02 roy budd - get carter ost (1971)

02 roy budd - get carter soundtrack (1971)

the get carter soundtrack, written by the film composer roy budd, was given to me by my brother in 2005 already. i enjoyed it from the start, but grew to love it even more in 2006. this is 70's jazz music, becoming very groovy at times. the record is a mix of calm, quiet tracks which sometimes have a psychedelic twist to them, and loud danceable funk songs, often with female vocals. it's hard finding videos for this one, but i'll drop in some wherever i can.

for a roy budd bio, i had to check allmusic.com, because i didnt know anything about him. well, apparently he was somewhat of a musical prodigy, teaching himself how to play the piano by ear before the age of six and started to work as a full-time professional musician when he was 16. most of the records he did were scores. allmusic says that get carter was his most-appreciated one.

the opening sequence of the movie with the opening theme gives a good idea of how roy budd's music sounds:



in case you find the music a bit too lame, keep in mind that the whole score was written to fulfil the purpose of accompanying the pictures. in the end of the video, you can hear a very short bit of looking for someone, another track of this album.

as i said before, the record can be divided into what could be "regular" tracks and what are called "themes". the main title theme, get carter, appears quite a few times throughout the cd. the intro itself is a version of it, too.

you can listen to the main version here:



i guess that this is one of the things i really like about this record: it's not a bundle of individual songs that you listen to in a row. instead, you got themes popping up again now and then like reccurring ideas, or different strings of a movie plot.
also worth mentioning is that the theme songs are by no means shorter than the other ones, which makes get carter quite a long-lasting experience.

and here's how the "classical" songs work:



one of my favourite songs is getting nowhere in a hurry. you can listen to it on myspace. in fact, all four tracks on the profile page are from the get carter soundtrack.

my definite number one track hallucinations i couldnt find anywhere, though. there is an okay remix version made for this youtube video:



it gets quite close to the original idea of the song, but unfortunately it is based on the instrumental. the vocal track underlines the structure of the song, makes it even more dreamy and weary. imaging these lines sung over the music slowly, very carefully:

"hallucinations
strange sensations
hallucinations
mind creation
why do i, why do i
try to fly to the sky

hallucinations
send me drifting
...
what i feel isn't real
am i lost? double-crossed

earth, sea, sun, sky
the world beneath my feet
slipping by"

only records number one gets more mystical.