Veröffentlichung Music Box: MAMA DRACULA (Budd) L'IMPRÉCATEUR / INTERDIT AUX MOINS DE 12 ANS (Bennett / Yared)

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Zwei Neue CDs von Music Box Records für die Freunde des Bizarren und Obskuren:

MAMA DRACULA (1980)

Music Composed and Conducted by Roy BUDD.

Reference : MBR-015

Price: 16,00 €

LIMITED EDITION OF 500 COPIES

Mama Dracula (1980) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack composed and conducted by Roy Budd, performed by The National Philharmonic Orchestra.

First time on CD with a new remastered sound. 8-page CD booklet with French and English liner notes by Florent Groult discussing the film score with director/producer Boris Szulzinger.

MUSIC BOX RECORDS is pleased to announce for the first time available on CD the world premiere release of acclaimed composer Roy Budd's (Get Carter, Soldier Blue, The Wild Geese) score for Mama Dracula (1980), a vampire comedy produced and directed by Boris Szulzinger starring Louise Fletcher and Maria Schneider.

It was during the raucous production of Picha's Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle, a 1975 adult-oriented French/Belgian animated film directed by cartoonist Picha, that producer Boris Szulzinger came across Roy Budd, a lightning bolt of an experience both on artistic and human levels. In 1980, the British composer would be offered two Franco-Belgian projects produced by Boris Szulzinger destined to appear on the big screen, separated by an interval of several months: The Missing Link and Mama Dracula.

The film tells the story of Mama Dracula, a character based on the true story of Countess Bathory, an enthusiast of rejuvenation baths consisting of the blood of young virgins, must come to terms with a shortage of such blood in the modern era. The musical accompaniment adheres strictly to a number of codes indispensable to generating the required mood: a romantic sombre feel with the use of a cimbalom and harpsichord, a lively tango theme for the twin vampires, military music pastiche, mock fanfare and lounge music à la Henry Mancini, all provided by the National Philharmonic Orchestra.

For more than thirty years, only the vanishingly hard-to-find LP record of the era could avail a taste of the unbridled yet delicious characteristics of this score. The present edition is therefore a chance for all admirers of Roy Budd to finally enjoy it, through a painstaking and careful presentation aimed at preserving the splendid original mix. The original soundtrack possesses all the generous qualities that typified its composer and merits fully the homage paid here to its true value.

1. Invitation to a Blood Convention (02:08)

2. To the Castle Dracula (01:22)

3. Mama's Story (02:11)

4. Mama's Little Boys (02:02)

5. The Castle's Laboratory (00:37)

6. Mama Sends Vamps to Work (01:49)

7. Inside the Vamps Showroom (01:48)

8. The Angry Villagers (03:35)

9. Fiance's Lib (01:06)

10. Mama's Theme (02:11)

11. Bath of Blood (03:27)

12. Morning Vamps (02:19)

13. The Professor and Nancy (03:17)

14. The Vamp Show (02:27)

15. Tango Vampo (00:46)

16. Nancy Speaks (02:31)

17. Mama and her Family (02:24)

TOTAL TIME • 36:40

L'Imprécateur (1977) • Interdit aux moins de 13 ans (1982)

Composed by Richard Rodney BENNETT • Gabriel YARED

Reference : MBR-016

Price: 16,00 €

LIMITED EDITION OF 500 COPIES

Original Motion Picture Soundtracks from the films by Jean-Louis Bertuccelli :

L'Imprécateur / The Accuser (1977) composed by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett

Interdit aux moins de 13 ans / Lucy On Seine (1982) composed by Gabriel Yared

First time on CD. 50 minutes of music, including 19 minutes of music never released before. 8-page CD booklet with French and English liner notes by Gérard Dastugue.

MUSIC BOX RECORDS presents on the same CD two original motion picture soundtracks for Jean-Louis Bertuccelli's films: L'Imprécateur/The Accuser (1977) composed by Academy Award-winner Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (Murder on the Orient Express, Equus, Four Weddings and a Funeral) and Interdit aux moins de 13 ans/Lucy on Seine (1982) composed by Academy Award-winner Gabriel Yared (The English Patient, The Lives of Others, The Lover).

Adapted from the best-seller written by René-Victor Pilhes in 1974, L'Imprécateur is a sardonic comedy. After an executive is killed in a mysterious car accident, the French offices of his multinational company is inundated with mysteriously threatening be-ribboned anti-capitalist tracts, delivered overnight to everyone's desks. When Americans from the head office get wind of these developments, they institute a search for the perpetrator which leads to mysterious subterranean passages under the company's skyscraper.

Jean-Louis Bertuccelli, bringing L'Imprécateur to the big screen on 1977 meant displaying and disassembling the wheels that turn in a large multinational and the effect of its actions on the behaviour of its employees.

The director made his choice on Sir Richard Rodney Bennett and described to him the music that he wished to have for the film with the following words: “At dawn, the mist on the lake.”

The music, recorded in London under the direction of Marcus Dods, gives a certain craftsmanship to the film, conjuring up a mysterious and phantasmagoric air, as befits the spirits in the underground, as in the highest spheres. The only existing source was the hard-to-find LP record released by Barclay in 1977. Its presentation was only based on two long suites. This new release now presents the same suites but with separate cues in order to keep the listening pleasure intact.

In addition to L'Imprécateur, MUSIC BOX RECORDS is pleased to present another Jean-Louis Bertuccelli's film Interdit aux moins de 13 ans, music composed by Gabriel Yared, one of his first ever scores for the cinema and never-before released.

The director lays a vision of the outskirts of Paris with neither embellishment nor aesthetic flair, in the pastel tones of a grey realism. Louis, a deliverer, works for a laundry company and is married with Marie, a saleswoman. He dreams of leaving and travelling. One day, he decides to stage a hold-up in a supermarket but the break-in goes wrong.

The keyboards and synthesizers are here in minimalist style, almost clinical, playing on the obsessive personality of the main character: repeating arpeggios, blues melodies, great ethereal cloths, between ambient and progressive rock.

L'IMPRÉCATEUR (32:07)

Suite I :

1. New-York (Générique début) (02:05)

2. La veuve (01:37)

3. Fissure / Saint Ramé au sous-sol / Overdose (02:41)

4. La veillée funèbre / Surveillance (02:47)

5. Le bus (02:42)

6. Rue Goulim / Le haut-parleur (00:59)

7. Écoute (01:10)

Suite II :

8. Le café (02:14)

9. Sabotage / La descente aux enfers (02:09)

10. Claustrophobie / Le corps (04:52)

11. Dans l'enfer / La cave (02:32)

12. Retour à la lumière (02:34)

13. L'accident (Générique fin) (03:32)

INTERDIT AUX MOINS DE 13 ANS (19:03)

14. Générique (02:25)

15. Louis et Lucie (03:09)

16. La nuit de Noël (02:04)

17. L'autre rive (Instrumental) (03:13)

18. Scène d'amour (02:59)

19. Descente de police (02:05)

20. L'autre rive (02:53)

performed by Ann Calvert

TOTAL TIME • 51:12

[Handstand]

Ist zwar persönlich nicht mein Fall, aber ich wollte doch zumindest diejenigen, die sehr offen für experimentelle/avantgardistische Filmmusiken sind, ermuntern, mal in den Bennett reinzuhören. Kein Fall für "Freunde der leichten Muse", sondern eher was für die, die eine Herausforderung musikalischer Natur schätzen.