Tracklisting:
The Andromeda Strain (Original Electronic Soundtrack)
(Kapp Records 10" #KRS 5513, 1971)
1-01. Wildfire (2:41)
1-02. Hex (4:07)
1-03. Andromeda (2:24)
1-04. Desert Trip (4:16)
1-05. The Piedmont Elegy (2:24)
1-06. Op (2:49)
1-07. Xenogenesis (2:40)
1-08. Strobe Crystal Green (5:01)
1-09. 1971 Percussotron Demo [Bonus Track] (1:07)
The Andromeda Strain (Original Electronic Soundtrack)
(Kapp Records LP #KRS 5513, 1971)
1-10. Wildfire (2:42)
1-11. Hex (4:06)
1-12. Andromeda (2:24)
1-13. Desert Trip (4:16)
1-14. The Piedmont Elegy (2:24)
1-15. Op (2:50)
1-16. Xenogenesis (2:40)
1-17. Strobe Crystal Green (5:00)
Tome VI (Verve Records LP #V6-8744, 1968)
2-01. Blue Quasar (15:18)
2-02. Elgin Marble (4:25)
2-03. Man With The Flashlight (11:39)
2-04. Jog Falls Spinning Song (5:56)
Waterbirds (Nocturne LP #NRS 702, 1970)
2-05. Waterbirds [Pt. 1] (7:37)
2-06. Waterbirds [Pt. 2] (6:36)
2-07. Walkin' Down The Gloomy Streets...Alone...Broke...
Depressed...Gonna Kill Myself Blues (5:02)
2-08. Little Big Horn (9:22)
2-09. The Love Song (1:31)
2-10. My Sweet Charlie (6:20)
2-11. Charlie Chaplin (4:12)
[CP 028 CD] Gil Mellé; The Andromeda Strain, Tome VI, Waterbirds +
May 2022; due to numerous requests, and in the spirit of celebrating Creel Pone's 17th Anniversary with a bang, here is a revised replica edition of this time-tested title, covering the original Kapp 10" & LP issues of "The Andromeda Strain" OST (plus a short bonus track of a "Demo" of the Percusotron III) augmented here with Mellé's two other relatable issues of Jazz-Electronics from the vinyl era: "Tome VI" & "Waterbirds", all across two discs!
Creel Pone of one of the most legendary Early Electronic Music Film Scores (right up there with Bebe & Louis Barron’s “Forbidden Planet”, Bernard Herrmann’s “The Day The Earth Stood Still”, and Oskar Sala’s Trautonium sound design for Hitchcock’s “The Birds”) - mainly due to the scarcity & production values of the original release: a Hexagonal 10” record housed in a six-fold flap-system affixed to the cover of a metallic 12” sleeve which opens up to reveal a set of photos from the film & the liner notes.
All well & good, but the attraction for me to this suite of pieces by jazz composer Gil Mellé has always been the bizarre invented electronic instrumentation (like the Percussotron III - a primitive drum machine) and lo-fi / distorted Musique Concrète techniques (the first piece alone consists of ten tape-transformed piano parts and the ambience of a bowling alley). For early 70s Hollywood film-score material, this stuff is pretty damn far out ... most of it sounds like a more free/European take on the Patrick Gleeson collabs on Herbie Hancock’s “Sextant”, other parts sound like the weird Finnish jerry-rigged electronics of Erkki Kurreniemi or even the more far-out segments on the first two Kluster records.
No matter how you slice it, this is an important set; rife with sound-research oriented takes that situate it well within the Creel Pone canon.