The Severed Arm/Messiah Of Evil - Phillan Bishop

[1972]

This avant-garde composer has just three scores to his name and what glorious works they were in the pre-Tangerine Dream/John Carpenter era of electronic scores. Who even knows if these were existing pieces or specifically arranged for these three films? I'm sure he was probably an academic connected to a university that probably had an electronic/computer music research centre but I can't be sure because I can find zero primary sources of  information on the guy. Phillan Bishop is so mysterious I'm inclined to think he never even existed except as a pseudonym. Having said that he was one of the essential pioneers in the first half of the 70s with regard to the development of synth and electronic film scoring.

The only biographical info I can find is that Bishop was born 1948 and died 1991 at 43 years of age and was the nephew of Jazz pianist Hampton Hawes. That's it!

The Severed Arm's disconcerting reverberations, clanky bloops, unsettling rudimentary synthetical signals, eerie tones, clangorous drones and archaic unearthly textures are classic mid 20th century gestures from the electro-acoustic world.

It's unbelievable that Creel Pones have never done some kind of archival release of Bishop's delightfully deranged scores.

[1973]

Youtube channel Fish Man on youtube manages to extract 4 minutes and 13 seconds of the unsettling Messiah of Evil score here in this clip. Bishop definitely achieved peak eeriness for this eerie of the eeriest movies as heard in the first three and a half eerie minutes here then in the last forty five seconds we get those absurdly heavy clanks, a masterpiece of horror sound design as is the apprehensive whirling synthetic delirium of the finale. It all perfectly matches the surreal horror of the antics in the sea-side town of Point Dune.  

 

[1975]

A swirling vortex of ominous electronics, clanks, scrapes and buzzing bleeps put through an echo chamber, discordant gothic piano and harmonica reverb-ed to oblivion, sinister chirps, off kilter synthetic bursts of sound, echoing atmospheres of malignancy and ending with spooky toy-town music box shenanigans amongst an array of blustery gusts. 

Phillan Bishop was a sublime sorcerer of scary synthetic sound: A gift to these horror film makers.