A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THIS ALBUM:

In 1990 I got a call from my friend, filmmaker Marina Sargenti. 

She asked if I’d be interested in writing the theme song to a movie she’d just directed called Mirror, Mirror. 

I went over to her place and she showed me a rough cut. 

 

It was a cool, creepy horror film, chock full of great character actors like the great scream-queen Karen Black, Yvonne De Carlo (Lily Munster!), Stephen Tobolowsky, and William Sanderson. 

And interestingly for a horror flick, it was not only directed by a woman, but written by women as well. Pretty unusual for the horror genre. 

So it had a unique angle going in.

 

Marina and I figured out where the song should go and for how long, and I went back to my house and wrote In My Arms.

The scene took place in the 1920’s so I tried to write the tune in that old-timey style.

 

I did a demo of the song in my little home studio with Scott Connor on drums, myself on piano and bass, Mark Maxwell on sax, and a trumpet player who was a terrific but managed to ruffle my feathers right out of the chute with little insults directed toward me under-his-breath that he thought I couldn’t hear. 

Maybe he thought he should be producing the session or something, who knows? 

Maybe he felt that doing this demo was beneath his station as a jazz purist or something. 

Anyway, fuck him, I’ve conveniently forgotten his name.

 

I played the demo for Marina and she flipped.

 

A couple weeks later the same group of musicians (including the trumpet dick) went into some weird little studio in Toluca Lake (I didn’t choose it - the production team did) to cut the song. 

Teensy little place (not enough room to swing a cat), very old equipment (not in a good way), but we all piled into the main tracking room and managed to cut the track in just a few takes.

 

Marina loved the final version of the song and asked if I could also do a couple of incidental pieces of music as well.

She asked for “Telephone Muzak” and “Church Music”.

I put together a few versions of each of those and she chose the ones she liked best.

 

I also recorded a line of dialogue that made the film. I played the telephone voice of a character called Father Jeffries. I think my line was… “Hello? Hello?”

 

The movie came out, was panned in the press, no one saw it, and it died a quick death.

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Then years later, thanks to VHS and then DVD rentals, it developed a cult audience.

In the late nineties, when the internet first got going for real, I started receiving emails from people from here in the States, and also from other countries, wanting to know if I was the guy that did the song for the film. That was pretty cool. I still get those emails and DM’s from people once in awhile asking me about the film. Very cool!

 

I’ve included both the demo and the final version of In My Arms (personally I like the demo better than the final), three versions of Muzak, and six versions of Church.

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The master versions of these demos were stored on cassette way back in the day, and had been living in old shoe boxes for 30 years, so there’s a little degradation in sound where the oxide was falling of the tape. However, I’ve tried to repair it as close to the original sound as possible.

 

The producers ended up making a Mirror Mirror sequel, then a third one to complete a trilogy, but I’ve yet to see those. 

Maybe someday.

 

Overall, working on this film was a very fun experience to have at the age of 25.

 

Well, except for that fucking trumpet player. What a wank.

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I hope you check this music out.

Thanks.

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Walker