Interstellar and Time Away

Regrettably, I haven't documented the trials and triumphs of EJ’s infancy as meticulously as I did her sister P. This is due in no small part to the job hunt, but also because EJ had a little trouble getting off the ground in the beginning. She had, to use the pediatric term, colic - which really means that she cried a lot.

And she did cry - a lot. Her sensitive tummy often made her inconsolable, and because of this the late night feedings that I came to enjoy with P were not quite as peaceful as I anticipated. It seemed pointless to have music playing when she clearly could not have heard it over her own screaming. When she finally did calm down, my wife and I both welcomed the quiet.

I had every intention of shaping EJ’s musical world as I have her sister's, but she clearly was going to take a different path.  To start, I started playing “wind down” music between dinner and bedtime.  Music for 18 Musicians was often first choice, followed closely by an album that I had purchased last year during the last push of the Superhero Theme Project but that only clicked for me earlier this year - Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar soundtrack.

This soundtrack received quite a bit of acclaim when it was released, and even though I had not seen the movie, it impressed me when I put it in rotation. In many ways, Interstellar struck me as a relatively traditional soundtrack when compared to Zimmer's more recent work, with strings and organs outlining its grandiose meditations rather than the earth-shattering intensity of Inception or the physics-bending atmospherics of The Dark Knight. Despite its more orthodox approach, it relayed a sense of exploratory fascination that clearly reflected the movie’s scope, even capturing the ominous wonder of a water planet with mountain-sized tsunamis covering its entire surface. 

I thought the Interstellar soundtrack was breathtakingly beautiful at the time, but it did not stick. I shelved it until I finally saw the movie earlier this year. Interstellar, as a film, affected me. It is certainly good science fiction, but one of its underlying messages spoke to me personally in a way that took me off guard, and it drastically altered my perception of its soundtrack.

The movie contains a plot line where, due to the tenets of relativity and space travel, a lifetime passes for a child while her parent experiences hours. In one scene, the father leaves his daughter to go on a mission that he is convinced is for the good of mankind, but that will most likely take him away from her for a substantial part of her lifetime.  As he drives away, she begs him to stay.



This scenario alludes to a real-world paradox that many parents face: they go off to work for the benefit of their families, an act which takes them away from their families. There is a deep, dark fear that we will look up one day from our work to find the children that we have been working so hard for have grown and that we never really took the time to know them. The elegant beauty of this soundtrack also harbors the pain and angst of this heartbreaking struggle. It felt even more meaningful when I went back to work a mere four weeks after EJ’s birth and was expected to act as if nothing had happened. Or as if I was getting more than three hours sleep a night.

Pediatricians say that most infants will grow out of colic, and fortunately that has been the case for EJ. She has turned a corner in the past few weeks and is much more peaceful in the evenings, so I came up with an alternate plan for late night music. Since my old ZEN MP3 jukebox finally bit the dust last year, decided to use my standalone bluetooth speaker.  It sounds surprisingly good for how small it is, so I uploaded five or six appropriate albums (Including Interstellar) on my phone. I was excited about cycling through them.

By this time, however, we were working on staging the house for its sale and the bluetooth speaker got unintentionally packed away in storage in the process. It won’t be seen again for several months. Looks like EJ’s Interstellar experience may be coming back at a future date - but probably in less than seven years.

May Roundup: The Battle Against Colic

I keep saying this: so much has happened and keeps happening that taking time to write meaningful posts devoted to singular albums takes time away from other important things.  My youngest daughter EJ, coming up on three months old, is one of those things.  She is doing well, although she has been much fussier than her older sister P was. She’s been struggling through tummy problems – reflux, gas, milk sensitivity, etc. Lots of lost sleep, however, and frustrations from us as to how to comfort her.  Overall, she is improving, but getting her through this has been very demanding. She’s cute and very sweet when she is feeling well, though, and my family has been INCREDIBLY helpful.

Aside from helping EJ grow out of her “colic,” as it is traditionally called, there are other major aspects of my life that are requiring a lot of attention.  I am not entirely at liberty to reveal the details just yet, but positive things are definitely afoot. This has caused the classic writer’s block situation: you sit down with a few minutes to write and have no idea where to begin. For now, the “roundup” format seems to be the solution for documenting my listening and, at the very least, bookmarking the events of 2016, so here is what has gone through the player since Spring Break.



