Hey everyone! Happy to announce this week are releasing the 1982 cult-masterpiece LIQUID SKY. We are stoked to have worked with Slava Tsukerman and Jason Roth to bring this long out of print classic back to your turntables featuring incredible art from Jack Hughes.
We are also releasing Maestro Riz Ortolani’s '80s power-synth classic WARRIORS OF THE YEAR 2072 for your listening pleasure, as well as a new distributed title from Burning Witches Records.
As usual, new releases go on sale on Wednesdays at NOON (CT) via mondotees.com.
NEW THIS WEEK
DEATH WALTZ RECORDING CO.
LIQUID SKY - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack LP (Pre-Order). Artwork by Jack Hughes. Mastered by James Plotkin. Pressed on 180 Gram Tricolor Starburst Space Splatter vinyl. Includes download card. Expected to Ship in April 2019. Ships Worldwide. $30
When looking for a composer for LIQUID SKY, director Slava Tsukerman first approached Brian Eno, who abruptly stood up midway through a screening of the film’s rough footage and left.
To be fair, the 1982 sex, drugs and aliens cult-classic - where UFOs look suspiciously like dinner plates, orgasmic brains are harvested for extraterrestrial heroin and actress Anne Carlisle essentially fellates herself while playing both the film’s male and female leads, Jimmy and Margaret - has never exactly been for everyone.
Not long after Eno’s spirited exit, sound artists Clive Smith and Brenda Hutchinson were working the late shift at Manhattan’s Public Access Synthesizer Studio (PASS) when Tsukerman walked in and asked for a demonstration of the studio’s recently-acquired Fairlight CMI, the first-ever digital sampling synthesizer.
With the CMI, nearly any sound could be recorded, fed into the computer and played back at different pitches on its piano-style keyboard. Smith and Hutchinson were among the few people at the time who’d been properly trained to use the machine and their demonstration made a big impact on Tsukerman. After a zealous, on-the-spot pitch from the Russian director in his thickly-accented English, the pair soon found themselves helping to execute the strange musical vision for LIQUID SKY.
For the film’s score, Tsukerman sought to take the appropriated circus music of Fellini’s classic surrealist films and filter it through the new wave of experimental electronic music being produced by artists like Eno and Kraftwerk. Where other films had used synthesizers to replicate the sounds of traditional instruments, Tsukerman aimed to create emphatically electronic original music, as well as digital adaptations of obscure works by composers Carl Orff, Marin Marais, and Anthony Philip Heinrich.
For Smith and Hutchinson, this represented a painstaking process where the various properties of each note had to be manually entered into the CMI’s primitive computer one-by-one using its alphanumeric keypad and unique light pen. But, intentionally or not, the strangely dissonant, off-kilter sonic tone that the technique produced had the noteworthy effect of making a movie about opiate-sucking aliens feel even more alien.
That distinctive tone can be found everywhere from the synthetic heartbeats of “Me and My Rhythm Box” to the lush electronic mini-symphonies that accompany LIQUID SKY's visually stunning “golden hour” time-lapse sequences.
But the score’s most affecting moment comes in LIQUID SKY’s closing scene, where Heinrich’s “Laurel Waltz” is digitized into a nostalgic carousel ride through Margaret’s life. From her wholesome Connecticut upbringing to the coked-out rooftop fashion shoot where she now finds herself, racing to board a dinner-plate UFO in search of something better.
Over 35 years after its initial release, Slava Tsukerman and Death Waltz Recording Co., are proud to present this pioneering work of digital sampling technology in its original analog format.
DEATH WALTZ RECORDING CO.
WARRIORS OF THE YEAR 2072 - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Pre-Order). Artwork by Luke Insect. Pressed on 180 Gram Red, Blue and Purple Swirl vinyl. Expected to Ship in April 2019. Ships Worldwide. $25
In 1984, Lucio Fulci directed a dystopian sci-fi epic called WARRIORS OF THE YEAR 2072. In the film, the world is ruled by TV networks, two of which are in a bitter ratings battle. In finding ways to out do each other, one network decides to host a Roman centurion-style battle to the death featuring convicted murderers fighting each other on motorcycles (wait is this a documentary?). As you would expect from Fulci, it’s outrageous, silly, super entertaining and full of over-the-top violence.
Maestro Riz Ortolani composed the score, and he delivers one of his most bombastic, striking and fun scores. It's loaded with killer synth lines, chunky riffs and pounding synthetic drums.
Death Waltz Slipmat. Expected to Ship in April 2019. Ships Worldwide. $12
Represent your love of Death Waltz Recording Co., with this brand new slip-mat. Then imagine all of the internal conversations that led to this specific color combination. Just know that justice prevailed even though pink on pink on pink was once on the table. You'll just have to settle for pink on pink on black. Compromise is essential for relationships. You'll learn that when you get older.
DISTRIBUTED TITLES
DISTRIBUTED TITLES
HOUSEWIFE - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Pre-Order). Colored vinyl. 500 copies only. Expected to Ship in April 2019. Ships Worldwide. $29
Burning Witches Records is proud to release Antoni Maiovvi’s killer score for Can Evrenol’s 2017 horror film, HOUSEWIFE.
HOUSEWIFE centers on a woman who, as a kid, saw her mother kill her father and sister. As she grows up she’s haunted by dreams of the event. Then she meets a celebrity psychic and all hell breaks loose in her psyche.
Among the things for which Maiovvi is known is his synth-infused scores — whether for actual films, such as ABDULLAH or YELLOW, or ones not yet made. But for HOUSEWIFE, Evrenol’s English-language debut after the phantasmagoric BASKIN, Maiovvi overall went a more organic, orchestrated route aside from the final disco cut track.
