Terry Riley

condition (record/cover): NM / EX+

The original soundtrack to Lifespan (1975), a low-budget thriller directed by Alexander Whitelaw starring Klaus Kinski, Tina Aumont and Hiram Keller, about a Dutch biochemist murdered for an immortality serum. Pressed by the French label Stip, distributed regionally, and almost immediately out of print: original copies remain scarce. The same music was issued in France on Philips (9120 037) as Le secret de la vie, the film's French release title.

Riley plays solo on Yamaha YC-45D with tape delay, the same instrument-and-process setup as Persian Surgery Dervishes and Shri Camel. The soundtrack runs to two side-long pieces of modal improvisation in his classic mid-seventies mode, written to picture but standing easily on their own as independent concert works. The 2007 Elision Fields CD Les Yeux Fermés & Lifespan reissued the material alongside Riley's other 1972 film score (for Joel Santoni's Les Yeux Fermés), with the original LP remaining the collector's object.