Hans Zimmer & Junkie XL – Batman v Superman OST: I began following Hans Zimmer in 2013 when I discovered the Dark Knight soundtrack, and I have seen a logical progression of his work since then. I think, however, that after Zimmer invested so much in the Dark Knight soundtracks, it was a bit too much to ask for him to reinvent Batman for this entertaining but flawed version of the character (although the Wonder Woman theme you hear above is pretty great, and not too far off in tone from my own impressions).

The Antlers – Burst Apart: I put this on my wish list back when I was into Beach House, and I think that if I had listened to it then I would have connected with it more readily. To be frank, however, I’m kind of not in the mood right now.

Emerson, Lake, and Palmer – Tarkus: I have always been an advocate of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s musicianship, but in my opinion, their weird chemistry resulted in a somewhat uneven body of work. Tarkus, however, is one of their strongest, most cohesive efforts, and the one that I put in rotation in tribute to Emerson after the announcement of his tragic death.

Storm Corrosion: I got this dark, atmospheric collaboration between Steven Wilson and Mikael Ackerfeldt a couple of years ago and promptly lost the disc. I was pleased as punch to find it double-stacked inside my Tarkus case.

Prince – Purple Rain: Inexplicably, I was listening to Purple Rain almost the entire month of March before Prince also fell to the terrible string of losses we have recently suffered in the music world. Purple Rain was clearly his breakthrough - his Sgt. Pepper’s or Dark Side of the Moon, and is unquestionably a classic album in its own right.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – EARS: Without much more than a teaser clip I ran across online, I picked up EARS driven by my curiosity surrounding the Buchla Music Easel. The album blew me away – I listened to it endlessly for days on end and it still captures my attention every time it comes through the rotation.

Bobgoblin – Love Lost for Blood Lust: Erstwhile 90’s power pop group Bobgoblin have been teasing their potential return for several years now. This collection picks up seamlessly from where their localized classic The 12 Point Master Plan left off way back when.

Wild Ones – Keep it Safe: My initial impression was to focus my view of the Wild Ones through the lens of Chvrches' electro pop classic The Bones of What You Believe. While there is some overlap and the album is quite good, I still can’t say as I have connected with it in a way that feels like it will pay off.

Health – Death Magic: Although their approach to manipulating sound seems to have some common ground with Battles, the result seems to overlay the noisy approach of Ministry with the Europop of the Pet Shop Boys. I’m surprised that so few people are framing them in 90s industrial nostalgia.

Bombino – Azel: It had been quite awhile since I had listened for a guitar hero, and some of the press on North African guitarist Bombino might warrant this kind of attention. His style requires liberal use of open-string drones, which can wear thin after a full album, but his energy, melodic sense, and nimble fingers keep my attention.

Tim Heckler – Virgins: Inspired by EARS, I attempted to dive into Virgins, another ambient album that has been sitting on my wish list for a while. It is an entirely different experience than EARS – it certainly did not grab my attention in the same way, but it is a compelling album nonetheless.

O Brother – Endless Light: The description that piqued my interest in this album was that it sounded like “TOOL meets Muse.” I would say that is seems more like “Mastodon meets Ours,” which for some people might seem like splitting hairs – but not for me.

John Williams: The Return of the Jedi OST: In our house, Friday has evolved into “Pizza and Star Wars Night,” which means that P gets to watch her favorite, “The one where Darth Vader becomes good again.” As a result, despite my attempts to connect with The Force Awakens and Attack of the Clones as "new" soundtracks earlier this year, Return of the Jedi might end up being the Star Wars soundtrack representative by year’s end.

The Superhero Theme Project: Revived and Retconned

Earlier this year, I reported that her interest seemed to be on the wane for the Superhero Theme Project, and at the time, this was true. She was requesting to listen to the playlist with less and less frequency.  It would not be unusual, however, for me to catch her humming The Great Gate of Kiev when she was playing by herself. It seemed like something was rolling around in there.  Then about a month ago, for whatever reason, her interest returned. She began requesting Aquaman in the car, so I would start with The Great Gate of Kiev and just let the playlist play on shuffle. She often wanted to sit in the car and listen to music in the driveway after we had finished our commute home. One day, she asked if we could listen to superheroes in the house, so I pulled up several good quality orchestral videos on YouTube and we watched them together. This whetted her appetite even further.



Then a complication arose. She was looking at my phone while listening to Hawkgirl, (AKA the Game of Thrones theme), and began trying to spell out the name of the song. Clearly, Hawkgirl doesn’t start with a “G” sound, so she was justifiably confused.  Did I mention she just turned 3?

