John Cameron
Psychomania
Original Soundtrack
Trunk Records / 2003
(original recording date 1972)

Though Davie Allan never lent tracks to any horror movies (a few horrible movies, maybe), King Fuzz would undoubtedly approve this grimy, wah-wah-driven soundtrack for the 1973 British zombie biker pic with Nicky Henson and George Sanders.

English composer-arranger Cameron (who’s worked with Alexis Korner and Donovan, among others) corralled a gaggle of UK jazzbos under the moniker of “Frog” and set them loose at Shepperton Studios; the result is genuinely menacing (more so than the movie, as I recall) prog-tinged rock, with snarling guitar lines boiling below a haze of spookhouse keyboard washes. The only ringer in the bunch is “Riding Free,” a dippy folk number sung by Harvey Andrews that toes the “bikers are truly enlightened beings” philosophy that the counterculture subscribed to until Altamont. Choice snippets of dialogue from the film (“The word, mother, is busted”) and a general confluence of bad vibes from track to track make this boss listening for your next street crawl in the midnight hour.

—Paul Gaita