Roy Budd – The Internecine Project

First release on vinyl.
Recorded at CTS Wembley in 1974.

Limited Edition of 500 Copies

The Internecine Project is one of Roy Budd's early film scores that to some extent was overlooked.

When the film was released no soundtrack album was available. Then finally in 2000 a CD was combined with Something To Hide and Foxbat, that included a small part of The Internecine Project.

Not everything included was transferred or correctly identified, as many boxes had few details or cues with titles. Following a revisit to the audio archive of Roy's tapes in August 2018, a lot of unreleased music recorded for The Internecine Project was discovered.

The Internecine Project includes many of Budd's key musical elements – big theme with a decent tune, heavy orchestral riffs, tablas, hypnotic 'Budd grooves' and some strange electronic noises provided by myself. Roy was collecting a team of musicians who regularly met around this period including a rhythm section consisting of Chris Karan (tablas, perc and drums), Daryl Runswick (acoustic and electric bass), Ronnie Verrell (drums), Tristan Fry and Frank Riccotti (percussion).

The National Philharmonic Orchestra lead by violinist Sidney Sax had played on his previous scores. Recorded live to picture in the main studio at CTS Wembley, there were a lot of musicians present including myself, a vast amount of percussion and the pressure was on for Peggy who ran the studio bar/canteen.

Similar to some of his other early films where soundtracks were not originally released, additional production was required to complete this new album.

There are many special things within this score as it has musical elements that reference Get Carter as well as some of Roy's later work and sets the style of what was to come. There are some amazing performances that were lost in the edit or appallingly mixed when dubbed to film and until now have remained hidden treasures.

Paul Fishman, 2019

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Composed and recorded in 1974, The Internecine Project is a classic Roy Budd score, released here on vinyl for the very first time.

Coming from the 'peak' Roy Budd period – post Get Carter and pre Diamonds – this score neatly bridges the two with Carter-like hypnotic jazz driven cues and superb Diamonds style drama.

The film itself was a slick British thriller directed by Ken Hughes, set in a gloomy London and based around espionage and murder. The plot is simple; former spy Robert Elliot (the ice cool James Coburn – with interesting facial hair and equally as interesting wardrobe) is given a big government job. In order to cut all questionable ties and clean up his rather grubby past he devises a plan in which all of his dodgy associates unwittingly kill each other on the same night – and in alphabetical order. The films unusual and often misspelt name comes from the word internecine – the definition of which is 'conflict within a group'.

Before preparing this score for issue I sat down to watch the film. I have vague memories of seeing it on late night TV sometime in the 1980s when such B movies were regularly rolled out to fill TV graveyard slots, but had no memory of the Budd score at all. The music on this release comes directly from the original Budd masters, and interestingly a couple of the cues were dropped form the film, and some appeared in edited from. But here we have all the Budd cues that were made in their entirety.

The more you listen to this soundtrack the more you realise just how distinctive Roy Budd soundtracks really are. Few composers have such a knack and economy when it comes to tension, even fewer have a genuine voice. It's great to be able to add this to the growing list of Budd scores now available and finally on wax.

Rest in peace Roy. And we're still listening.

Jonny Trunk, 2019

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Licensed for this vinyl release from JHP.
Superbly mastered for this release by Paul Fishman
JBH079LP / 666017333717