While I was more than happy that our work with the alphabet was starting to pay off, she was going to catch on to me very quickly.  I took some time to reformat all the files,  renaming them and editing the tags so that the character’s names would appear as the various compositions played (although I kept the composer’s names intact). Additionally, and this is the kicker, I reassigned album art to each track so that a picture of the superhero would display as the track played. Also, in true comic book fashion, I did my first, and probably only, retcon of a character.

Ever since last year, I have regretted adopting Main Title/Trinity Infinity from The Matrix to represent the Martian Manhunter. After nine months, she could still not identify it when it played. It just didn’t have enough melodic material as a standalone composition to stick, and it stuck out in the playlist because of this shortcoming.

When I revamped the list with graphics, I reassigned the Martian Manhunter’s theme with my original first instinct: Dream is Collapsing from the Inception soundtrack. I had initially dismissed this track because I envisioned the superhero playlist to be purely orchestral, and the prominent electric guitar in the introduction went against this conception. I continued listening to the Inception soundtrack on my own, however, and never gave the Matrix soundtrack a second look.



My justification for appropriating music from The Matrix was that shimmering chord progression that I playfully called “the Matrix Sound.” More than anything else, I thought that musical sound effect carried an ethereal otherworldliness that summed up J’onn J’onzz. That sound effect by itself, however, was never used in an independent musical fashion anywhere on any of the Matrix soundtracks. It always lined up with the action of the film, and without the film’s narrative to provide some structure there was just not enough for her to hold on to.

There is also, however, an “Inception Sound” to be found, although it is identified less by shimmering string chords and more by thunderous, blasting brass and percussion. While this incredible, physics-defying sound is also inextricably wound up in the narrative of the movie, Zimmer also quite brilliantly places it within musical structures that can stand on their own.

In my mind, Inception sits between The Dark Knight and Man of Steel, the middle entry in a trilogy of Zimmer’s soundtracks that have captured my interest in the past few years. While it inhabits the same dark, foreboding tone of its predecessor, it also has the startling dynamic impact that defines Man of Steel. No matter how low the volume level is on Inception, it creates the sense that it is rattling the very edges of universe, threatening to overwhelm and consume all sounds in its path.

Considering my increasing interest in Hans Zimmer’s work, it seemed appropriate for him to be represented on the playlist, and I would not have a more suitable chance than with The Martian Manhunter. I wasn’t so sure that the Little One would buy it, though. The last time I tried to pull a fast one on her, she called me out.  It was clear, though, that she was not connecting with the Matrix track. I felt pretty sure that with the picture of J’onn J’onzz on the display, she would not question the change too much.

I was right. She totally bought it. In fact, I think she likes is a lot better, especially when “The Inception Sound” begins to appear at the end of Dream is Collapsing (1:34 in the clip above), and we both start chanting “J’ONN J’OOOONZ……J’ONN J’OOOONZ” at the top of our lungs.

Success.

To go to the previous post in this series, click HERE.
To go to the next one, click HERE..

Zimmer's "Man of Steel:" an Impossible Balance

It was a couple of days after Christmas, and we were at my in-law’s vacation condo. I quietly crawled into bed between a feverish toddler and an exhausted wife. Both were finally asleep, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, I had a quiet moment. I slipped in a pair of earbuds and pulled up Hans Zimmer’s Man of Steel soundtrack, which I received from my family. I had been looking forward to getting a chance to sit down and listen to it, and although this was not entirely the setting I had anticipated, I did not want to pass it up.

It was as if I had stepped into another world.


From elegant themes that roll like thunder across distant hills to percussive polyrhythms that border on cacophony, Man of Steel is majestic, expansive, and gracefully melodic, and it continues the exploration of sound that Zimmer began on The Dark Knight and sustained into Inception. Across my examination of these soundtracks, I increasingly hold the opinion that Zimmer represents the best in contemporary soundtrack composition. Man of Steel does nothing but reinforce this view, especially the way in which he augments the orchestra without challenging its identity. Twelve drumset players, metal sculptures, and a steel guitar “choir” hardly represent the instrumentation of the average studio orchestra. That he can make this unique ensemble work as a whole is a feat of his artistic vision.



In any ensemble, an essential concern is balance. Musicians playing a group must instinctively play in relationship to another if all the important parts of the composition are to be heard. Man of Steel’s instrumentation, however, makes a true studio quality performance of the soundtrack problematic. For example, there is a certain timbral change in a drum sound when it is hit hard. Man of Steel pervasively employs the power of that sound, but for that many drummers to play that loud in the same acoustic environment as a string section just isn’t acoustically viable. It would change the intensity of the drums, and therefore the nature of the performance, if they were to play quieter or if there were less of them. In the real world, it just doesn’t work.

