Jean Bernard Raiteux – Les Demons

Finders Keepers has no shortage of exotica, erotica and psychsploitation among its ranks. Hell, its pretty much the reason to keep running to its embrace, and they up the ante with a reissue of French composer Jean-Bernard Raiteux aka Jean-Michel Lorgere’s score to the very b-movie Les Demons. The movie comes from a treasure trove that Finders and B-Music have touched on before, the film catalog of Jess Franco, here working under the Anglicized alias of Clifford Brown. The film follows much of the same themes that he’s found before, horror, witchcraft, demonic possession and naturally, nunsploitation. Can’t make that up, that’s a man’s motus operandi right there. He literally has more than one film that might fit the term nunsploitation.

As if this weren’t reason enough to investigate, Franco had a habit of hiring groundbreaking composers to work out scores to his films and Raiteux is working his lush psych ass off on this one. Titles like “Kathleen Writhing,” The Weakness of Rosalinda,” and “Three Serpents to Karen’s Dwelling” feel like they should have schlocky porn connotations, but they’re actually top tier psych that far outstrip any of the scenes they underscore. This is a psych odyssey, completely instrumental but no less lysergic. Raiteux ropes in psych-folk, burning acid guitar and a creeping ambience that’s not always present in the the garage-psych indebted debris of the ’60s. Its a higher minded psych and full on fun because of it. Finders won’t ever really steer you wrong. Andy Votel is digging more crates than most of us will ever have time to find, but no reason not to embrace it when it comes your way.




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