News about Film Music Goodies at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, featuring appearances by David Shire (Monkey Shines), Mychael Danna, Steven North (son of Alex North), author Kevin Courrier, and Me (!), plus a 35mm screening of Planet of the Apes (1968), and free screenings of film music documentaries. Also in the blog: tally of new & upcoming soundtracks.

Time for another tally of new & imminent horror soundtracks, related links, teasers, and Indigo says adieu to CDs and home video.

June-July score tally, and ruminations on Toronto’s brush with Hell.

Risking life and limb, we recently approached intergalactic refugees GWAR about contributing a track to the second installment of Rue Morgue Radio’s Hymns From the House of Horror (available May 1), cleverly titled Hymns From the House of Horror II. After swooning lead singer Oderus Urungus with a pitch that went something like: “We would love to promote your scraps and mutually benefit from their otherwise utterly worthless appeal,” the lead Scumdog agreed to let us feature an epic number from the band’s latest gory opus, Bloody Pit of Horror, so long as we let them torture, humiliate and otherwise psychologically traumatize one of our interns. The quandary proved time-consuming and difficult.

Another pair of bands has been announced on the official Hymns From the House of Horror II Facebook page today! If you didn’t check out yesterday’s announcement, the first two artists out of the gate were THE CREEPING CRUDS and CALABRESE!

Click here for more bands, more details and a look back at last year’s comp.
And don’t forget to us!

Last year’s Hymns From the House of Horror was so much fun to stitch together that we’ve decided to try our monstrous hand at it again! For Hymns From the House of Horror II, we’ve gathered 20 skull-knockin’ cuts – some previously unreleased, some rare, some sneak peeks – from a host of horror bands, spliced them together with trailers for imaginary grindhouse movies we’d surely love to see (created by RM staff and friends), and are offering it as a free download, complete with printable album artwork designed by Justin Erickson and hosted by Rue Morgue Radio’s Tomb Dragomir!

It’s the end of the month, and time for another tally of current and upcoming horror soundtracks, plus a new label that’s very Jean Rollin-friendly. Also of note: additional horror score reviews, and earthworm chum you shouldn’t be eating.

The next few months are filled with several interesting score releases from various genres, and I’ve distilled the horror / Eurosleaze / sexploitation titles to the list at the end, with links to the labels for further info.

Those wanting to grab Les Baxter’s Fall of the House of Usher may be out of luck, because Intrada’s hour-long CD – hour-long CD – is sold out. Like I said in a related blog: it’s Baxter, Poe, Corman, AIP, and never before released. What the hell were they thinking when a run of 1200 was decided?

Yes, it’s been a while since the last soundtrack release tally, but it never fails that once you hit December, time actually gets folded in half, causing days to go by in half their normal time until roughly January 4 when we’re back at work (unless one serves within the service industry, provides an essential service, or is in utter servitude, and Xmas is just another surprise holiday that somehow showed up before you could book time off and have a vacation, leaving co-workers to toil in your place).

I frankly have no idea how things leaped from the middle of October to the end of November, with Christmas jingles filling the air, and jewelled trees dotting the corners of large malls, but here we are, and here’s the delayed tally of soundtracks with a horror/thriller/Eurosleaze angle.