Man of Steel is, however, a studio construction, with parts recorded separately and assembled in a virtual setting. In the past, this might have set me ill at ease, but I have come to appreciate the amount of abstraction and vision this approach requires. Zimmer does not just rely on abstract soundscapes. Instead he captures performances of his compositions and assembles them to maximize their emotive potential in a supportive, sometimes propulsive harmonic environment. This allows Man of Steel to be both immersive and incredibly powerful while retaining the sound of human hands on instruments.



What I really like about Man of Steel is its noticeable narrative capacity. It tells a story of the film almost as clearly as the film itself. Superman has evolved and changed dramatically over the course of his existence. He has gone from being a strong, bulletproof guy who can jump really high to being nearly godlike. In his more recent history, there has been a general movement to humanize him, and in Man of Steel, the foregrounding of his struggle as an adoptee was particularly touching. A good portion of the movie is centered on Superman's self-discovery, not just of his powers, but his purpose.



For the careful listener, this manifests in the blossoming exploration of just a few simple themes that provide the framework for the entire soundtrack. Variations and extrapolations allow this melodic material, most of which starts as a murmur at the outset, to unfold into something immensely powerful and textured by the end of the listening experience.

Despite the somewhat surreptitious setting in which I gave Man of Steel its first listen, I was thankful that I took the opportunity to listen to it on headphones, because it is best taken in an immersive environment that will highlight its amazing dynamic range and atmospheric depth. Subsequent listens in other environments resulted in shaking rearview mirrors or nervous glances out the back patio door. Not that any of that stopped me – it has been in constant rotation for months. Man of Steel is quite amazing, to the point that is has made other soundtracks I have listened to since sound dated and clichéd.

The Superhero Theme Project Part 7: The Martian Manhunter

The Martian Manhunter is certainly one of the most underrated of DC’s classic characters. Thanks to the Justice League animated series streaming on Netflix, however, The Little One has a soft spot for (as we call him) J’onn J’onzz. When, over Thanksgiving, I suggested that J’onn J’onzz might have a “song,” she ran down the hall yelling “J’onn J’onzz! J’onn J’onzz!” Even the comic book fans in the family were confused.

Even though the Martian Manhunter is a relatively obscure member of the Justice League, I wanted to get this one right. A theme song for J’onn J’onzz was an opportunity to introduce some moodier sounds into her superhero theme playlist. The character’s stoic and lonely demeanor, coupled with otherworldly powers like telepathy, shape-shifting, and phasing, make him the “Other” on the team. He is an outsider with the capacity to objectively comment on humanity. It seemed like a wide-open field, but once I set out on the path to find J’onn J’onzz’s theme, things got sticky pretty quick.

I initially considered some more exotic 20th century chamber music, and although 12 tone music certainly captured an otherworldly feeling, I thought that might be just too far out (especially after pushing the limits with Hawkman). Instead, I used Debussy’s Nuages as a starting point. For me, this alI-time favorite would be welcome listening three times a day, but ultimately, its length and mood was prohibitive for a 2 year old.



I asked around and checked out lots of unfamiliar suggestions, but it was a little difficult to immediately decide if a piece really captured how I saw the character. J’onn J’onzz is obviously a science-fiction character, but his demeanor is far more introspective and detached than the space themes that I had been examining for Green Lantern. His alienness is otherworldly and his powers surreal, so I began to look for themes from reality-challenging movies. Inception was a top contender.  Although this score is basically orchestral, its instrumentation often reaches far beyond the boundaries of traditional scoring, and its use of melody is not always obvious.



It seemed like a step in the right direction, however, so I started to research the soundtracks to other reality-bending movies, and it was not long before I came up with The Matrix. I remember the movie’s soundtrack as being quite synthetic, but despite the technologically-driven theme of the movie itself, its score largely stays within the boundaries of the traditional orchestra. What really caught my attention, though, was a pervasive sequence of layered chords that, in the movie, accompanied most of the bullet-time sequences. I have since been referring to this texture as “the Matrix Sound” (with some deference to Tristan).

As a whole, The Matrix score was even less thematic and more programmatic than Inception’s. Taken out of its context, however, I began to relate the Matrix Sound with J’onn J’onzz walking through walls or changing shape. As a result, for a brief time during the Thanksgiving break, I became a bit obsessed with the Matrix Sound. I wondered if it could be compelling enough on its own to pull a piece together into a cohesive theme for J’onn J’onzz. I listened to as much of the Matrix soundtracks that I could, distilling them down to the tracks that fit the two-to-five minute mark. Then I repeatedly listened to and reviewed these tracks, trying to find one that had both some thematic strength and an emphasis on the Matrix Sound.

