Strut presents a major release for 2027 celebrating the expanded score from The Melt Goes On Forever, the acclaimed documentary exploring the life, art and times of American outsider artist David Hammons. The award winning original score by film composer and avid record collector Ramachandra Borcar features an extraordinary guest line up of jazz and avant-garde greats including Shabaka Hutchings, Marshall Allen (Sun Ra Arkestra), The Pyramids’ Idris Ackamoor, Ethio- jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke, Umar Bin Hassan (The Last Poets), among others.
David Hammons, revered as a visionary artist of his time, spent his career exploring the Black American experience through an ever-evolving range of forms and techniques. Working across sculpture, performance, drawing, video and body prints, Hammons rose to prominence in the early 1970’s and has continued to the present day, all the while remaining one of America’s most distinctive and influential artists.
Deeply inspired by Hammons’ artistic process, Ramachandra created his score as a musical equivalent of the iconic work seen in the film. Drawing from Hammons’ love of jazz, his influences from across the African diaspora and his unconventional use of found objects, Ram reflects this approach by combining a hypnotic spiritual jazz sound with a variety of African musical instruments and styles.
The inspiration was further tied together with a vast array of found objects used as both percussion and melodic instruments alongside amplified kalimbas, vintage synthesizers and dub-inspired effects. The curated roster of legendary musicians performing on the score are all veterans of the Afro-jazz landscape and represent both the rich musical legacy of the past, and today’s new wave of modern jazz voices.
This definitive soundtrack package presents expanded versions of the film cues alongside previously unreleased material in a fluid and expansive journey thru cross-generational jazz, dub and global influences.
The Melt Goes On Forever is available on gatefold Vinyl LP with download card (featuring bonus material), and on CD housed in a deluxe sleeve. Both formats are accompanied by a 28-page booklet tracing the career and unique work of David Hammons through extensive liner notes and rare photos.
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