The Vampires of Dartmoore - Dracula's Music Cabinet (1969) [Remastered 2009]

You couldn't script it... You are nineteen minutes and twenty-two seconds in to your peak-season cruise around the Kraut-schlock peripheries. To say the trip has been an eventful one would be an understatement - you don't know what to expect next and your 12" x 12" Germanic tour guide has proved quite unreliable thus far. As your diamond tipped vessel maneuvers through the grooves of your 9th horrific attraction (entitled 'The Soaked Body') the soundtrack awkwardly becomes background music and you are overcome with the sound of gushing water...'Help!' you think sarcastically, the music, or is that muzak, is drowning!

This is the movie soundtrack to a film that never existed. This is the movie soundtrack by the band that was never requested. These were the sound library musicians who had to invent their own clients and imaginary cast, crew and plot to get their music heard, by a niche audience, before floating deep into the depths of the rare record reservoir gasping for breath.

To take a cinematic cue the record in question is the euro-trash-Pop equivalent of Jean Renoirs tragic / triumphant Boudu character who as a homeless, confused and desolate down-and-out plunged to the depths to be unwillingly rescued, resuscitated then after gradually winning the hearts of an entire family becomes respected and revered as royalty. Over 20 years after the mad scientists, Dr. Horst and Ackermann, first breathed life into this short-lived beast, brave and intrepid vinyl explorers have sporadically returned to the doors of 'Dracula's Music Cabinet' to resurrect the sonic spooks and mutated melodies to share with nerds, mods, rockers, Hip-hHoppers, Psych-nuts and Kraut-siders alike.

The lifeless corpses of 'The Vampires Of Dartmoore' that lay six feet beneath the belly of the 'Eins Deutschmark' bins has since crept through the record collections of the aforementioned social circles devouring continental currencies and demanding random ransoms of 200 Euros plus sweat, tears (of laughter) and a lot of blood.