Ostensibly, something of an unknown quantity, an initial google on Wil Malone reveals him to be something of a true musical journeyman with an impressive array of credentials. A member of original British pysch combo Orange Bicycle, his later production credits for string arrangements scan from Massive Attack’s sublime “Unfinished Sympathy” to the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” And he’s worked with Sabbath, UNKLE and The Spice Girls!!! ECLECTIC OR WHAT!!!

But its for the soundtrack for this little known 1972 exploito-fest horror film DEATHLINE (“Raw Meat” in the U.S.) that Wil Malone’s card should be well and truly marked. Something of a failure in cinematic terms, Spinney’s 2001 CD release brings together the truly unforgetable “Main Theme” with about 18 minutes of “Incidental Pieces” strewn together from various cues fore the film. And, although the punter may feel short changed at this 22 minute-long CD, the music more than makes up for this.

The “Main Theme” erupts into utterly sleazoid cocktail-jazz moog funk, a full-on striptease grimecore romp that accompanies the protagonist on his walk through the city’s strip joints in the film. All rhodes piano runs, scattering across the melody like deadly vermin, and session-man drum proficiency, staccato orchestral stabs power this phat-tune along. With the moog to the front, we also get a kind of Dave Arbus-ian fiddle — in fact, this could be a more British cabaret take on the street-moog-funk of Crossings-period Hancock (although perhaps more Tony than Herbie!!).

But its the 18-odd minutes of “Incidental Pieces” were Malone really shines with some of the best experimental english progressive (-in-the-real-sense-of-the-word) music. Yes, its really that good!! Discordant oboe, xylophone, and abstract VCS3 textures bring to mind Hamlet-period Third ear Band immediately; an influence made all the more stronger when the prominent strings start to dominate — huge swipes of dissonance — sonorous cellos and mellifluous oboe themes come and go ‑whilst strange electronic oscillations bring to mind the early work of Delia Derbyshire with the Radiophonic Workshop and White Noise — this strange, and very eccentric english sound continues on a kind of Ron Geesin-esque trajectory for a few minutes, until its fades out and a lone, incredibly spooky choral voice enters (upping the whole Atom Heart Mother vibe exponentially!).

A lone descending minor key, and more spooky choir-boys are added, until eventually a whole soupcoun of voices are merging, re-forming, separating, re-emerging — very similar to Schulze’s choral arrangements for Black Dance (if less “basso profundo”); the next piece strikes out of this choral soup — dominant cellos and yet more oboe refrains, and an untidy drum rattle provides something of a shock-chord (no doubt scoring a moment of not-niceness for some poor soul in teh film). It gets incredibly asbtract here, but them merges into a beautiful Debussy like tranquility (if only, momentarily) — displaying Malone’s versatility as composer. 

To me, the biggest influences would be The Third Ear Band, with the ghostly, mist-ridden, Middle Ages-like atmosphere created through the melodies and the timbral associations of the instruments — but both films (Deathline and Polanski’s Hamlet) were released in the same year — although “The Thirdies” had had a few lp’s out by this point).

Malone’s score, however, is a real melting pot — huge cymbal rushes, Penderecki-like string scrapings, the spectral chorals of Birtwistle, Crumb et al, and upfront Herrmann-esque string-driven discordancy). But, considering this is the music to a low-budget horror film, it works perhaps better as an isolated exercise in modernist abandon — a hefty experimental approach which is incredibly affective, on purely sonic terms.

Lots of electronics are included — early Moog, sounds like a VSC3, and as the amalgamated piece continues, the experimental tendencies come more prominent; with disorientating, uneven, percussion stabs, atmospheric moog doodlings, and chirruping wood-blocks. However, the more ostensibly “modernist” Malone’s score gets, paradoxically (perhaps?), the more typically “horror film” the whole thing begins to sound. The strings are by now rabid in their search for a climactic final crescendo, ear-splitting whistles taunt the listener, but (and the strewn together nature of the project migth have something to do with this) the piece just kind of fizzles out, runs out of steam.

That said, its an impressively affecting piece of true English experimentalism that is well worth investigating.