I
probably should have been blogging about HBO's Westworld as it ran over
the past few months. I don't know that there was anything else on TV I
was enjoying quite as much, and it offered plenty to dig into. Perhaps
I'll take up writing about it whenever season 2 finally rolls around.
But
one thing I don't have to wait on is the recent soundtrack release for
season 1. Released just days after the season finale, this 34 track
album presents both a healthy collection of composer Ramin Djawadi's
original score and all the major pop hits he reorchestrated for
different episodes.
It's
this latter aspect that has probably driven this soundtrack to
unusually high sales. There is a market, it seems, for player piano
renditions of Soundgarden, Radiohead, The Cure, and Amy Winehouse.
Glibness aside, I don't want to be too dismissive of the subtle
creativity at work here. There's a variety of techniques used to give
the music a mechanical feel, like wildly different "left hand" and
"right hand" parts, and strangely rigid trills and slides. The songs are
also played on different pianos for different emotional impact; some
tracks use a sharp tack piano, others have a brash and echoing sustain,
and others fall somewhere in between.
More
interesting are the non-piano covers. Two songs are played by a string
quartet: Radiohead's "Motion Picture Soundtrack" and Nine Inch Nails'
"Something I Can Never Have." The former has an unsettling squeezebox
quality, while the latter feels like accompaniment for some strange
ritual. Then there's the pivotal track from the series premiere, a full
orchestral rendering of the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black." First
unrecognizable as anything but meandering piano over ominous strings, we
get a "showdown at high noon" statement of the melody on horns before
the orchestra joins in to luxuriate in the music as the on-screen
visuals luxuriated in violence.
But
in my opinion, best of all on this album is Ramin Djawadi's original
work. Any fan of the show can instantly recall his haunting title theme
(the first track on the album, of course), but there are many other gems
too. Much of the music involves clever ways of injecting an unfamiliar
element into more conventional "Western" music. There's the theme for
"Sweetwater," tack piano over menacing strings, but with some odd
percussion and sinister scratching just audible as the music fades out.
There's the sorrowful piano chords of "This World," that are backed by a
motor-like, stereo-panned noise in "Online." Or the track "Reveries," a
blend of melancholy violin with an electronic sound evocative of water
droplets.
Instrumentation
is key even in music queues that aren't explicitly trying to blend the
natural and the synthetic. Many tracks are almost divided in half -- the
first part a solo or concerto, and the second part a full restatement
of the melody using the entire orchestra. The technique shows up again
and again, in "Memories," "Bicameral Mind," "Exit Music (For a Film),"
and more, but it remains fresh and interesting each time it's used.
I
have a number of favorite tracks on the album. "Dr. Ford" features
several different melodies, some using natural instruments and others
synthesizer (an overt echo of the show's thematic content). "Pariah" is a
fun twist on Western movie music featuring a solo, vaguely mariachi
trumpet. "MIB" has at least five distinct leitmotifs in just three
minutes (and, for Game of Thrones fans, feels most like Djawadi's work
there). "No One's Controlling Me" is an angry nest of backmasking,
buzzing, and clicking percussion. And "Violent Delights" is pure
synth-driven action, a sinister and relentless piece vaguely evocative
of Daft Punk's work on Tron: Legacy (in a good way).
No comments:
Post a Comment