and OUTrageous, but never middle of the road, Jess Franco was many things but he wasn’t pretentious and never delivered art for art’s sake and I feel honoured to have spent time with him. Franco was in fact a realist, he kept both feet firmly on the ground and a keen eye behind the right side of the lens and if Jess did have any demons his films were his exorcisms, the critics were the bloody judges and his legacy (through the medium of X-rated cinema of variable quality) is immortal.

[engl] "ASFALTO SELVAGEM" LP is one of the rarest soundtracks ever made in Brazil, arranged by João Negrão. Truly a hard to find item! Asfalto Selvagem is a 1964 Brazilian film directed by J.B. Tanko, a drama based on the first part of the novel "Asfalto Selvagem: Engraçadinha, Seus Pecados e Seus Amores", by writer Nélson Rodrigues. Imagine Les Baxter meets Ennio Morricone and Armando Trovajoli on Jazz Bossa Nova. Ed Motta’s Favorite 1964 Jazz Bossa Nova

[engl] An Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Album from the 1978 Hindi film 'Muqaddar Ka Sikandar'. Music by Kalyanji Anandji.

[engl] Narrative film music and sound design for Robert Wiene's classic 1920 psychological thriller. 2012 - 2014 digitally restored in 4K by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation. Musician and writer Karl Bartos has long been admirer of Weimar-era culture. During his time in Kraftwerk, he helped create the stunning track 'Metropolis', directly inspired by a band viewing of the classic 1927 Fritz Lang film of the same name. The original orchestral music composed for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Giuseppe Becce had long been lost and in 2005, after watching the film, Bartos imagined what it would be like to create an entirely new one in the 21st Century in his home studios in Hamburg. Now with crystal clear images, digitally restored by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation, the film is visually the best quality it has ever been, and now, with Bartos' soundtrack, there is impressive sound to go with the haunting vision. For the task, Bartos ransacked his own library of musical compositions, recreating pieces he had written as a young classical musician in his pre-Kraftwerk days whilst creating new sounds, melodies and textures. The intention was not simply to write a film score per se. This was to be an immersive listening experience with special sound effects to match the action as we enter the film as both spectator and participant. A creaking door, footsteps on gravel, the turning of pages in a ledger, a half-heard fragment of dialogue are seamlessly synchronised to the action on screen. By taking the characteristics of Expressionism in the arts, and transferring them into film making, a disturbing, distorted depiction of reality enwrapped and entrapped the viewer. The subjective replaces the objective. We are sucked into a parallel world lit in menacing chiaroscuro, where dimension, proportion and perspective are all off skew. From the convex polygon-shaped windows of precipitously sharp-inclined buildings to the surreally odd tables and chairs with long spindly legs to be found in preposterously small and oddly shaped rooms, alienating camera angles and im possible vanishing points, the town of Holstenwall in which much of the action takes place, is the world of the imagination, not the empirical world of our own eyes and ears. 'The cinema image must become an engraving,' the film's set designer Hermann Warm said. Into this world journeys Caligari himself played with supreme artifice by Werner Krauss. He is the hypnotist, a shamanistic figure who controls Cesare (Conrad Veidt), his exhibit, who resides as if dead in a coffin-like wooden cabinet, a somnambulist who can predict the future, and who only wakes at Caligari's bidding. Caligari, in top hat, hornrimmed glasses and white hair is, by turns oddly ridiculous with his facial mannerisms and gurning and dangerously demonic in his magical control. Cesare by contrast is strangely beautiful if tortured, his dark tousled short hair matted in sweat, his clownlike face a rictus of fear and possession. With dark kohl round the eyes and lipstick on the lips, he looks more modern, alarmingly so, yet the contortions and terror in his eyes seem only too real. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is rightly considered a classic and is a film which is endlessly debatable given its themes of power, control and possession, themes which took on an even deeper resonance in the 1930's and 40's as the world witnessed Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. Had both countries sleepwalked into fascism and totalitarianism? The startling image of Cesare has had a huge influence on popular culture: David Bowie constructed his Diamond Dog's tour set in 1974 as part homage to the film and the singer's last ever video, for the song 'Lazarus' in 2015, shows him playing his own version of Caligari's creepy somnambulist. Robert Smith of The Cure's gothic stage persona, performance artist Klaus Nomi, Johnny Depp's Edward Scissorhands and Joaquin Phoenix's Joker all carry direct echoes of Conrad Veidt's original extraordinary imagery and performance. We can hear melodies that lie within the tradition of the Baroque Age of Bach, the early Romanticism of Mozart, the dissonance of Schoenberg, the unsettling metric play of Stravinsky and the harshly dramatic repetitions of Philip Glass. From outside of the classical tradition there is the folklorist bricolage of the fairground barrel organ tempered playfully by some psychedelic backwards musique concrete along with some melodies which would not have been out of place on a Kraftwerk album from the classic era. All the time the listener is on a journey, sounds move in and out, music weaves and entwines, the soundscape is immersive and intoxicatingly rich. It is music which is, by turns, beautiful, amusing, playful and profoundly disquieting and it is perfect fit for the aesthetic of era-jumping in the actual film. Dr. Caligari's action switches from the then present day to the past century and even further back before rebooting back to the imagined present. 'There's something about this film. No matter how often you watch it, it keeps its secrets. Who is mad and who is not always remains a question of interpretation,' says Bartos. The film remains an enigma, but now one with the soundtrack and soundscape it deserves.

