A startling soundtrack for a controversial early Nicolas Roeg film featuring the likes of Randy Newman, Mick Jagger, Ry Cooder, Merry Clayton, the Last Poets, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Ry Cooder, all made crazy yet coherent by former Phil Spector arranger Jack NItzsche. Cooder’s indelible slide work is featured on his songs, but elsewhere, it’s Lowell George giving the tunes a nervy, frazzled edge. If you ever wondered what Randy Newman singing a furious rocker about erectile dysfunction would sound like, “Gone Dead Train” is your tune.

Nicolas Roeg’s 1970 film Performance is perhaps best remembered for Mick Jagger’s turn as reclusive junky rockstar Turner, and his team up with Ry Cooder on the malevolent blues of the film’s musical centrepiece “Memo From Turner.” The soundtrack as a whole, however, is a cult classic in itself. Composed largely by Neil Young producer Jack Nitzsche, it mixes heavy narcotic blues rock with more esoteric sounds befitting the film’s surreal atmosphere. Randy Newman’s barnstorming “Gone Dead Train” bleeds into unsettling ambient compositions, baroque instrumentals, spooked middle eastern-inspired incantations and The Last Poet’s still revolutionary Black Power call to action, “Wake Up, Niggers.” With everything tied together by Cooder’s virtuoso slide guitar playing, it’s a dark, strange trip.