Fear fans and cineastes rejoice. New sinister sounds have been brewing in Vienna from the boffins at Cineploit. For the uninitiated the two composers at LAWA who the project take their name from are Alain Leonard and Alex Wank and yes the latter will be known by many for his work in death metal outfit Pungent Stench. It’s horror and fright flicks, predominantly Giallo and cult Euro oddities that he has turned his endeavours to since laying that particular bunch to rest. Cineploit itself is the one-stop shop for releasing these films to the Austrian market and beyond and their hard-box blu-ray releases are well renowned among collectors. The music is just as important however and LAWA have been faithfully penning their own compositions and occasionally tributes to that particular art as well as putting things out by similar like-minded creatives. We last heard from LAWA with their double release ‘Manipulation’ and ‘Instrumentation’ (also reviewed on this site) and now this new one has just (errr) manifested.
Interestingly we are informed that the music on this limited vinyl and digital release is as far as the A) side is concerned, created for an as yet uncompleted documentary. I guess we can look forward to this in the future but no other details seem to be available just yet. One thing that is obvious from the track titles is the fact that it is very undead orientated. Let’s get to the guts of things shall we?
It’s a bit of a sweet living dead suite at first with the triple themed ‘Zombi,’ ‘Zombi Love’ and ‘Zombi Party Zone.’ We get warped electronica and ominous stalking beats over a melody that vaguely reminds of very early Human League on the first. It’s effectively creepy and atmospheric starting perhaps in New York as the outbreak spreads and in the second arriving on a Fulci-laden desert island via a bit of calypso and coconuts. As for the party, don’t worry about a ‘rave from the grave’ this is a funky shuffle with strange sonic sounds and a bit of an embedded disco sound that was synonymous with the era these fiends were originally unleashed. Where the story leads from here is more open to mystery via track titles like ‘Country C19’ with its futuristic weaving synth lines and brash thumping percussion and ‘Flying Core’ maybe a reference to the Philippine jungle hell of Stefano Mainetti and Al Festa’s work on the latter parts of the loosely connected sprawl of film cash ins on the original. Watch out for a ‘Crazy Zombi’ too and try not to get distracted by stock footage and J&B as it will pounce as the erratic sloughing crescendo of the music suggests.
Moving onto the B) side and the further ‘electronic nightmares’ we turn to the album tribute which fans should probably recognise as being a piece based on Luigi Batzella’s somewhat barmy 1974 Gothic horror ‘Nude Per Satana.’ Taking the bones of Alberto Baldan Bembo’s main title and emphasising the eerie misty graveyard strains and emphasising it with ghastly choral parts and odd reverberating reanimated twinging sounds, it’s a suitable homage. Like the movie, it’s a bit of a fever dream and rather encourages me to dig the film out from my collection and re-watch it. ‘Vox Populi’ has desert island drumming and a hallucinatory heat-stroke vibe before moving into twanging bass and sounds of tribal rituals. For the non-movie fans it’s also somewhat Numanoid. Fast paced adventure is next as we go on a bit of a romp to the juddering ‘The Wait.’ It’s more Yello via Kraftwerk than Killing Joke and film wise gives me the impression I have stumbled onto a SOV late Bruno Mattei entry.
Working really well at turning your head into a projector screen the album is adept at providing filmic snapshots in your mind over the 13 varied tracks here. It’s an enjoyable trip through varying deadly scenes and gives little time to recover after escaping from one before the next is snapping at your heels. There even seems to be a marching UFO alien anime robot stomping around in the late stages, so there’s more than enough to keep you on your toes on this enjoyable album.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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