[engl] Galvanising our ongoing commitment to the lost music of the Czech New Wave cinema movement from the late 1960s and 1970s, Finders Keepers Records follow up our series of previously unreleased music to Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, Daisies, Saxana and The Little Mermaid with a short series of soundtracks for films by the country’s master of the macabre and the nation’s first point of call for freakish fairytales and hallucinogenic horror, Mr. Juraj Herz. Regarded as the final ever film of the Czech New Wave, Juraj Herz's Morgiana (alongside Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders) was made after the Prague Spring during Czech cinema’s most scrutinised censorship era, deep in the throws of communism. Spearheading a micro-cosmic sub-genre of hor- ror fantasy or scary/fairytales alongside Karel Kachyňa's Malá Mořská Víla (The Little Mermaid), these directors built a handful of subversive, flamboyant and experimental new films based around classical communist approved sur- realist literature; sidestepping creative compromise and uniting some of the leading lights of the FAMU founded film movement for the last time. Both musical scores courtesy of Luboš Fišer unite Valerie and Morgiana; sharing doppelgänger production and compositional ideas presented by Finders Keepers Records for the first time ever outside of the original context of the film. It is easy to hear why the music for both films could easily be confused as part of the same score, or as very close twin sisters, having been recorded just 18 months apart in 1970 and 1972. Revealing tiny shards of identical melodic phrasing, the Morgiana score visits darker hallucinogenic corners for this tale of two sisters seen through the perspective of giallo-esque “cat’s eye” cam- era work (filmed by Jaroslav Kučera) revealing poison induced hysteria fuelled by sibling rivalry and desperately twisted jealousy. Adopting his mys- teriously macabre musical persona, the versatile Fišer interweaves chimes, harps and harpsichord with echoing flutes, lutes and piano, applying his sig- nature orchestral tension and experimental percussion traits in the form of treated pianos, vibra-slaps, tape samples of striking matches and spring reverbs to this oblique heady selection. Revered in similar esteem to that of Czech film legend Zdeněk Liška, Fišer’s unreleased filmography of forward-thinking Czech scores is slowly reaching a wider global audience through his first-ever dedicated commercial soundtrack releases which should, in time, win him the same votes of confidence that we now award the likes of Komeda, Korzyński, Roubaix and Nicolai, amongst other European soundtrack luminaries.

