For the score to the 1973 vampiric drama film Ganja & Hess, Sam Waymon uses elements of soul, psychedelic, gospel, and experimental electronic to effectively communicate the weight of stress and cultural pressures upon the lead characters, with (for example) strains of old jazz threaded through echoing gasps and hyperventilation, simple string instruments plucked over intense drone beams, and chanting giving way to clear melodies and horrified screams.
Like the movie, the score is strikingly ahead of its time in terms of content while recognizably using the forms of its day, and while the splitting of the tracks is done in odd ways , it still achieves a bizarre sort of hypnotic momentum while spinning about from one piece of juxtaposition to the next. Though it took almost half a century for the music to receive its own release, it’s aged quite well (though it is distinctly early-’70s), and is certainly worth hunting down for fans of well-made experimentalism.
Scrambled Brains 