Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Keep OST



The Keep (1997) is the soundtrack to the movie The Keep (1983) by the German electronic music group Tangerine Dream. A limited run of 150 CDs were sold at a concert by the group in the UK in 1997. Virgin soon announced that the album would be available for general release in early 1998, but legal issues with the film studio stopped the release. In 1999, Tangerine Dream's own record label sold 300 copies of the Millennium Booster album set that included The Keep with a different cover.

01. "Puer Natus Est Nobis"– 3:09
02. "Ancient Powerplant"– 4:28
03. "The Silver Seal"– 3:07
04. "Voices From A Common Land"– 4:06
05. "Arx Allemand"– 4:24
06. "The Night In Romania"– 3:15
07. "Canzone"– 2:51
08. "Sign In The Dark"– 4:19
09. "Weird Village"– 3:23
10. "Love And Destiny"– 3:31
11. "The Challenger's Arrival"– 4:32
12. "Supernatural Accomplice"– 4:07
13. "Parallel Worlds"– 4:29
14. "Truth And Fiction"– 2:52
15. "Wardays Sunrise"– 3:20
16. "Heritage Survival"– 4:13

"Puer Natus Est Nobis" is a Christmas mass composed by Thomas Tallis around 1554 - this track is from the introit "Gloria" and is credited as "Gloria" from the "Mass for Four Voices". This theme appears in the film when the demon saves Eva from the soldiers. "Heritage Survival" and "The Night In Romania" first appeared in several live concerts during the 1982 "Logos" tour, but were not titled as such until the soundtrack release. The tracks appear in the film when Dr Cuza rejects the demon. "Canzone" appears to be an original composition for the film. None of the other tracks were included in the actual film score.

A rerecorded version of "The Challenger's Arrival" was released on the album Tangerine Dream Plays Tangerine Dream in 2006, and in 2007, "Ancient Powerplant" was included in the Ocean Waves Collection, available for download from the Tangerine Dream website.

Download links: Part 1 Part 2 or Part 1 Part 2

Friday, October 23, 2009

There Will Be Blood OST


It is rare that a movie soundtrack can be taken as a standalone. That is to say it is difficult to take a soundtrack without colouring your opinion with your knowledge of the story or of the movie experience.

But this is a rare beast. Entirely orchestral in its construct, immediately drawing you into the mood and mix of sinister and celebration, this is a soundtrack that takes you on an emotional journey all by itself. However, as the title of the Album intimates that journey is not full of green fields and dancing hobbits. Instead the mood is dark and often malevolent, which gives me to believe that the movie must be about the want of men and what they will do to obtain it.

Very much in the same mould as Michael Nyman soundtracks in the way it influences mood, this is not easy listening, but is very evocative and will take your mind on a journey while stimulating the imagination. Highly recommended !!!

download or download

Ganheddo

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Збогум на 20-от век (1998)

"Goodbye 20th Century" is a unique, surreal and visionary film that's divided into three parts. The film's three stories take place in the future, past and the end of the twentieth century. Some parts reminded me of El Topo. Imagine, if you will, Road Warrior and Christmas Evil filmed by Kusterica and Jodorowsky. This was the first film I have ever seen from the country of Macedonia, and because of its atmosphere; it takes its viewers to another dimension. The two directors combine elements of mysticism, gypsy folk lore, sci-fi and surrealism for a bleak and bizarre view of the future. The first part of the film takes place in the 2019. A man is to be executed at gunpoint. Even when repeatedly shot at, the man cannot die. He continues to live. We later learn that he was cursed for having sex with a saint. He was impotent and could only get it up for this woman. The curse causes the town's children to die. He is now forced to go on living. A mysterious immortal prophet tells him a way to break the curse. There is also Lynch like elements such as a crazed green haired joker in the film who looks straight out of a batman comic. I know, it sounds strange. The bizarre costumes and abandoned environment is in a cinematic category of its own. The second part of the film takes place in the 1900's, Where we witness the first incestuous marriage and murder to be caught on camera. And finally, the film dives into the present which is New Years Eve, before the year 2000. A man in a Santa suit goes crazy at a funeral, or is it the family who's crazy along with their coke addicted relatives and farting grandmother. This is the chaotic event (not Y2K) that leads the world to a bleak future. This film defies description. "Goodbye 20th Century needs to be released on DVD. The low VHS quality doesn't do it justice. On another note, God can only imagine the horror stories that people could tell about living in war torn Macedonia. So the film may feel irrelevant to some western viewers. If you enjoy the films of Jodorowsky, Arrabal, Zulawski and Kusturica, then "Goodbye 20th Century" is for you. It would make a good triple feature with "The Holy Mountain" and Tekeshi Miike's "Izo" since all films have bizarre mystical imagery. And Remember, The future is as screwed up as the past.