[engl] It has been exactly ten years since Finders Keepers Records first liberated Luboš Fišer’s immaculate soundtrack music for Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders (Valerie A Týden Divu) from the vaults of the Barrandov Studio in Prague. As the inaugural release of an ongoing discography of previously unreleased scores from the hugely creative “Film Miracle” that occurred during and after the Czech New Wave (CNW), this score will always retain a special place in the heart of the label as well as our listeners who consistently request an updated repress of this significant vinyl milestone. Having grown in status from an obscure and misunderstood socialist-era art house oddity, via the hands of risqué foreign fluff merchants, to finally find its rightful audience as a bonafide surrealist cinematic masterpiece of world class standards, this 1970 film adaptation of Vítezslav Nezval’s 1935 avant-garde novella (a film that literally cross-pollinated Max Ernst’s A Week Of Kindness and Lewis Carols Alice In Wonderland) has garnered widespread critical acclaim. Inspiring ongoing generations of visual artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers – all of whom regard this truly individualistic and inimitable surrealist film poem to be an indelible influence – Valerie continues to impregnate their daily artistic referential fabric. Commonly considered to be the swansong of the CNW, following a huge paranoia fuelled government lm cull in 1969, owing to the fact it is last government approved feature film of the post-Prague Spring era to combine the efforts of controversial filmmakers from the FAMU (Filmová A Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umení) film school, Valerie would also be the first of an exciting and essential new fertile strain of Czech made cinema fantastique. Successfully condensing the final drops of CNW lifeblood through a series of presumed apolitical scary/fairy tales, directors like Jaromil Jireš and Juraj Herz used surrealism, traditionalism and fantasy to rejuvenate the creative energy of apathetic fillmmakers evading government scrutiny via creatively coded artistic allegories. By strategically choosing to adapt a pre-war surrealist melodrama written by a communist convert author called Vítezslav Nezval and based in a non-specific traditional era, the previously censored filmmaker Jaromil Jireš was able to craft what many consider his nest filmic hour and what would later become his most universally received achievement. Enlisting the individual talent of some of the CNW’s most formidable stalwarts, in what might have been their most creatively challenging roles, Jireš managed to unintentionally establish a new genre format that was both stylistically and sonically tuned to the trends of the impending decade thus future-proofing his career and providing a woozy gateway drug to an otherwise time-locked lost movement.

