Album Review: Various Artists - Disco Undead

Author: Peter Muscutt

There's been a great interest in the soundtracks from zombie films recently. The brilliance of the zombie movie parody "Shaun Of The Dead" was reflected in its excellent soundtrack, a blend of contemporary artists such as Ash and The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, as well as older music interspersed with snippets of dialogue.

There was also a recent release for much of the unreleased library music from the classic "Dawn Of The Dead", which fans have been praying for since the release of the original movie soundtrack. Of course, there's plenty more obscure and bizarre soundtracks for the legion of obscure and bizarre zombie movies out there, and that is the subject matter of this release - an intriguing selection of twelve horror 'themes' reinterpreted by a veritable horde of modern electronic musicians. Its certainly not chart fodder, and to be fair the appeal of this release is probably going to be very limited, but for those curious enough to hunt this album down, you're in, for the most part, for a treat.

It's not essential to have heard the theme tunes that have been re-recorded here (to call them cover versions would be wrong, these really are reinterpretations), however it helps to listen to this CD in context. The opener, Orgue Electronique's "Le Notti Del Terrore", is full of thumping electronic drums and waves of eerie synthesiser that sound as if they were culled from the original theme tune (from Nights of Terror - presumably a Disney film). Gique lend a fantastic hand to the theme from the Lucio Fulci classic Zombie Flesh Eaters (here entitled Fulci's Rotting Children) which includes sampled dialogue from the film (a complete rip off of the 'when there's no more room in hell' speech from Dawn of the Dead!) and replaces the very 70s sounding keyboards with a cool, minimalist strip down.

It And My Computer (don't worry if you haven't heard of any of these bands, names don't matter when the music is this good) turn in a brash keyboard laden track, "Le Droit De Tuer" (a version of the theme tune from "The Exterminator") which comes complete with hissing and popping drums.

One of the finest tracks on this release, "The Pianist And The Reporter" by Bangkok Impact, is a DJ's dream, with a hypnotising drum pattern (imitating a speeded up human heart?) and an almost trance-like tune sprinkled with fat sounding synthesisers. It's hard to imagine this featuring on a horror film soundtrack, but as the title implies, this truly is 'undead disco'!

Another cult classic, Dario Argento's "Suspiria", receives the electronic treatment from Solenoid. Fitting in nicely with the style of other tracks on this album, it's a great track with hints of Orbital about it. The album follows the same template for the remainder of the tracks, although it does seem a bit of a cop out as we're treated to, amongst other things, an original track entitled "Cannibal Sluts" (charming!), and rethinks of themes from films like "The Thing" and "Assault On Precinct 13" - not very undead!

Whilst some of this album is rather forgettable, there are some absolute gems here that will undoubtedly appeal to collectors of rare film soundtracks or lovers of 1970s horror. A definite oddity, this one stands out most for it's originality and inventiveness. Give it a try, you might surprise yourself.