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Crlos: “City of Fluxes” (2003)

From City of the Future, a project of microsound.org

Andrei Tarkovsky’s legendary 1972 sci-fi psychodrama Solaris features a remarkable sequence about 30 minutes into the film, in which the character Burton speeds in an automobile through a vast, labyrinthine metropolis.  (The scene was filmed— where else?— in Tokyo.)  In an already strange film, this passage— entitled “City of the Future” in the DVD chapter headings— is a staggering and experimental gesture: nearly five minutes of montage evoking the dense, alien beauty of the modern urban experience.  The sound mix for this scene is what really makes it work: Tarkovsky’s longtime musical collaborator, Eduard Artemyev, creates a slowly building collage of industrial whirs and rumbles that makes you feel you are traveling not through the city, but into its throbbing concrete heart.

In the spring of 2003, sound artist and curator of microsound.org Kim Cascone invited members of the group’s email list to create remixes of the sound file extracted from the “City of the Future” scene in Solaris.  One of these tracks, “City of Fluxes,” was featured in Past Forward, the audio companion to issue #13 of the fabulous Cabinet magazine, entitled “Futures.”

October 18, 2009, 12:57pm

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David Shire: “Main Title”

From the soundtrack to The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

I believe I first stumbled upon this music through my still-ongoing quest for examples of twelve-tone jazz.  (Recommendations, anyone?)  Though the idiom here is much closer to funk than jazz— it was the 70s, after all— the fusion is nonetheless delightful.

The topicality of this post is purely coincidental.

July 01, 2009, 2:33pm

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Ennio Morricone: “L’Uomo dell Armonica” (“The Man with the Harmonica”)

From the album Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), the soundtrack to the 1968 film directed by Sergio Leone (original Italian title: C’era una volta il West)

Perhaps the most awesomely dramatic three-and-a-half minutes of music ever recorded.

Starting with the plaintive, reverberant harmonica riff that is one of the soundtrack’s many recurring musical symbols, the music builds to an imposing wall of sound comprising harpsichord, orchestral accompaniment, and an epic melody played on a distorted electric guitar.  Strings, chorus, and a military drumbeat bring the music to a glorious climax, then fade away, leaving the harmonica alone again.

Needless to say, the music has added power when heard in the context of the film.  It accompanies the final showdown between “Harmonica” (Charles Bronson) and Frank (Peter Fonda).  The slow unfurling of the music is carefully synched to the cinematic pacing, down to the last detail: the drums and chorus enter at the instant Frank’s jacket hits the ground.

February 18, 2009, 12:51pm