Italian progressive rockers Goblin created many film scores during the late 70s and early 80s for Italian schlockmeister Dario Argento, but their magnum opus is the score for George Romero’s epic B-Movie masterpiece Dawn of The Dead, and this is the best track from that score.

Film music often uses a fast tempo when accompanying a chase or when trying to be scary, but “L’alba Dei Mori Viventi” has the ghastly slow dragging tempo of a nightmare, perfectly mirroring the relentless onslaught of the zombies themselves, and crowned with a drunken, spinning-out-of-control ascending synth melody that sounds like it’s being performed by a zombie simultaneously waving a severed limb.

Due to wack international licensing agreements, the complete original score has never been released in the US on a domestic label, but a version is available here. You can find the DVD of Dawn of The Dead here. Goblin has a site here, and there’s a comprehensive fan site here.

David Byrne is performing for four nights in a row at Carnegie Hall, beginning tonight with a rare performance of his musical collaboration with Robert Wilson, The Knee Plays.

I was lucky enough to attend one of the first performances of The Knee Plays in Los Angeles in 1985, which had members of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band playing horns, but for some strange reason had a David Byrne lookalike reading the text, which was somewhat disconcerting but not entirely out of line with Mr. Byrne’s recurring themes of alienation, simulation, and transformation. It was a memorable show. In The Future is a favorite track from that project, never released on CD and very hard to come by these days. I’m taking it from the Urmson Vinyl Crate and digitizing it here for you.

More info about the original record is here, and info about this week’s shows is here.