Alain Goraguer – La Planète Sauvage (Bande Sonore Originale)

I bought this due to all the positive reviews I'd read indicating some psychedelic, funky, spacy proggy fun. This is mellow muzac mostly, with vey little to get excited about and I found it a boring listen. I still enjoy the film, but the music definitely needs to visuals in my opinion.

Had you ever watched Fantastic Planet? Back in the 1980s, here in America, chances are if you had, you would have seen it on the USA Network on Night Flight (I remember seeing it around 1988). Or maybe you were lucky to see it in some art cinema back in the 1970s (I can't imagine this being aired in a mainstream movie theater, but then I was born in 1972, far too young to seen this when it first came out, so I can't say for sure). I really was tripping out over the sci-fi animation and the '70s funky music that went with it. I am ever so glad that it's been available on VHS and (since 1999) DVD. But you have to be careful what version you get, as many early VHS versions were botched (a couple scenes missing), and the 1999 Anchor Bay DVD had subtitles you could not remove (and the English language Anchor Bay VHS also had subtitles that didn't need to be there, but made sense if you bought the French language VHS on Anchor Bay). In France, the movie was called La Planète Sauvage.

What's really surprising is a soundtrack album to this film ever existed, and I'm glad it did. It was originally released on the EMI/Pathé Marconi label. The original LP is quite rare and a collector's item, so I am happy that it's been reissued.

Music was by Alain Goraiguer, and what you have here is spacy '70s funk, at times reminding me how Pink Floyd might have sounded like if they wanted to back up Isaac Hayes for Shaft. It has a lot of that same type of Shaft-like funk, with lots of wah-wah guitar, plus electric piano and clavinet. If you never seen the movie, you might find those recurring themes a bit repetitive, but in the long run, it makes sense in context of the movie, plus these recurring themes are variants. There are some pieces that do differ from the movie itself, so this makes purchasing the soundtrack album essential.