Grooves & Samples #24: Manfred Hübler & Siegfried Schwab – Necronomania (1971)

Grooves & Samples is a weekly dive into old dusty crates of jazz, funk, soul and beyond.

A great source of sample fodder, and groovy music in general, is the realm of film soundtracks. Throughout the 60s and 70s in particular many films were scored by experimenting musicians who combined jazz, funk, and rock to craft many intriguing aural backgrounds for the silver screen.

One great piece of film score magic is the OST for the 1971 German/Spanish horror film titled Vampyros Lesbos. Yes, that’s right, lesbian vampires. Long before the current ‘sexy’ vampire craze surrounding Twilight and True Blood, this film was relatively successful around Europe. It was directed by prolific Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco, who made quite a few decent horror films in his day, but also made a large amount of low-budget weird porno. Vampyros Lesbos, is one of his more popular films that treads on both sides of his creativity with elements of both horror and porn.

For crate diggers and groove hunters, the soundtrack is really the gem of this film. It was his first film with a more edgy and experimental vibe. Franco was an avid fan of jazz music, and prior to this film had mainly jazz film scores. However this time, he worked together with German musicians Siegfried Schwab and Manfred Hübler for decidedly more psychedelic sounding music.

The original LP was released as Sexedelic – Sexedelic and also The Vampires’ Sound Incorporation – Psychedelic Dance Party and both are super rare and expensive to get your hands on. However the music is now readily available on various reissued LPs by the oddly named label Crippled Dick Hot Wax.

Our featured cut this week is “Necronomania”, a track that opens with some nice open piano that is just begging to be flipped. And the legendary DITC member Showbiz did just that. He reworked the song into a beat for AG to rap on, appropriately titled “Spit”, which appeared on their 1998 album Full Scale.