soundtracks
Sep. 22nd, 2003 11:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfbThe Erin Brockovich soundtrack has, since it first came out, been my favorite music for the long dry drive through central California to LA. Thomas Newman's score is driven by themes that are propulsive, matching the constant rhythm of the road, but the mood changes every few minutes, making the gradual transitions of passing scenery seem more eventful than they really are.
And the main themes are somehow sly, suggesting that the bright sun and blue sky are somehow a facade behind which shady dealings are going on. This, of course, sounds like the film; this could mean that I'm getting my ideas more from the memory of the movie than from the music itself, or it could mean that Newman perfectly suited his music to the tone of the film. It probably means both of those.
Even the Sheryl Crow songs support this mood. "Redemption Day", halfway through the album, balefully describes the same atmosphere of corruption that the instrumental music implies. And "Every Day is a Winding Road" closes out the experience by insisting, despite all that, on the road's promise of open possibility. Or at least that's how I hear it.
The High Art soundtrack--mostly composed by Shudder to Think--is perfect desert music. Hints of middle-eastern tonalities subvert Arizona into Arabia, and the album is made up of eerie open spaces, of languid curves rising over ambient beds of sound, that match the heat and the slow-rising planes of sand along the highway.
I can't be suffering from post-cinematic suggestion in this case, because I've never seen the film. But my understanding is that it takes place in the art world of New York. So how come it feels more like a desert than a city? Maybe it feels like both, and I just don't know it yet.
Kremerata Baltica's recording Silencio, though often gorgeous, is less apt for the drive through New Mexico. I can't tell which piece is which, as I've left the track listing at home, but the high shimmering dissonances of the first work seem meant for icier expanses, and a later piece is nearly destroyed by woodblocks, placed much too close to the microphone and overpowering the rest of the work's subtlety.
I've used Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians as driving music all over the country, but I don't think it's ever been better than among the mesas of west Texas. The visible strata of the earth, all parallel but none uniform, are echoed by Reich's minimalist tactics, his steady pulsing and hundreds of similar but never quite identical measures. And the strategy of the piece--in which tension builds very slowly through repetition and then, in one moment, everything changes and a new direction is set--finds its match as I rise imperceptibly to the crest of a low-grade hill, and suddenly find a new vista before me.
I could go on--about Weird Nightmare, a predictable mismatch for daylight in Louisiana or anywhere else; about Brian Blade's soaring Perceptual and George Enescu's histrionic chamber music in the lush forests of Alabama and Georgia; about Hooverphonic, an entirely unexpected success in the Carolina mountains--but you get the idea.
And anyway, this story--in which I search at all times for the best extended work to fit the passing landscape--is misleading at best. In reality, I spend most of my time listening to some 3700 songs on shuffle play on my iPod, which--like Holiday Inn, Clear Channel, and the interstates themselves--makes a mush of everywhere.
And the main themes are somehow sly, suggesting that the bright sun and blue sky are somehow a facade behind which shady dealings are going on. This, of course, sounds like the film; this could mean that I'm getting my ideas more from the memory of the movie than from the music itself, or it could mean that Newman perfectly suited his music to the tone of the film. It probably means both of those.
Even the Sheryl Crow songs support this mood. "Redemption Day", halfway through the album, balefully describes the same atmosphere of corruption that the instrumental music implies. And "Every Day is a Winding Road" closes out the experience by insisting, despite all that, on the road's promise of open possibility. Or at least that's how I hear it.
The High Art soundtrack--mostly composed by Shudder to Think--is perfect desert music. Hints of middle-eastern tonalities subvert Arizona into Arabia, and the album is made up of eerie open spaces, of languid curves rising over ambient beds of sound, that match the heat and the slow-rising planes of sand along the highway.
I can't be suffering from post-cinematic suggestion in this case, because I've never seen the film. But my understanding is that it takes place in the art world of New York. So how come it feels more like a desert than a city? Maybe it feels like both, and I just don't know it yet.
Kremerata Baltica's recording Silencio, though often gorgeous, is less apt for the drive through New Mexico. I can't tell which piece is which, as I've left the track listing at home, but the high shimmering dissonances of the first work seem meant for icier expanses, and a later piece is nearly destroyed by woodblocks, placed much too close to the microphone and overpowering the rest of the work's subtlety.
I've used Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians as driving music all over the country, but I don't think it's ever been better than among the mesas of west Texas. The visible strata of the earth, all parallel but none uniform, are echoed by Reich's minimalist tactics, his steady pulsing and hundreds of similar but never quite identical measures. And the strategy of the piece--in which tension builds very slowly through repetition and then, in one moment, everything changes and a new direction is set--finds its match as I rise imperceptibly to the crest of a low-grade hill, and suddenly find a new vista before me.
I could go on--about Weird Nightmare, a predictable mismatch for daylight in Louisiana or anywhere else; about Brian Blade's soaring Perceptual and George Enescu's histrionic chamber music in the lush forests of Alabama and Georgia; about Hooverphonic, an entirely unexpected success in the Carolina mountains--but you get the idea.
And anyway, this story--in which I search at all times for the best extended work to fit the passing landscape--is misleading at best. In reality, I spend most of my time listening to some 3700 songs on shuffle play on my iPod, which--like Holiday Inn, Clear Channel, and the interstates themselves--makes a mush of everywhere.
