Death Line - OST

The score to the 1972 British horror film Death Line has been available for a while now and, seeing it cheap, I decided to pick it up and give it a go. I'm glad I did – there's good, interesting music on Spinney's 2001 disc. The only downside is the length, as clocking in at 21 minutes for the two tracks, it doesn't seem that there's a lot on offer.

The four minute title track is an odd bump and grind piece that seems entirely inappropriate for a horror film until you recall the images it accompanies: A bowler-hatted civil servant prowling through the world of Soho strip clubs, looking for some cheap thrills before catching the Underground. There, however, he is attacked by a cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller, the last remaining offspring of a group of workers who were casually abandoned after a cave in when the management – or the civil servant's grandparents, perhaps – did what we would now call a cost-benefit analysis and decided it would be cheaper to hush it up and let the workmen die. Call it unorthodox economic revenge…

The second track, running 17 minutes, is a succession of incidental cues – choral singing, early synthesiser noises, strings, percussion – perhaps most reminiscent of one of John Zorn's cut and paste collages.

Death Line composer Wil Malone is one of those who? types until you realise that, having worked with countless mainstream artists in the British music industry over the years, from Black Sabbath to Massive Attack, you've probably got some CD wherein he was responsible for arranging some strings or suchlike.

Rounded off with nice cover art – though some informative liner notes would be appreciated – it's a case of short but sweet…