2.22.2019

SNDTK

It's amazing how hard a time I am having writing not-even-that-many-words and not feeling somehow fake about it. Jaded, I.

Suffice it to say, today I clicked on Blissblog like I always do, and today I found out from Simon's site that Pitchfork has published lists of best movie scores and soundtracks that Simon has contributed to and, overall, the list doesn't seem that bad. Most Pitchfork lists piss me off. Glad that Blade Runner "won" and that some hazy-headed intern didn't write about it.

That being said, I was shocked, SHOCKED, shocked, to see, unless I read this thing too dam quickly, uh, and maybe I did, um, no Tangerine Dream?

This is why I don't write about pop culture anymore, though.

There's something very odd about the persistence of the idea of canonization without any sort of system of values that is meant to be defined by said canon.

So I'm just some dude vaguely aggravated by the fact that the score of a 30-something-year-old movie isn't being recognized by a website I don't care about because what?

This almost feels like sports right now. Who is the greatest second baseman of all time? What should I feel if my favorite one is omitted from that list?

I didn't mean to go this route.

I just wanted to post a video of some music that I like. I do want you to like it too, if you don't already.

Here it is.



3 comments:

SIMON REYNOLDS said...

that is cool actually

i think one of the things with votes for scores / soundtracks is that people rarely if ever vote for a soundtrack / score to a movie they don't like or rate. so it could be that are many great OSTs languishing on forgotten or not fondly regarded movies.

so that maybe we why Tangerine Dream didn't get the nod (is there a generally-deemed-to-be-great movie that they soundtracked?)

on the synth-OST front i actually was surprised that Moroder didn't get a nod for Midnight Express but then again it's mostly "The Chase" that is killer there

but going back to the great OST / no so great movie issue - i guess it makes sense, if the point of the music is to serve the images, but the images are inferior to the soundtrack, that that's necessarily going put the OST in an odd zone.

SIMON REYNOLDS said...

that weird percussive burbling one in the middle (about sixteen minutes in0 is really cool

:-p said...

Yes! Lots of cool moments. IIRC correctly those bubbling sounds correspond to a scene during which the protagonist is unable to prevent his father's Porsche from sliding into a lake outside of Chicago.

Personally, I am floored by the Reich homages of "The Dream Is Always The Same" and "Love On A Real Train", the latter of which is sort-of-covered towards the end of Global Communications' 76:14.

This movie, and soundtrack, hit me hard when I was young. Just another kid in a basement enthralled by the real possibilities, promised by sounds and images, that I thought were waiting for me in a few years' time. It's not just that I was young and everything was possible. Rents were cheaper, people less risk-averse, spaces less visible; unmapped. Or maybe I really believed that late night wandering through deserted streets listening to synthesizers would yield some sort of spiritual transformation and personal transcendence. I still try.

In regards to your comments on the issue of quality, well, that's actually why I chose Risky Business. Mostly, Tangerine Dream did interesting soundtracks for un-interesting movies, so I can see how that would reduce their chances. Sorcerer was a tough watch (though I should give it a second go) and I still haven't seen Michael Mann's Thief, which is right down my alley. Otherwise, well, yeah.

I can see both sides of the argument easily: the music is just the music or the music is meant to correspond with image so if the image is bad, the music becomes so. I think the latter is a bit unfair, but then again, I can't think of any movie soundtracks or scores that I would want to listen to that are associated with films I actually and actively dislike.

Risky Business is (partially, correctly) usually written off as just another 80s teen sex comedy sort of thing. That film, though, also exists as a perhaps too-subtle satire of the nascent materialism of the 1980s and the decoupling of social, financial and educational privilege from any notion of public responsibility, and, even as a sex comedy, there's an atypical ambiguity about it all, a sensitivity to a loss of innocence more-keenly-felt (I wonder to what extent Joel Goodson and America are meant to be conflated?). Most of the TD music corresponds to some very-stylized, even poetic, bits of filmmaking that break up the rhythm of the film in a way that is very satisfying; the music and image do correlate.

Regarding Moroder, I haven't seen Midnight Express and don't know the soundtrack beyond "The Chase" but that is definitely a worthwhile mention, if only because Drive (Chromatics/Italo-inspired soundtrack) made it on the list.