About a decade ago Ollie Teeba and I embarked upon a session to re-soundtrack The War of the Worlds using Richard Burton’s excellent narrative for Jeff Wayne‘s version as the glue. That session was never finished and the audio languished for years until Ollie rebooted it and recorded a 45 minute version a few years back, presenting unique CDRs to friends and family one Xmas.

It was good but it was dense and the spoken word sometimes relentless, so I suggested he spread things out, play more of the underlying music and extend it to an hour for the show. And he has, on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the radio play first being broadcast across America and sparking a panic that the world was being invaded.

Ollie has re-styled the piece with large helpings of 70’s soundtrack work and psyche rock, digging into his favourite genres outside of Hip Hop. Well known pieces by Axelrod and Schifrin take on a new light when coupled with Burton’s story-telling and many seem tailor made for this presentation. Re-scores of famous books are pretty unique and I think this is the first time we’ve featured anything like this on Solid Steel.

You can hear Ollie performing as part of Soundsci in Bristol this evening at Sip The Juice in Stokes Croft. His Herbaliser partner in crime, Jake Wherry, will be holding it down tonight in London at Village Underground with Jaga Jazzist, Mr Thing, Kelpe and Tom Central.