Clint Mansell - Three Year Stretch
Clint Mansell - We're Going Home
Clint Mansell - Trailer Bedtime
Clint Mansell - Glory Be
Clint Mansell - Death is a Disease
Clint Mansell - Death is the Road to Awe
Clint Mansell - Summer Overture
Clint Mansell - Marion Barfs
Clint Mansell - Lux Aeterna
Clint Mansell - Pi r^2
Clint Mansell - 2 Pi r
So, I started off just wanting to bring you some of the tracks from a new film that Clint Mansell has done the score to, but it's ended up as a bit of a retrospective. Mansell was in a British band called Pop Will Eat Itself, who I possibly saw when they toured Australia in 1995 as part of the Alternative Nation festival. I certainly remember 'Ich Bin Ein Auslander' being a big spin in the clubs I was frequenting back then. Mansell got into doing soundtracks when he was living in New York. Darren Aronofsky, who was working on his first feature, Pi, met him through a mutual friend and asked him to be involved. Since then he has scored all of Aronofsky's increasingly successful flicks. From Pi we have 'Pi r^2' and '2 Pi r', and you can hear the drum and bass beats that were popular at the time. It's amazing to hear how Mansell has progressed creatively from this starting point.
The next score was the big breakthrough for Mansell. Based on a novel by Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem For A Dream is a dark masterpiece and the music is intrinsic to it's intensity. As the movie has three parts, Summer, Fall and Winter, I've included a score piece from each, 'Summer Overture', 'Marion Barfs' and 'Lux Aeterna' respectively. As film scores tend to do, they all contain traces of a common theme. The string refrain, as played by the Kronos Quartet, is perhaps the most brilliant piece of music Mansell has written and highlights his greatest strength - to create a series of notes, a melody, a tune, or whatever you call it, that seems quite simple but is somehow heavily embedded with emotion. This is music I sometimes hear repeating in my head while walking down the street. A version of 'Lux Aeterna' was used on the trailer for the second Lord Of The Rings film.
The film The Fountain wasn't well received by critics, but I loved it. The soundtrack fared better and was nominated for a bunch of awards, winning the World Soundtrack Academy's Award for Best Original Soundtrack of the Year. The film was extremely ambitious and so is the soundtrack. It's epicness matches the movie and is overall my favourite of Mansell's soundtracks. It's basically new classical music as is evident on both 'Death is a Disease' and 'Death is the Road to Awe'.
The first time I saw The Wrestler I didn't notice the score music, perhaps it was eclipsed by the hair metal that was part of the plot. But I did notice it on subsequent viewings and then, when I heard it sans pictures, all the emotions I experienced while watching the movie came rushing back. I was lucky enough to see Mansell perform some of his film scores recently and he mentioned that he was attracted to film scripts which have a sense of loss. You can hear that sense on 'Trailer Bedtime' and 'Glory Be'. Appropriately, Slash helps out on guitar.
Finally, to (the) Moon. This is not an Aronofsky film, in fact it's directed by Duncan Jones aka Zowie Bowie, son of David. I saw it last Friday and thoroughly enjoyed every minute. The soundtrack is also excellent. I'd been listening to it for a few weeks before seeing the film but got a lot more out of later listens. Seeing the film gave the sounds context. What's exciting is the feeling that Mansell is just getting better and better at his craft, I eagerly await his next small step.
PWEI - Ich Bin Ein AuslanderLabels: instrumental, orchestra, soundtrack