Cory Strand — Village of the Damned:A Reinterpretation

It’s fair to say that 1995’s “Village of the Damned” is one of the lesser known & respected films made by US cult director John Carpenter. I have very vague memoires of the once or twice I’ve seen the movie over the years, but I do recall been very underwhelmed & disappointed by it. So I approached this recent soundtrack  reinterpretation by Minneapolis based HNW/ stark ambient artist Cory Strand, with certain amount of apprehension.

“Village of the Damned” was the 14th  movie Mr Carpenter directed(not counting his Tv moives), and it appeared in April 1995 on US movie screens. It was a re-make of a respected 1960 British sci-fi film of the same name that told of the British village of Midwich, which found it’s self over-run by these strange children who all had unusual scalp hair texture and colouring (pale blond, almost white), striking eyes and unusual fingernails- it turns out all of the children have a  powerful telepathic bond with one another, and they have a chilling plan for the village.   The remake moved the story to the US costal village of Midwich, California- the film featured Christopher Reeve( in his last role before his paralysing accident), Kirstie Alley( Cheers, etc) & Mark Hamill( Star Wars). As I mentioned early on I only have fairly vague memories of the movie, but none of them are particularly good, and I’d go as far to say it was on par with really bad Carpenter movies like Ghosts of Mars.

Anyway enough about the original movie, lets move onto the release at hand. The reinterpretation comes in the form of a two CDR set, and it's released on Indiana based Blackened Noise, HNW, Dark Ambient, Black Metal & Horror Drone label Occult Supremacy Productions(which is owned & run by Dustin Alan Redington of Crown of Bone, Tenebrious & Lord Of The Dead).  The silver & grey spray painted discs each come in thier own separate thin cd case, which feature on their front covers monochrome stills from the movie, and track listing/ minimal eye like artwork on the reverse. The artwork is photo copied, but it’s well enough put together & thought out.

Disc one features six tracks, and disc two features seven tracks. The thirteen tracks each last between six & eighteen minute mark. And really the release offers up a fairly even mix of chilling & moody ambience, and sometimes harmonic tipped walled noise. And must say for the most part I found both discs most consistent & rewarding, with Strand nicely balancing errier-ness with brutality.  A few of my favourite moments come in the form of: disc one’s “March of The Children” which mixers huge sounding brutal HNW judders ‘n’ jitters with wavering harmonic synth textures. Disc ones “Day Break” which summons up a moody & pitch black thick drone sustain, which is under fed by distant panicked harmonic dwells ‘n’ rings. Disc twos “The Funeral” with it’s slowly churning ‘n’ dense mix of throbbing walled noise & slowed down moody guitar drone like harmonics. The distant chiming chilling harmonics & thin/fixed ambient drift of disc twos “Baptism”.  Disc twos “The Brick Wall”, which blends together malevolent ambient string drift, with reverberating ‘n’ echoing industrialized clunks, subterranean tunnel rumbles & fairly subdued wall noise hovers ‘n’ drags- all to create a great brooding & mostly sustained violent end to the disc & this release.

So to sum-up this is another varied & worthy movie soundtrack reinterpretation from Mr Stand, and it has actually made me want to give the movie another try too. This release comes in a edition of 50 copies, so hopefully you’ll still be able to get hold of a copy of this either direct from the label or from Mr Stand himself.