[engl] An unholy grail of near mythical status finally joins the Finders Keepers Records discography in the form of this first-ever reissue of Masahiko Sato’s elusive sensual psychedelic free jazz score to the stunning Japanese witchcraft animation Belladonna Of Sadness (Kanashimi no Belladonna) directed by anime screenwriter Eiichi Yamamoto in 1973. An early feature-length example of a micro-genre in which Japanese anime producers collaborated with the “pink” film genre, Belladonna’s challenging occult, sexual and political subject matter was the cause of the film’s notoriety for many years, earning Yamamoto’s work a critical platform amongst some of the best counterculture animation films of the era such as La Planète Sauvage ( René Laloux/Roland T poor, France 1973), Marie Mathématique (Jean-Claude Forest, France 1967), Wizards (Ralph Bakshi, US 1977), Heavy Metal (Gerald Potterton, Canada 1980) and Time Masters (René Laloux/Moebius, France 1982). Drawing further stylistic similarities with Shuji Terayama/Tenjo Sajiki associated poster artist Aquirax Uno and the Hara-Kiri magazine cartoon strips Pravda/Jodelle by French artist Guy Peellaert, as well as the early flamboyant Klimtesque imagery of Jean Rollin collaborators Philippe Druillet and Nicolas Devil, Belladonna Of Sadness brought a strong European flavour to its sophisticated and stylish Japanese application which accentuated the French origins of the plot loosely based on accounts taken from the 1862 book La Sorcière (The Witch) by French historian Jules Michelet. Over the last decade Belladonna Of Sadness has risen from the ashes and now shines brighter than ever. Now on the eve of its third or fourth global DVD release, fans no longer have to wait four months for third generation VHS telecine rubs from “that guy” in the States, or stuff their ambitious wish lists into the hands of any lucky friends visiting Tokyo in the summer. Belladonna has been used as nightclub projections by clued-up VJs and been restored by discerning feminist folk singers and improv bands while influencing illustrators, fashion designers and other creative types along the way. Original copies of the soundtrack, however, are much less likely to rear their heads on a weekly basis, with prices literally doubling each time the original stock copies swap hands amongst the same Italian dealers at central European record fairs. Italian soundtracks are expensive anyway, but this one, as I’m sure you’ll agree, has got extra credentials. Finders Keepers Records, in direct collaboration with Sato himself, agree that this record should finally be liberated amongst those who know the magic words. With our decision to keep this album “strictly Sato” we removed a track – the main orchestral love theme by Asei Kobayashi and Mayumi Tachibana, which in all honesty is very much detached from Sato’s psychedelic soundtrack. Kept intact, however, are the songs sung and penned by Sato’s then wife Chinatsu Nakayama, including the track entitled TBFS (answers on a postcard?) that only appears on the master tapes and never actually made it to the theatrical cut of the film (although the theme is briefly alluded to, in different instrumentation, in a cut-scene available on the German DVD). This reissue project also marks the beginning of a longer intended relationship between Finders Keepers and Masahiko Sato, exploring his recorded work in both film music, jazz and avant garde composition.

[engl] Disco Deewane is the 14 million copies best-seller 1981 Pakistani pop/disco album by the duo Nazia and Zoheb, consisting of Nazia Hassan and her brother Zoheb Hassan, with composition and production by Indian synth-pop producer Biddu. It charted in fourteen countries worldwide and became the best-selling Asian pop record to-date. It changed trends in music across South Asia, where it broke sales records. In India, it sold 100,000 records within a day of its release in Mumbai alone, and achieved Platinum status in three weeks.

[engl] KILLER JAZZ FUNK OST BY PIERRE VASSILIU ( MAN BEHIND LES MASQUES, and tons of other cool project) of Jean-Daniel Simon Movie A great soundtrack to tidy next your « Mariage collectif » , « un homme est mort », or « L’homme orchestre » record. A must have

[engl] For the third installment in our Finders Kreepers dedicated vin- tage horror soundtrack series we begin with an obscure French witch flick which pulls together stylistic echoes of both Bell Book And Candle and Czech gothic thriller Morgiana then feeds them through the musical mind of one the true pioneers of electronic composition for this little known OST by a well known sonic mav- erick. Often evading the composer’s discography lists Pierre Henry’s rare score to Malefices (aka The Hex or Where The Truth Lies) hears our bonefide musique concrète originator at what is perhaps his most melodic and fragile (especially for the formative era) layering vocal tape loops and gossamer feminine voice treat- ments with plucked strings, white noise wind and brooding indus- trial piano textures for this intoxicated poison peon which stands as the perfect opener to an intense soundtrack for those lucky enough to find the original record (or film for that matter). The second cut on this limited edition 45 is a classic piece of unnerving horror composition that adopts the same child-like vocal/brooding undercurrent that has earned scores like The Innocents, Night Of The Hunter and Profondo Rosso an indelible place in our nostalgic nervous systems. Creating a major stir as a novel and stage play before benefitting a celluloid adaptation The Bad Seed shocked audiences with the first cinematic killer kid in mainstream cinema following a did she/didn't she plot set to innocent nursery rhymes played in fragile minor keys against paranoid orchestral restraint. Mirroring the theatrical mother’s worst fears and accentuating the lead roles split personality The Bad Seed earned composer Alex North continued plaudits for his classy, conceptual realisation of this milestone in horror cinema soundtracking.