Download links at Sunglasses After Dark

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Cuadecuc, vampir (1970)



Description: Vampir-Cuadecuc (1970, 75 mins., 35mm) is a dreamlike combination of documentary, narrative, experimental, and essay film styles and is one of the key films of contemporary Spanish cinema. Shot on the set of Jesus Franco’s Italian horror film Count Dracula, and featuring the star of that film, Christopher Lee, Vampir is both a sly political allegory about generalissimo Francisco Franco, a gentle homage to early films about the vampire legend, particularly Dreyer’s Vampyr and Murnau’s Nosferatu, and a work of subtle beauty and great richness.

Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum:
The first word in the title of Pere Portabella's ravishing 1970 underground masterpiece, made in Spain while General Francisco Franco was still in power and shown clandestinely, means both “worm's tail” and the unexposed footage at the end of film reels. The film is a silent black-and-white documentary about the shooting of Jesus Franco's Count Dracula, with Christopher Lee, that becomes much more: the lush, high-contrast cinematography evokes deteriorating prints of Nosferatu and Vampyr, and the extraordinary soundtrack by composer Carles Santos intersperses the sounds of jet planes, drills, syrupy Muzak, and sinister electronic music, all of which ingeniously locate Dracula and our perceptions of him in the contemporary world. Moving back and forth between Franco's film (with Dracula as an implicit stand-in for the generalissimo) and poetic production details, Portabella offers witty reflections on the powerful monopolies of both dictators and commercial cinema. The only words heard are in English, spoken by Lee and written by Bram Stoker.

Download links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Sinner Man

Rabbits

Inland Empire OST

Whether you believe "Inland Empire" is a great film filled with mystery, or a meaningless assemblage of unsettling scenes, you can't deny that it has a great soundtrack. Sound design has become so important to Lynch that all of his films since "Lost Highway" feature a constant extra-diegetic sound source of some sort. In "Lost Highway", there were obvious musical selections separated by ominous rumblings and barely audible industrial sounds. Now in IE, the distinction between what is "music" in the traditional sense and what is ambient sound is almost totally blurred. Not all music has melody, and not all ambient sound is without melody - even if only in an abstract sense. While I'm disappointed that Angelo Badalamenti didn't collaborate, Lynch seems to have taken on the task himself with great success.

In many ways, this is an interesting companion to the film. It appears that Lynch created lengthy selections, which he subsequently cut and arranged to work with the editing and flow of the film. Now, we're able to hear them in their entirety, as Lynch originally conceived them. To me, it's a fascinating window into his creative mind.

Beyond Lynch's original material, there are some interesting selections ranging from Beck to Penderecki's intense modernist works. The big disappointment for me was the curious omission of the music from the burlesque club scene. It was a great subversion of sleazy stripper jazz into something atonal, but still groovy.

Finally, many speculate that a lot of the film is explained in the lyrics of "Polish Poem", and this is an easy way to hear it. There do seem to be some answers, but as is typical for Lynch, they're clouded in vague, poetic language and end up raising more questions than they answer.

01. David Lynch - Ghost of Love
02. David Lynch - Rabbits Theme
03. Mantovani - Colors of My Life
04. David Lynch - Woods Variation
05. Dave Brubeck - Three To Get Ready
06. Boguslaw Schaeffer - Klavier Konzert
07. Kroke - The Secrets of the Life Tree
08. Little Eva - The Locomotion
09. David Lynch - Call From the Past
10. Krzysztof Penderecki - Als Jakob Erwachte
11. Witold Lutoslawski and Joey Altruda - Novele
12. Beck - Black Tambourine (film version)
13. David Lynch - Mansion Theme
14. David Lynch - Walkin' on the Sky
15. David Lynch and Marek Zebrowski - Polish Nig
16. David Lynch and Chrysta Bell - Polish Poem
17. Nina Simone - Sinnerman (edit)

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Inland Empire (2006)



Inland Empire is a surrealistic, psychological thriller film, written and directed by David Lynch. It was his first feature-length film since 2001's Mulholland Drive, and shares many similarities with that film. It premiered in Italy at the Venice Film Festival on September 6, 2006. The feature took two and a half years to complete, and was Lynch's first film to have been shot entirely in standard definition digital video. David Lynch believes that his new film makes sense. In fact, that it makes perfect sense. And not only is he not joking; he’s saying this about the most screwed-up, far-out film he’s made since Eraserhead. It’s a three-hour psychotropic odyssey that throws conventional narrative out of the window. Characters mutate and morph, time zones overlap, and wormholes connect worlds within worlds within worlds. But through it all Lynch maintains an astonishing sense of commitment that almost dares you to keep up: if Mulholland Drive laid down the gauntlet, Inland Empire (Lynch insists the title be capitalised) is the duel that follows, a mystery like nothing you’ve ever seen before...

CD1: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
CD2: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

...stunning Laura Dern