Soundtrack Saturday

The pair of recent New Order Sunday mixes and yesterday's Fadela, a single released on Factory Records in 1987, have led me to Salvation! Directed by Beth B, Salvation! was a 1987 film, black comedy about an evangelical/ televangelism sex and blackmail scandal, starring Viggo Mortensen, Exene Cervenka (of Los Angeles punk band X) and Stephen McHattie. I've seen the film once, way back in 1988 at a film night when I was a student at Liverpool university and I honestly couldn't tell you much about it- a very of its time film I think. 

The soundtrack however is a different story. It was released on Factory's Benelux label and its sister label Le Disques De Crepuscule and featured five New Order songs, four of which only ever saw the light of day on the soundtrack until the New Order Retro box set in 2002 included Let's Go on John McCready's disc. 

Let's Go

Let's Go is very New Order in 1987, shiny and bright, sounding like it could easily have been an album track on 1986's Brotherhood, not quite a lost gem perhaps but a missing New Order song all the same. The five songs were all recorded for the film- Touched By The Hand Of God was deemed worthy of a full Factory release as a single in 1987, remixed by Arthur Baker and released as FAC 193, the follow up to True Faith which was a big hit that summer.

Touched By The Hand Of God

In the Retro box set booklet Stephen comments that Touched... was a 'land speed song- writing attempt', written for the film, a case of sit down and write a song in a day. In Substance Hooky says he arrived at the band's Cheetham Hill studio first and wrote the juddering synth bassline on his own. Bernard turned up and was impressed enough to want to turn it into a song. The way Hooky describes this suggests that gaining Bernard's approval was important in the summer of 1987. 

The other three songs are Salvation Theme, Skullcrusher and Sputnik. Skullcrusher is short, bass-led, some feedback running through it and a gnarly Sumner guitar solo, a curio in the NO back catalogue.

Skullcrusher

As well as New Order the soundtrack has songs by Arthur Baker, Cabaret Voltaire, The Hood (the musical outfit for legendary New York doorman and party promoter John Hood) and Dominique (Davalos, an actor and musician, best known for her role in Howard The Duck, a film I had entirely forgotten about until now), and Jumpin' Jesus (Baker and Stewart Kimball with actor Stephen McHattie on vocals). Of all of these Cabaret Voltaire's Jesus Saves is the keeper, a 1987 industrial synth pop moment.