The Little One had no patience for all of this research, though. Every time we stepped into the car from that point on, she begged for J’onn J’onzz, so I somewhat prematurely chose a track of the appropriate length that prominently featured the Matrix Sound, which was the Main Title/Trinity Infinity track shown above.

This is the first time during the course of this project that I was, and am still, a little ambivalent about the track I chose. Clearly, it is meant to accompany the action of the film. Perhaps I can justify the somewhat erratic, jarring nature of the piece by attributing it to the complexities of the Martian Manhunter character, but as a standalone piece of music, it does not really make a whole lot of sense in comparison to other tunes in the playlist. This would be a pretty serious issue if it weren’t for one thing: the Little One loves it. J’onn J’onzz has been first on her lips every morning since the track’s introduction and it always gets at least two repeat requests. I guess I shouldn’t let my personal predilection towards melody and form inhibit her formative musical experience.

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The Sounds of Batman Then and Now

Before the year 2000, the comic book fan had relatively little to be excited about at the box office, Most superhero movies simply were not possible on a reasonable budget without some serious imagination. Back in 1988, Tim Burton certainly had that to offer, and his take on Batman generated quite a bit of excitement in certain circles. The dedicated comic fan will doubtlessly argue the strengths and weaknesses of the movie, but its influence on the character’s ongoing evolution has been undeniable.

The score to Batman was composed by Danny Elfman, who at the time was better known, at least to me, as the lead singer of Oingo Boingo. Elfman has gone on to have quite a bit of success as a movie composer, but Batman was probably his breakout moment - his Star Wars, so to speak. As a much younger musician, and one who judged orchestral music mainly by what it would sound like on the marching field, I thought it was brilliant. Certainly, Elfman’s playful, imaginative style clearly brings back imagery from the film and in small doses, it’s electrifying.



I revisited this soundtrack recently and was initially quite exhilarated. The opening theme is now, in retrospect, iconic. Burton’s dark imagination may have changed Batman visually, but Danny Elfman’s attendant soundtrack shaped the way Batman sounded for the next decade. The Batman Animated Series, which was arguably one of the finest renderings of the Batman mythos, featured a variant theme by Elfman. This tied the series into the same world as the movie, and as the DC animated universe grew, the shadow of Elfman’s themes stretched further and further.



Despite its influence, over the course of the Batman OST, as a more mature listener I began to feel less and less engaged. It’s pervasively nervous, anxious energy soon becomes exhausting, and the themes that were so compelling at the outset are repeated and reinvented endlessly with relatively little harmonic or rhythmic variation. By the album’s end, it starts to feel like the whole thing has been nothing more than that one theme over and over again, dressed up in Elfman’s characteristic flurry of strings.

These days the cinema is a much different place for those of us that grew up reading comics. There are many amazing movie adaptations, not the least of which was the genre-defining Dark Knight trilogy from Christopher Nolan. His gritty, real-world take on Batman appealed to both comic fans and non-fans alike. Like its concomitant movie, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s soundtrack to the second of these films, The Dark Knight, is a much different rendering of Batman’s soundscape.



The Dark Knight OST often has more in common with the moody, minimalistic ripples of Phillip Glass than the thematic bombast of John Williams. This impression is doubtlessly due to its use of repetition as a compositional tool. At no time, however, does it sink to redundancy (which, taken as a whole, Elfman’s score does). The Dark Knight uses melody sparingly, instead conjuring a sinister, cerebral mood through a staggeringly broad spectrum of timbres and sounds. Perhaps because it is relatively sparse, it is still possible to hear vague outlines of Elfman’s thematic material if you are imaginative. Mostly, however, The Dark Knight is a defiantly original tightrope walk between contemplative focus and terrifying, explosive fury.

Because melody is not at the forefront of The Dark Knight, Zimmer and Howard’s score is not as immediately memorable as Elfman’s, but it is in some ways more engaging. Its strengths are far more subtle, and are not overused to the point of exhaustion. Unlike the Batman OST, which fatigues the focused listener, The Dark Knight gives the listener enough room for their own place in the soundscape. It feels as if it is over too soon, which infuses it with an aesthetic value outside of its status as the accompaniment to an amazing movie.

EDIT: This review became an episodic project that formally started HERE.