4 out of 5

Label: Spun Out of Control

Produced by: Alan Sinclair

Alan Sinclair returns with a twofer of imagined flicks and their very real music: a 1980 post-Cannibal Holocaust psychdelia trip called Strip Their Flesh, and a mid-80s sci-fi horror monster movie called The Artefact. As usual, these are wholly convincing conjurations (I keep looking up the “movies” Sinclair scores to double-check I can’t find any references to their existence…) and label Spun Out of Control / designer Eric Adrian Lee / Sinclair went all-in on packaging, giving us little black-and-white one-sheets in the liner notes for each movie – not to mention the fantastic cover art, which pushes this as a split bill – and there’s not one iota of cheek to the whole thing. These films should be real.

Musically, I’m continually blown away by how Alan’s Repeated Viewing moniker has flourished beyond the sometimes predictable confines of the synthwave movement to really embrace the scoring process – Alan really seems to ingest whatever would be era / genre appropriate, and produces soundtracks that are interesting in and of themselves, tell a story, and are utterly convincing without (again) overplaying that hand.

Strip Their Flesh focuses on glowing, embracing synths, initially conjuring a pastoral jungle exploration – a lazy river journey; an open-ended nighttime wander – before “Observe the Ritual – Bind Them” drops the curiosities for intensifying beats in its back half, unleashing full-on synth horror for the final, title track.

The Artefact is more directly hostile, more directly fitting a darkwave bill but focused on cathedrelic synths and a plodding, comparatively minimalist approach. The discovery of the subject matter gives way to neon-soaked psychedelia, like a Panos Cosmatos movie, then kicks into Carpenter style action for its concluding tunes.

Flesh’s opening half is, track by track, a little less distinct versus The Artefact, and the transition into beats is bumpy, but all of the music is just so immersive, giving us full experiences of two movies in a fairly short runtime.