Gil Mellé – The Andromeda Strain OST (1971)

Gil Mellé – The Andromeda Strain (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Original release 1971 KAPP Records
2017 Jackpot Records – Limited Edition RSD
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/192kHz |  Web art + scans
Genre: electronic / experimental | 1971
Jackpot Records ~ JPR-044

Dr. Vibes’ 12 Days of Christmas – Day 3 – Probably the eeriest soundtrack for any film that was not  technically in the horror genre, Gil Mellé really broke ground in electronic music on this soundtrack for this classic science-fiction thriller adapted from the Michael Crichton novel. Apparently he “created his own instruments” to make some of these compositions.  I’m not sure what that really means but the  results are definitely otherworldly.   I have a habit of being fans of soundtrack albums without ever getting around to seeing the associated film, and that was the case with this title until just a few years ago.   Although reissued in Japan several times on vinyl, for the longest time this was only available digitally as a CD-R on the grey-market / bootleg label Creel Pone.  It finally got a limited official release about 8 years ago that is now also pretty rare.  So I was pretty happy to see it on a list o special releases for Record Store Day in 2017.  Jackpot Records deserves some credit for staying faithful to the original deluxe packaging (which I did not place on my scanner, sorry).  But I sort of wish they just made a normal round EP, because I suspect getting these hexagonal things off the presses isn’t easy — my brand-new copy had a big-ole scratch on it as soon as I opened it.  But I think I got a pretty good transfer.

A1  Wildfire  
A2  Hex
A3  Andromeda  
A4  Desert Trip  
B1  The Piedmont Elegy  
B2  Op  
B3  Xenogenesis  
B4  Strobe Crystal Green  

Licensed From – Kapp Records – KRS-5513

Credits

Engineer – Alan Sohl, Gordon Clark, Terry Brown
Producer, Composed By, Arranged By – Gil Mellé

Notes
Limited to 1500 high priced vinyl LP reissue in original KAPP design, released for the RSD (Record Store Day) 2017.
Hexagon-shaped black 10.5 inch vinyl, housed in an elaborate chrome silver folded pod-shaped sleeve.
(Came sealed in plastic with an additional big Info sticker)
Mastered from the original tapes.

RIPPING INFO
RSD 2017 Jackpot JPR-044 vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica AT440-MLa cartridge; Speedbox power supply); Creek Audio OBH-15; AUdioquest King Cobra cables; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; clicks and pops removed with Click Repair on very light settings, manually auditioning the output, and often turned off for large sections of this record; further clicks removed with Adobe Audition 3.0; dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.

password: vibes

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4 Comments

  1. Thanks for the discovery and I wish you a great 2019!

  2. Wow, top-notch stuff. Many thanks for sharing!

  3. Thanks for this! It IS enjoyably eerie. And Happy 2019 to you!

  4. Merci beaucoup pour cette curiosité!!!

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