If you caught scorching vinyl-only lead single The Galata Extraction off ATA Records’ The Library Archive Vol. 4, you’ll have been champing at the bit for the next full album in the label’s series paying homage to the library music of the 1960s and 70s by KMP, DeWolfe and the like. So to say expectations for this have been high is putting it mildly. How do you live up to that kind of hype? Can you live up to that kind of hype? I think this might require another track-by-track breakdown!
1. THE GALATA EXTRACTION
Bloody hellfire, hang on to your hats! It’s breakneck Eastern spy-funky psychedelia as swirling guitars go head-to-head with Farfisa organ and bongo-ish dumbek percussion. The very thing to soundtrack a Cold War rooftop chase in early 70s Istanbul! What do you possibly follow that with?
2. WALTER IN GABARDINE
You follow it with crime-funk of course – in this case a slinkier organ-led affair, that happily chugs along like a Mustang weaving through traffic in downtown San Francisco, say – though I get that’s Bullitt not his boss Walter played by Robert Vaughn.
3. ROUNDTREE
Oh what – like Richard Roundtree a.k.a Shaft!? Also slinky but more of a strut round the alleyways of Harlem after dark, looking for evidence.
4. TRAVERS POPPING
A little more jaunty – this is like one of those extended interludes in seventies films with no dialogue. But at least it’s not on the scale of that ridiculous bit at the Monterey Jazz Festival in Play Misty For Me that seems about half-an-hour long though.
5. KIEN WITH IRON CLAW
Oh what – as in Shih Kien of Enter The Dragon fame? Less the soundtrack to the attack on Bruce Lee in the Hall Of Mirrors than that to Kien’s character Han sadistically caressing said weapon in preparation for what he might do to Lee.
6. DUNAWAY’S EYES
As in Faye Dunaway? We’re back to the more whimsical thread on the LP with this one’s vibraphone-drenched ambience.
7. A DILEMMA FOR HOLBROOK
As in Hal Holbrook a.k.a. Deep Throat in All The President’s Men? It’s certainly got underlying tension in those horns.
8. REDFORD IN SHEEPSKIN
Back to the whimsy again. This is in fact the very musical incarnation of gentleman actor Robert Redford in a sheepskin coat – all tinkly romantic piano and wistful flute. It’s impossible to summon a vision of Redford in your mind’s eye to this one that isn’t vaseline-smeared, soft-focus.
9. TATSUYA, THE SWORD
Not Tatusaya Nadakai the Kurosawa samurai-movie regular, by any chance? I think there’s quite a strong chance given the other track titles here. Another meditative one, though one imagines a samurai visualising all the moves of combat he’s just about to take part in while cherry blossom floats down around him.
10. GREER’S LONG WEEKEND
Jane Greer? Michael Greer? Nope, me either. It’s definitely not Pam Grier though because this is like the partner track to Redford In Sheepskin.
11. SUTHERLAND
As in Donald? This one’s a regular game of two halves and keeps swapping between them. You’ve got your funky, happy Donald – like the stoned, hippie tank commander of Kelly’s Heroes and then you’ve got your Donald wandering grieving and forlorn round the wintry Venice of Don’t Look Now. But which one’s the real Donald Sutherland eh?
12. THE TWO AKIRAS
Ending as you began with something funky and atmospheric isn’t a bad way to book-end proceedings. But the reference? Two Akiras? Surely just the one, deeply buried in a secure vault beneath Neo-Tokyo? Well – not if you count that unstable young lad Tetsuo who’s rapidly accelerating ESP powers are threatening to give him Akira-like nuclear destructive capability…
COMMENTS: Imagine you’re channel-surfing (archaic televisual practice m’lud involving switching TV set on and moving progressively through the channels) and on every channel is some kind of genre film from the 60s, 70s or, at a pinch – the 80s. That’s this LP. Or at least an audio version, minus the visual. And that is a very good thing.
BEST TRACKS: The Galata Extraction, Walter in Gabardine, Kien With Iron Claw, Tatsuya The Sword, The Two Akiras