When you think about the soundtrack to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, what leaps to mind? The emphatic prog score by Goblin, sure, but what else? That bizarre orchestral Muzak that plays over certain scenes in the mall—a wobbly, flatulent combination of tuba, xylophone and tambourine that sounds like it was composed and performed by a marching band from a lunatic asylum. The song has a name–it’s called “The Gonk,” which couldn’t be more appropriate—and it’s one of a handful of tracks from the De Wolfe Music Library that Dawn’s executive producer, Dario Argento, utilized to flavor the movie’s soundtrack (which is why he shares the “Music By” credit with them). Since library tracks are the red-headed stepchild of the recording industry, the majority of these tunes were left off any official soundtrack releases and remained a mystery to all but the most obsessive Romero fans and music collectors – until Jonny Trunk of the U.K.’s Trunk Records and Joel Martin did the legwork and found the 14 library cuts that comprise Dawn’s “forgotten” soundtrack, and compiled them on this disc.

If you’re not familiar with the movie, you should know that there’s not a lot of rockin’ going on here – the closest thing to a pop song is “I’m A Man” by the Electric Banana, which was the handle that the Pretty Things used for library cues and soundtrack music. It’s an amusing, countryfied piss take on male egoism, and is used perfectly in the movie (over the redneck shootout in the woods). The rest of the material here is spooky synth instrumentals and orchestral tracks that are still capable of inducing a few goosebumps (my vote for the creepiest goes for the throbbing “Sinistre,” which plays over the zombie stalking Flyboy in the boiler room, and “Cosmogony Part 1,” which I believe is heard during the scene in the slum apartment basement), and one long aural montage of oddball cuts – an insanely hyper football march, a sort of nu-Charleston with a banjo break, an electronic tango, and a long, classical piece on Moog – that serves as the musical backdrop for the main characters as they indulge in the mall’s material temptations.