James Stevens

As is often the case with vintage b-movies, it's the poster for the 1967 Amicus production of They Came From Beyond Space that draws you in. The curvaceous space woman and her menacing alien team firing upon a terrorised planet Earth suggests more action than perhaps the film delivers, but it does the job. The movie is a typically low-budget affair - a sci-fi drama (released as a double bill with The Terrornauts) directed by Freddie Francis, the celebrated cinematographer who went on to shoot The Elephant Man and Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear. Whilst it’s a cheap affair, it’s also good fun, helped along by a tense, swinging, jazz inflected score. The opening titles grab you immediately with psychedelic lighting and a swaggering big band theme by British composer James Stevens. Having worked as an uncompromising avant-garde composer for the BBC in the 1950's, Stevens was skilled in blending unusual and dynamic sounds into mainstream projects. A lifelong pacifist, CND campaigner and buddhist, Stevens was highly regarded in serious music circles but failed to gain wider acclaim during his lifetime. He passed away in 2012 leaving a sizeable collection of classical, operatic and experimental works alongside his soundtrack recordings.

Despite lengthy investigations, the only surviving copy of They Came From Beyond Space's score that I could locate was a musty 1/4 inch compilation tape tucked away in his archive at the British Library. After careful digitisation by the Save Our Sounds team, additional work was needed to remove heavy wow & flutter along with some nasty tape scrunches. It was a challenging process but hopefully we've managed to present the best available version of this groovy, long forgotten soundtrack. The score has a distinctly Brit-Jazz, Soho swing feel with it's bombastic themes countered by moments of drawn out suspense and some lovely, pastoral grandeur. Considering jazz wasn't his main repertoire, Steven's music stands up alongside 1960's big-band contemporaries such as Michael Garrick, Tubby Hayes, John Surman, Ian Carr, Mike Westbrook, Alan Skidmore and Tony Oxley.